All Women Adventure Race

Saturday Oct 4, 2003

Woke up at 5:30 am to a crisp, cool morning by the lake after camping out with my team mates and our boyfriends/husband.
Kristen, Mindy and I got up, ate our banana nut muffins and energy gel and went on our way to get marked and to claim our transition area. We have never done an all women race before. How catty can these women get today? We will definitely find out.

We walked around scoping things out, not knowing anything about the race. For those of you who have never done an Adventure Race before, you never know what to expect. You are only told what to bring. With this, we knew we would be running and mountain biking, but that was it. There are always mystery events!!!

We stood around for the pre race meeting and the national anthem and were then given 5 minutes to get prepared to run and to grab an envelope which we could not open until the start of the race. Soon enough, the horn was sounded and we were off. We tore open our envelopes to read a page long, single spaced typed letter. Which come to find out was a lot of jibber jabber and was only done to help space out the race. We got started off in the front and took off trail running! We ended up running to the end of a dirt road where we had to search for a tennis ball with our team number on it. We found it and took off running back to where we started and beyond that. We hit some trails and ran a good ways! This is where I was thinking, "oh no, how much running are we actually going to be doing?". We got to the end of the trails and did a couple of silly events with the tennis ball which incorporated all running and teamwork. Next, guess what! We took off running again. We ended up at the transistion area after running 4.5 miles to begin our mtn biking!

Mountain biking!!! I was scared. I had only been mountain biking with my wonderful boyfriend who would call out every technical thing on the trail! But I knew I could do this. Kristen, Mindy and I took off with our adrenaline pumping and sucking down another energy gel. As we hit the trails we all got excited. We stormed through 10 miles of trails while hitting several more mystery events even including a word find and an event using plywood to get to the other side of a trail and we were not allowed to talk! Wow, I didn't realize we were actually going to have to use our brains! I guess an all around athlete is made to be both smart and strong! We had to pass several other teams as they walked up hills and walked down hills on the trails. This course was very technical, rocky, tight, twisty, but FUN! As we came out of the trail head, we started sprinting to the transition area. This is where we switched back into our running shoes.

Well, guess what!!! We had to run some more! We headed on over to where the lake started and had to walk in waist deep, muddy, murky lake water in our running shoes! Yuck! But the cool water actually felt great on the legs! Then we did another mystery event where we all stood on these long boards with ropes tied to them and had to walk on them around a course that was set up. Then we ran to the other end of the lake where we had to grab an inner tube and get to the other side of the lake however we could using our arms and legs! What a nightmare. I ended up trying to switch positions and ended up falling out of my tube to find myself not able to get back in, due to the life jacket! So I used breast stroke while still in my tube and with my muddy, soggy running shoes still on my feet! Agghhh! We finally made it to the other side and we got out and took off running in our wet and muddy shoes. We got to some more obstacles including a moon walk that we had to dive into without touching anything to meet our team mates on the other side! Then we put back on our wet running shoes and took off for a dead sprint to the finish line! Wow, under 3 hours? No way!

Well, we were all told that the best teams would finish in 2 hours while the non experienced teams would finish around 5 hours. We ended up finishing in 2:40:00 as the 7th place team out of 51 for beginners. The first place team of two masters women finished in 2:13:00. And overall including the survivors and masters we finished 40 out of 190!

What a day! What a race! What a team! I need a nap, a shower, some clean running shoes, and a loving boyfriend!

Janet Clements

Edited by cycle01 2003-10-07 12:55 PM