mMy first adventure race was at the Nantahala Outdoor Center in North Carolina. I was a last minute replacement for a three person co-ed team and the race lasted 8 hours. What can I say about my first race?? In the few days I had between when I was confirmed to race and when I met up with the two guys and traveled over to NC, I was in panic mode trying to pull together all of the gear that I needed. I was riding an old beater, borrowed mountain bike. I had a Salomon pack overnighted to me (shipping cost more than the pack), and (because I lived in a very small town and had few shopping choices) I picked up the rest of the mandatory gear I needed (compass, waterproof matches, first aid supplies etc) at Walmart. By no means were they top of the line, but they would meet the gear requirements and for a first timer that was good enough.
The guys turned out to be ten years younger than me, were an easy going and fun loving pair, and we spent that race day doing nothing but having huge fun. The mountains in NC were overwhelmingly huge compared to the small hills I had been biking to that point in middle Tennessee, and by the time we were done the race I had tendonitis in one forearm from all the braking. About four hours into the race we were riding on a narrow single track along a ridge line. My back wheel slid off the trail which sent the bike into a roll. I rolled off the trail and then rolled about 10 feet down the hill to my left. A tree broke my fall, my bike landed unceremoniously on top of me, and I was hooked. I loved adventure racing. We finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. I don't really remember exactly what position we ended up, but it didn't matter. I had fallen in love with this sport and for the first time in quite a few years I resolved to become a dedicated athlete again.
How do I even describe what my life became for the next seven years? Cross training and continual, non-stop training became the norm. Two and three different types of training every day. It became a lifestyle. Runs before work. Swims at work in the morning. Stair climbing during lunch and running on the treadmill after work, while killing time until I could take a spin class at a local gym. Taking a 90 minute spin class on a Saturday morning, going to a restaurant to eat a light breakfast, before heading for the trails to either mountain bike or trail run. Running half marathon distances on a Sunday morning like it was nothing. Riding 16 hilly miles from home to the gym, running for an hour on a treadmill, and then riding the same 16 hilly miles home. Signing up for century road rides just for a long training day. Signing up for marathons and mountain bike races for the same reason. Training quickly became an all-consuming lifestyle and I relished every minute of it. One day I ran a seven mile loop on the trail three consecutive times and then went mountain biking with a friend. And I thought nothing of it. Driving to Atlanta to get certified in canoeing, rappelling, or just to train with team-mates and driving 100 miles to meet and workout with a new prospective team-mate..
Over the years training became more and more prevalent. Mileages on foot, on bike and in the pool increased and then continued to increase. And I thought nothing of it, because it was just was a normal part of my day and part of my life by that point..
At the same time I was deeply embedded in training, the number of races I took on began to increase. Over time my reputation as a strong and tough racer began to make it easier for me to find team-mates, and race planning also began to take up a lot of my time. I raced with adventure racers from every state in the south east many times, in addition to racing with guys from New Jersey, Michigan , Missouri, Maryland and Florida. I raced all over the south east many times, in addition to Virginia and W Virginia many times (tough terrain), Kentucky, Ohio and Missouri. Lots of traveling (one time I did four races in three months in three different states).
Within a couple of years of starting adventure racing both my boys had left home. One was working on his undergraduate and then graduate degree in Athletic Training. The other tried college for a couple of years, decided that it was not for him, and enlisted in the Air Force. My second marriage was done (for an overachiever, marriage was not something that I seemed to be very good at), and once both the boys were gone my husband and I divorced.
By the time I was in my mid-40s I had bought a house, lived close to my work, the job was orderly and I had the entire aquatics division under control, and I was literally working strictly to pay my mortgage and finance my growing adventure racing addiction. I had an entire room of the house dedicated strictly to all of the gear that I needed to race - climbing gear, paddling gear, navigation and trekking gear, road riding and mountain biking gear, and all the clothing and footwear needed for each race discipline in every kind of weather
Within a few races I began to realize that I had no real interest in short adventure races, that I was strongest in races that lasted between 2 and 3 days, and the vast majority of races I did over the years were that length. I felt stronger at 18 hours than I did at 8 hours (which is not unusual for female athletes, who often excel in endurance sports). The longest race I ever did was 5 1/2 days up in Virginia. The shortest I ever did was 6 hours. I did it with my now-husband. He was 60 years old at the time, we did it down in central GA on the hottest day of the year (it was 98 degrees that day, with all the humidity that central GA had to throw at us), and I was incredibly proud of him for finishing it with me.
Some races (like my first and like the one with my husband) I did strictly for fun. Some I did solo strictly for navigation practice, And some I did to try (and sometime even succeed) in being competitive.
