Addicted to Adventure Racing! Simple Pleasures in Moab

One adventure race down, many, many more to go.

Too much fun . . . Moab, Utah was the setting for Adventure Xstream . . . although we did not make our goal of finishing in under 8 hours (Finished in 8:30) we had a blast and know we will be back for more (Durango June 14th among others). Here are the pics from the race:

Photos

On Sunday before returning home, we took a tour of Arches National Park and saw the sights of the cool park. Here are the pics from Arches

Photos


RACE START/ 1st Segment - 18-mile paddle on the Colorado river.

Calm, calm, calm, Racers Ready . . . oh not calm any more. My heart rate shot up as we put Jen in her boat, shoved her off than attempted to play catch-up, problems with my skirt sent the heart rate even higher . . . soon enough I was in the boat and pointed downstream. We legs were shaking and my arms were burning and all I could think was . . . "Wow I finally doing this" The paddle section took us 3 hours. We had worked out a tow system to increase speed and stay together . . . it worked well enabling us to keep moving and pull each other along We passed a bunch of teams on the river, but knew there were more ahead of us then behind . . . the atmosphere was one of chaos and excitement . . . there were teams in tiny river boats, next to a team in a canoe with the stereo blazing Black Sabbath, somewhere ahead of us lay people like Ian Adamson, who has won every major adventure race on the planet (For the record he finished in 6 hours)

THE BIKE - 35 MILES TOTAL ON MOUNTAIN BIKE - split up in 2 sections

We jammed thru the post-paddle transition, changing clothes, eating food and prepping to spend the rest of the day on bikes We began with a 3 mile asphalt ride, that quickly turned into a 2500 feet to gain over ~ 4 miles. We're talking sections that were 10-12% grade and had us tilting our heads back to look UP to see where in Gods name this road was taking us. We had driven part of the course the night before, but somehow it all looks different on your bike.........than from the comfort of the backseat of Toyota..

We made it up the hill with no major problems and turned our attention to blasting through the flat stretches to the 4th transition where we would pick up our running gear and climbing harness. Our support team (Brad & Rhonda) (Who took such great care of us) had our clothes laid out, food ready, and were barking out gear list items to make sure we had all that was required.

Next we came to our (my) first mistake, while busy drifting off looking at the beautiful view screaming down the downhill, I missed the turn for the next checkpoint, rather than turn around, I found another route to the checkpoint (Which ended up costing us at least 30 minutes) Sorry guys!

THE RAPPEL / TRAIL RUN SECTION - 250' rappel, 10k trail run.

We arrived at the rappel which was on this 250' cliff wall that faced Gemini Arches Jen was a bit jittery, and I was just ready to throw myself off a perfectly good cliff. Off the side 250 feet of rope makes it difficult to rappel, so the going was slow at first. . . . soon enough I was burning my hands from the heat build-up, looking down at the specks below me (people) was quite a feeling. About half way down, my number became tangled in the rappel device and stopped me dead. After fishing it out I hit the bottom and began to rappel Jen and Coop.

The run was no surprise. We simply had to get back to our bikes.......which were up on the top of that cliff we just rappelled down - nice. We started off at a decent clip . . . this was going to be our strongest thing ...but then Jen's quads started to cramp. So we had to run/walk the 6 miles back up to our bikes....taking advantage of downhills and flats as they came......we still did the run in 1hour 3 min and passed at least 2 dozen teams.

THE LAST BIKE SECTION TO THE END !
This last section started with a fantastic, crazy downhill with jaw-dropping views of the mountains......We all kept saying "we're almost done! How much worse can it be??". Then there was the hill.

Right at the end they slammed us with another hill. Not just a little 'bump' but a friggin CLIMB ! Another 10% grader.......which although shorter than the first.....it was not going to be easy 7.5 hours into the race! Jen's quads were fried. Coop was burnt, I wanted cold beer.

I barked back to Jen "Get on! We're doing it!" meaning I wanted her to grab hold of the tow system on my bike ( a long piece of surgical tubing threaded thru light-weight PVC pipe attached under his bike seat ) ......and tow her up that hill!

And off we went.

Audibly grunting and heaving, hunched over our bars......... digging for what we could find and still passing teams we climbed at one point Jen yelled up to me, " maybe I should drop off and walk this section??" (Quoting Jen)

The next moment was kinda like a slow-motion scene from the Exorcist.....you know....that bedroom scene where the little girls head is spinning around and that demonic voice comes out of her body and says "Geeet Ouuuut!! " ......? Well, that was Nic. Except the phrase was this seemingly slow-motion, warped, demonic response of "Nooooooooooooo, Staaaaaaay Onnnnnn! " I was staying on.

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