Well, the day of reckoning is over, and I lived.
The story starts with me not being able to
not think about the race all the nite before, so I got about 2-3 hours of sleep. Got up at 6:30, and we packed up Scott's truck and headed out to the lake.
The firs thing I notice is that everyone else has expensive equipment and clothing, all tailored to just this sort of race. We are unloading our cheap, old bikes, and peasant clothing and equipment, muttering to ourselves about "all we want is to not finish last".
Scott dubs the 3 guys that parked next to us, all with bikes well over $1000 and matching biking jerseys and socks, "team USA"
Our third guy, Kevin, played in the state games volleyball the entire day before, and was totally spent from that, not a good start for our team, 3Techs (I did not get any input into the team name). He actually called us the nite before saying he was cramping up, and if we could find a replacement, do it. Yeah, didn't seem likely the nite before the race.
There are by my guess, about 100 teams here, most are first timers like us, thankfully.
We were told by several people who raced this before that the race went:
run 2 miles,
bike 10 miles,
canoe 2 miles,
obstacle course,
run 2 miles.
So we were prepared for that.
Instead, the first announcement was that the course was changed drastically this year.
Great.
So he says "you need to take everything with you"
We all had running shoes, biking shoes, and beach shoes. I didn't want to use one pair of shoes on any other part of the course, because I just about can't run in the biking shoes, cannot bike in the anything but the biking shoes, and didn't want to run in sand-filled shoes.
So now the biking is first.
I just figure we'll follow the crowd, and worry about passing as the race goes on.
We only bike about 1 mile, and then it's time to run, and I'm stuck in the biking shoes.
2 miles of running in those stupid biking shoes later, we need to bike another 10 miles.
Scott and I are very strong in this, and can pass people, but Kevin is wilting.
In the end of the biking section, we did very well, and definitely finished in the top 25
We got to the inflatable kayak section, which only holds 2 people, so the third person had to get in an inner tube and swim out to another boat and get a token.
Kevin and I kayaked, and Scott swam.
It turned out that Kevin and I were the worst kayakers in the entire race. We got passed by the only team behind us, and could not go straight to save our lives. It seemed to take forever to finish, but thankfully we finished about the same time as Scott so he was not waiting.
Then we had to do, as Scott described it, "a bunch of grabass tasks" on the beach. It involved filling up buckets with sand or water and then carrying them around.
Then it was the last run, which we expected to be 2 miles again, but instead it was only about 1. I was feeling very good, and was able to run te whole way, but both Scott and Kevin were cramping.
So when we realized the run was "run straight out, get a stamp, and run back to where we started" I left them in the middle, got the stamp, and met them as they started back.
An all girl's team did the same, and me and the lead girls from that team ended up sprinting back to the finish line.
As I was racing her, I thought, "I am not going to lose to this girl", and looked back to see that Scott and Kevin were far ahead of her teammates. Since the time is the time the whole team gets there, I thought "I don't even need to beat her" and let her go ahead in the last 10 yards.
She tries to get her team entered as scott and kevin come up behind me, and is very loud about making sure everyone understood she was here in line before me. And the guy entering times is indeed putting her in before getting my info.
But when we gets to taking my teams info, the race director says to him "this guys teams was here before her, mark their time as 3 seconds before hers"
pfffft.
I will post some pictures of the race when I can find them.
In all, I estimate we finished in the top 25. The gold and silver men's times were a full half hour before us, but the bronze men's time was only 10 minutes before us, so I'm curious how far out of the medals we were.
Knowing what I know now about how the race works, and if we could have not had Kevin kill himself the day before the race, I think there's a good chance we could have been in the medal hunt.
But we didn't finish last, so mission accomplished.
Scott and I went and ate a truckload of taco bell, and I went home and went to sleep for 3 hours.
Then I had a small poker tournament, only 10 guys showed up.
But I
won that, drank several beers, and generally had a good time.
This was a day to make autobiography.