How do you tell people about all the hallucinations resulting from too many hours on the move and too little sleep? About the bruises and breaks from falls, the heat exhaustion and hypothermia, and endless scratches from bushwhacking through endless thorn bushes in endless national forests? About falling asleep while riding your bike? About tacoed bike wheels and tacoed canoes resulting from wayward rocks and your own inattention?
When I first started racing I approached local athletes that I knew, hoping to find team-mates that didn't live at least six hours away from me (so that we could train together more often than I usually trained with team-mates). I still remember talking to a guy who had run the Ironman in Hawaii when he was younger. A guy who could still run faster and bike faster on his worst day, than I ever could hope to do on my best day. When I told him about adventure racing his first question to me was "When do you sleep"?
When do you sleep? In races less than 24 hours you don't. During the 5 1/2 day race, I don't think we slept more than a total of 12 hours. How do you tell someone about all the times you have slept on the side of the trail for 20 minutes, while using your pack as a pillow? That I've slept on park restroom floors in the middle of the mountains when it was 20 degrees? That I've slept in grassy ditches on the side of highways, under park picnic tables, under bushes using my rain jacket for warmth, and that I have fallen asleep in mid step, mid pedal, and while sitting for just a moment while a team-mate studied the map? I learned pretty quickly that people either "got" adventure racing right away or never understood it, no matter how much I talked it up. I never WAS able to find local athletes to team up with me. Adventure racing was just too foreign, too gear intensive, too training intensive, too uncomfortable and (because navigation was so much a part of racing) a little too scary to try for many people.
In mid-2008 I did a race with a team-mate from SC and another from GA. The race was in North Carolina and was a national qualifying race. I had been racing for six years by then and (although I had a reputation fpr being a tough, never-give-up racer) I also was not anywhere near the fastest. I was a decent racer. But the elites - OMG they were good. Strong. Fast. Sponsored. They were in a completely different league from my racing. I had competed in many national qualifiers over the years and never gave that aspect of the race a moments thought. I just raced my own races.
So my younger GA team-mate and older SC team-mate and I did this race, as we had all done together many times. and I remember it well. My now-husband-then-boyfriend was our support crew, it rained solid and unrelenting for the first half of the race, and the hills seemed to go on forever. By the end of the race we were happy to learn that we had finished fourth in a very large co-ed division. Cool. Our chief navigator had done an outstanding job and we had raced solid, injury free and mechanical-issue free. We were pleased, and after finding out the results we did what we always do. After two days straight of eating simple carbs we showered up, went the nearest all-you-can-eat restaurant and went full-on carnivore. Worn out bodies starving for protein.
A week later we found out that we had qualified for nationals. Stunned, I emailed back asking how that could be. The top three teams had already qualified in other races, which moved qualifying down the next team. Us. In all the years I had raced it had never occurred to me that we would ever make nationals. Not even once.
Four months later we raced nationals. It was in November and freezing cold. One of my team-mates had been sick the week before the race, bonked hard in the middle of the race, could never recover, and we limped across the finish line ending up ranked just below the half way mark of the team line-up. Not a terrible finish considering we were racing against the best teams in the nation and considering that two of us had to care for an ailing team-mate. I wish it had gone better, but there are so many things that you cannot control during a race - mechanical failures, navigation errors, injuries, illnesses, weather, personality conflicts, and so many other things that had nothing to do with fitness and technical skills. Just bad luck that happens when you're pushing beyond your limits in the wilderness for hours and days without rest with a couple of other like minded crazies. It's all just part of racing.
Early in 2009 I drove to Chattanooga to meet up with a prospective new team-mate from Atlanta. We spent the day trail running and mountain biking together, seeing if we were physically and personally compatible. We both wanted to do a race at Land Between the Lakes up in Kentucky. As the day progressed I realized that I was stronger on foot and he was stronger on bike, but generally we matched up pretty well. Pleased with how the day had gone (and pleased that I had been able to keep up with him on bike in the mountains in back of Chattanooga) we headed off the trail and rode across the grass at a play park on the way back to our trucks. As I rode across a grassy ditch I hit a patch of wet leaves. Instantly my front wheel pulled hard to the right. I did a partial endo over the handlebars, landed hard on the ground with my bike wrapped around my legs. Unclipping from the pedals I unceremoniously untangled myself from my bike, and sat on the grass for a few minutes trying to catch my breath. My knee hurt.
I took a couple of days off training, slowly and gingerly biked on easy trails a couple of times as the swelling went down, and within a week I felt perfectly fine. The fall was forgotten. Fast forward and six weeks later I was on a trail at the Land Between the Lakes AR. Me and my male team-mate were hiking on a trail when I suddenly stepped into a hole. I fell down to my knee (the same knee) and the pain was bad enough for me to cry out. A few minutes later we continued on with the race and the fall was quickly forgotten. I had no problems with the knee for the remainder of the race, but by the time we had found our way back to Tennessee the knee was twice its regular size and I was limping. I took a few days off both work and training, RICEd my knee (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and went back to work. By that time the swelling had gone down, but as I walked down the hall my knee would unexpectedly and without warning, buckle.
