A few months ago I saw an announcement for the Anthem Adventure Race. This race was a "sprint" distance, with a maximum course time of 3hrs. Didn’t sound too bad. All we knew from the website was that it involved 3 mi of running, 6 mi of beginner level mountain biking, some kayaking, some wall climbing, and "mystery events" guaranteed to get us wet and dirty. Originally, Zac (my husband), Craig (my father-in-law), and I signed up as a 3 person team, but then Zac broke his wrist, so we had to switch to 2 person. Craig had just gotten over a cold, so that was a close one. If the race had been a week earlier, he would have been sick, and the weather would have been really bad. Luckily that weekend it was sunny and warm.

Just before the start of the race we were given a map and an instruction sheet with all of the tasks listed. We had to complete all of the numbered tasks in consecutive order, and at the bottom of the sheet there were spaces where the numbered tasks would be marked with a hole punch. There were also time bonus questions, where if you answered the question right, you got a few minutes subtracted from your finish time. We read all of the clues ahead of time, but didn’t have a pen handy for writing everything down. We told Zac to get a pen and leave it in our transition area so we could pick it up after the run.

1) Run around the park. The horn blew and the race started off with a run around the entire Anthem community center park. I’m guessing total distance was close to 2 miles, as it took us around 20 minutes to complete. The announcers told everyone to take a right turn going out of the park, and stay on the sidewalk all the way around. As we came up to the first cross street, there was a huge group that went straight, while we were in a group that turned right. People in the first group turned around and sprinted back, yelling that they hoped this was the right way. I reasoned that the street they were going down was going into the residential area, and wasn’t going around the park, so we had to be on the right track. There were people flat out running the entire thing, while we jogged along. We got shuffled to the back of the pack, but figured it was a long race, so no need to waste it all on the first run. We got to the transition area at the end and got the card punched. It was then on to task #2.

2) 3 legged race. Using only 1 hand each, you had to tie one leg of each partner together, for a 3 legged race. That was pretty easy for us. Then you had to do a 3 legged race course, which involved a small hill and lots of turns around cones. We totally rocked this portion of the race. We put our inside arms around each others shoulders, and got to walking in time by calling out "stroke" when the 3rd leg went forward. We passed one team early when their rope came untied. Then we quickened the pace to a fast walk. Others were having trouble walking so we passed about 4 more teams total. It probably helped that Craig and I were about the same height, too.

3) Team mountain bike. In this you both had to ride your bikes around a course by following the map. Craig had the map and was navigator, as he had the hashing experience. We got out of the park, but quickly took a wrong turn. We stopped to get reoriented, and turned around and got going the right way. The course took us along sidewalks, and then paved walking paths through the desert. You couldn’t go too fast because there were a bunch of residents walking & jogging on the paths. Finally we got to the dirt, which were just little dirt paths through the desert behind houses. We passed a few teams on the dirt, and we were actually able to go faster on the dirt sections. I looked down at one point an my computer said we were booking at 18 mph. We could have been on a tandem with how close I was sticking to Craig. We then reached the ½ way check point, which is to ensure that you don’t just do a few laps around the park and say that you did the course. This was the first chance for a bonus time, as we had to ask the punch guy what his first name was to get a bonus point. Luckily we both had pens that Zac had left in the transition area. After that we followed residential streets, and were looking for a left turn at Freedom Drive. We rolled up to Freedom Drive, but it was a T intersection with no paved left turn. We rode on a little ways to see if the next street on the left side was it. Nope. Time to pull out the map again. Looking a bit closer, it turns out that the turn was marked just before Freedom Drive. We backtracked to the intersection, and there on the opposite side was a powdered arrow. Craig said he was kicking himself for missing that one. We took the dirt trail for a few ways, then it looped us back around to the pavement and the sidewalk behind the community center. We couldn’t tell if we were supposed to go over the bridge that led to the parking area, as it wasn’t marked, so we asked a 3 person team who was already on Task #5. They confirmed that that was the way, so we pulled in and were done. Even with a few wrong turns, we never really strayed very far off course or got lost. This task actually pushed us up to the middle of the pack, as some folks were completely turned around and lost out there. The course was also easy riding, and Craig mentioned that he could have done it on his road bike. My cyclocross bike was the perfect choice for that course.

4) Blindfold puzzle. We dumped our bikes and went to the next station in the park, which was a puzzle. One person needed to be blindfolded and put together the puzzle, while the other stood on the opposite side of the table the puzzle was on and call out what to do (they couldn’t touch the puzzle). This was another task that we totally rocked. I was the blindfolded one, and the puzzle was a foam kiddie one with about 5 pieces. One side of the pieces was smooth while the other side was bumpy. For our puzzle, smooth side was up. Craig gave me pretty clear instructions, like "towards me", "towards you", "left/right", and "rotate clockwise/counterclockwise." I guess a few teams got hung up on how to rotate the pieces. Anyways, I think it took us a few minutes to do that task. We also had a bonus time question on this one, by filling out how many pieces were in the puzzle.

5) Bike & run tied together. For this one, one person had to ride a bike while the other had a hand tied by rope to the bike. We tied the rope to the seat of my bike, and Craig was the runner. The course used a shorter portion of the team mountain bike course. But it was still about 3 miles long. We made all street crossings the chance for Craig to walk, and being the bike rider I gave the hand-ups of water to him. Good thing I had 2 water bottles on the bike. At this point in the day it was also getting warm. We got the ½ way point checked, and then made it back to transition for the task to get our card punched.

6) High dive. The next 2 tasks were at the community pool. #6 required both team members to jump off the high dive diving board. Zac said one gal was afraid of heights and refused to do it. That one was pretty easy for Craig and I.

7) Pool swim/surfboard. #7 required you to go from one side of the pool to the other (about 25m long). You could paddle a foam surfboard to the other side, but then had to paddle it back to bring it back to the starting side of the pool. We both decided it was faster to swim. Later we guessed that the board was for people that didn’t know how to swim.

8) Basketball. Task #8 was on the indoor basketball courts of the community center. You had to make a basket from the free-throw line and your partner had to catch the ball and not let it touch the ground. Then you had to do a layup and the partner had to catch that too, after the ball made it through the hoop. Then you switched and the other partner did the same. It took me awhile to get both baskets in, and I had trouble catching the ball after it went through the hoop. Not my favorite task. But we made it through. Bonus time points on this task were to figure out how many points you had scored.

9) Volleyball court crawl & partner carry. Task #9 was on the other side of the community center at the volleyball court. Probably about a ½ mile walk. By that time, we were walking in between the tasks. For this one, they had wet down the volleyball court sand to make mud. They had set leftover bike transition racks up, and zig zagged rope in between all of them. So you had to crawl under all the ropes through the mud down the entire length of courts. That wasn’t too bad, except the sand was really coarse and hurt your knees. So I tried to keep from crawling on my knees. Then on the other side of the courts you had to carry your partner back to start. Craig just carried me piggy back, and most of the 3 person teams carried someone like a medical patient. They also had the sprinklers for the courts going, so we were able to rinse off a bit.

10) Kayak. It was then another long walk across the athletic fields to the ponds, where the kayak task was set up. They only had a small number of inflatable kayaks, so we had to wait in line and there were about 4 teams in front of us. Craig delegated the rowing to me, and I had never rowed anything before, so I got a quick lesson while we waited in line. There were 3 ponds total, with a path in between each one. You had to row to the cone on the opposite side, then get out and carry your kayak to the next pond. Last year people drug the kayaks and the race group had to pay to replace them all, so this year they added a 5 min time penalty for each time a kayak touched the ground. The ponds were pretty small, probably only 3-4 feet deep, with waterfalls. So that made for interesting currents. I tried to paddle straight, but then some strange current would start to spin the kayak around. They weren’t the most responsive either. But at least it was a chance to sit down. At the end of the 3rd pond you had to carry your kayak all the way back to the beginning at the first pond, which was a bit of a haul. We then had to walk all the way back to the community center building for the last few tasks. It was during this walk that I realized that there was nothing that said we couldn’t ride our bikes in between tasks. I was kicking myself for not realizing this sooner, as that would have saved us some time and kept us from walking everywhere. But no one else figured that out, either.

11) Wall climb. Before going on to Task #11, we stopped in the transition area to get some water and a Cliff bar. I was starving at this point, but we were almost done. We walked inside to the rock wall, and Zac was there and said the easiest line was to the far left. Craig jumped at that opportunity, and was practically done before I even got started on the wall. The kayak rowing had tired my arms out, so I fell on my first attempt. But I got going again, and you had to climb up and touch you hand above a taped line. So this task didn’t take too much time.

12) Ball toss & bucket. The last task was on a nearby athletic field. One partner had to stand behind cones and throw 3 rubber balls to the other partner on the other side of the field, and they had to catch the balls in a bucket and not use their hands while standing behind another row of cones. We tried this a few times, but several of the tosses were a foot too short, or the ball would bounce out of the bucket. The guy directing that task then allowed us to switch to the short course, which was about half the distance. We then got all 3 balls in, one right after the other.

Then it was a short jog to the finish line. Our finishing time was about 2 hrs, 30 mins. We had gotten most of the bonus time points, except 1 and a half. On one, we never did find some secret point on the bike course map to collect a green tag. The other question asked us where the 2 green smiley faces were. One was by the rock wall, but we didn’t find the other. There was a total of 15 minutes in bonus time points that could be won. The highest scored that day was 13 minutes, and our team scored 7 minutes. So our final finish time was 2 hrs, 23 mins. Both of us are engineers, so we flew through the logic tasks. The race definitely needs more of those. ;-)

It actually worked out better that we were a 2 person team. Both the 2 person and 3 person teams did all the same tasks, so for the 3 person teams, someone had to sit out for some of the tasks. And we got a bike jersey instead of a T-shirt for doing the race, which was pretty cool.

Pics are posted in my photo album here: Anthem Adventure Race Pics