I went to an Orthopedic surgeon who wanted to do an MRI. Right around that same time I needed an expensive truck repair and the cost of both was about the same. Truck repair - MRI - Truck Repair - MRI. I went with the truck repair. I had years (and years and years and..........) of personal and professional experience with athletic injuries. I could rehab this myself. I was sure of it. I spent the entire summer doing everything that I thought I needed to do. A complete cease of training. Low impact training. Gradual increase in intensity, distance, length of training. Cross training as much as possible. More rest. Plenty of ice. All of it, throughout the entire summer and by the end of that summer I was fit, strong, healthy, uninjured, back to training as long and intensely as I had been doing for years, and I smugly congratulated myself on beating an injury.
In September I agreed to team up with three guys in Missouri for a race in that same state. The race started at midnight (as so many of them did) and very quickly it was obvious that they were faster on foot than I was. To make better time we pulled out a tow rope (a common tool to assist a racer who may be weaker than the rest of the team on foot) and we all took off in a run. A lot of too fast down hill, and the pain was almost immediate. By 1am I had completely blown out my knee. An entire summer of rehabbing my knee shot to hell. I couldn't run. I could walk on flat surfaces and uphill, but traveling downhill was painful, unsteady and very slow. I could feel the swelling and was afraid to left up my pant leg and take a look.
We had been bussed to the race start, and were basically in the middle of nowhere. We had followed trails for a while but the race required that we quickly begin bushwhacking across country in search of checkpoints that we had plotted on the map. Travel was almost impossible. I couldn't do more than slowly limp along, up hills, down hills, over downed logs, around bushes, across creeks, bushwhacking our way slowly from one CP to the next. Every bushwhacking move hurt.
By 2am I knew I was done. I was going to have to drop out of the race. I felt terrible. For letting down my team. Once we got to a manned checkpoint I could drop out and they could continue, but whatever finish they got in the race would be unofficial. But it was what it was. Finally at 9am we hit the manned CP and I bailed on my guys.
A month later I had knee surgery for a torn lateral meniscus. A month after that I accepted a position with a Parks and Recreation Department in Alaska. That Missouri race was the last race I ever did. I raced for seven years in total. I value the experiences I had, the memories I have, the friendships I made, the places I went, the people I met and the challenges that I was able to overcome in this most crazy of athletic endeavors.
Do I miss it? No. Do I miss the goals I had while training? Yes. I'm at a point now that is close to where I was at way back when, before I started adventure racing. I have an elliptical and a spin bike and a mountain bike and use them all regularly. A kayak for summer paddling. I walk a lot but don't run anymore (chronic hip injury). My lifestyle is still active (but not competitive anymore) but this aging athlete feels a little...........lost. After so many years of focused and dedicated training (in martial arts, professionally, in adventure racing) I have not found much recently that excites me or drives me forward.
I did however spend this past winter focused on learning how to cross country ski. I'm not bad at it. Maybe a goal-less aging athlete just needs to take on a different kind of challenge. And Mt Borah calls to me. Maybe old dogs can still find ways to challenge themselves. Maybe.................
The guys turned out to be ten years younger than me, were an easy going and fun loving pair, and we spent that race day doing nothing but having huge fun. The mountains in NC were overwhelmingly huge compared to the small hills I had been biking to that point in middle Tennessee, and by the time we were done the race I had tendonitis in one forearm from all the braking. About four hours into the race we were riding on a narrow single track along a ridge line. My back wheel slid off the trail which sent the bike into a roll. I rolled off the trail and then rolled about 10 feet down the hill to my left. A tree broke my fall, my bike landed unceremoniously on top of me, and I was hooked. I loved adventure racing. We finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. I don't really remember exactly what position we ended up, but it didn't matter. I had fallen in love with this sport and for the first time in quite a few years I resolved to become a dedicated athlete again.
How do I even describe what my life became for the next seven years? Cross training and continual, non-stop training became the norm. Two and three different types of training every day. It became a lifestyle. Runs before work. Swims at work in the morning. Stair climbing during lunch and running on the treadmill after work, while killing time until I could take a spin class at a local gym. Taking a 90 minute spin class on a Saturday morning, going to a restaurant to eat a light breakfast, before heading for the trails to either mountain bike or trail run. Running half marathon distances on a Sunday morning like it was nothing. Riding 16 hilly miles from home to the gym, running for an hour on a treadmill, and then riding the same 16 hilly miles home. Signing up for century road rides just for a long training day. Signing up for marathons and mountain bike races for the same reason. Training quickly became an all-consuming lifestyle and I relished every minute of it. One day I ran a seven mile loop on the trail three consecutive times and then went mountain biking with a friend. And I thought nothing of it. Driving to Atlanta to get certified in canoeing, rappelling, or just to train with team-mates and driving 100 miles to meet and workout with a new prospective team-mate..
Over the years training became more and more prevalent. Mileages on foot, on bike and in the pool increased and then continued to increase. And I thought nothing of it, because it was just was a normal part of my day and part of my life by that point..
At the same time I was deeply embedded in training, the number of races I took on began to increase. Over time my reputation as a strong and tough racer began to make it easier for me to find team-mates, and race planning also began to take up a lot of my time. I raced with adventure racers from every state in the south east many times, in addition to racing with guys from New Jersey, Michigan , Missouri, Maryland and Florida. I raced all over the south east many times, in addition to Virginia and W Virginia many times (tough terrain), Kentucky, Ohio and Missouri. Lots of traveling (one time I did four races in three months in three different states).
Within a couple of years of starting adventure racing both my boys had left home. One was working on his undergraduate and then graduate degree in Athletic Training. The other tried college for a couple of years, decided that it was not for him, and enlisted in the Air Force. My second marriage was done (for an overachiever, marriage was not something that I seemed to be very good at), and once both the boys were gone my husband and I divorced.
By the time I was in my mid-40s I had bought a house, lived close to my work, the job was orderly and I had the entire aquatics division under control, and I was literally working strictly to pay my mortgage and finance my growing adventure racing addiction. I had an entire room of the house dedicated strictly to all of the gear that I needed to race - climbing gear, paddling gear, navigation and trekking gear, road riding and mountain biking gear, and all the clothing and footwear needed for each race discipline in every kind of weather
Within a few races I began to realize that I had no real interest in short adventure races, that I was strongest in races that lasted between 2 and 3 days, and the vast majority of races I did over the years were that length. I felt stronger at 18 hours than I did at 8 hours (which is not unusual for female athletes, who often excel in endurance sports). The longest race I ever did was 5 1/2 days up in Virginia. The shortest I ever did was 6 hours. I did it with my now-husband. He was 60 years old at the time, we did it down in central GA on the hottest day of the year (it was 98 degrees that day, with all the humidity that central GA had to throw at us), and I was incredibly proud of him for finishing it with me.
Some races (like my first and like the one with my husband) I did strictly for fun. Some I did solo strictly for navigation practice, And some I did to try (and sometime even succeed) in being competitive.
How do you tell people about all the hallucinations resulting from too many hours on the move and too little sleep? About the bruises and breaks from falls, the heat exhaustion and hypothermia, and endless scratches from bushwhacking through endless thorn bushes in endless national forests? About falling asleep while riding your bike? About tacoed bike wheels and tacoed canoes resulting from wayward rocks and your own inattention?
When I first started racing I approached local athletes that I knew, hoping to find team-mates that didn't live at least six hours away from me (so that we could train together more often than I usually trained with team-mates). I still remember talking to a guy who had run the Ironman in Hawaii when he was younger. A guy who could still run faster and bike faster on his worst day, than I ever could hope to do on my best day. When I told him about adventure racing his first question to me was "When do you sleep"?
When do you sleep? In races less than 24 hours you don't. During the 5 1/2 day race, I don't think we slept more than a total of 12 hours. How do you tell someone about all the times you have slept on the side of the trail for 20 minutes, while using your pack as a pillow? That I've slept on park restroom floors in the middle of the mountains when it was 20 degrees? That I've slept in grassy ditches on the side of highways, under park picnic tables, under bushes using my rain jacket for warmth, and that I have fallen asleep in mid step, mid pedal, and while sitting for just a moment while a team-mate studied the map? I learned pretty quickly that people either "got" adventure racing right away or never understood it, no matter how much I talked it up. I never WAS able to find local athletes to team up with me. Adventure racing was just too foreign, too gear intensive, too training intensive, too uncomfortable and (because navigation was so much a part of racing) a little too scary to try for many people.
In mid-2008 I did a race with a team-mate from SC and another from GA. The race was in North Carolina and was a national qualifying race. I had been racing for six years by then and (although I had a reputation fpr being a tough, never-give-up racer) I also was not anywhere near the fastest. I was a decent racer. But the elites - OMG they were good. Strong. Fast. Sponsored. They were in a completely different league from my racing. I had competed in many national qualifiers over the years and never gave that aspect of the race a moments thought. I just raced my own races.
So my younger GA team-mate and older SC team-mate and I did this race, as we had all done together many times. and I remember it well. My now-husband-then-boyfriend was our support crew, it rained solid and unrelenting for the first half of the race, and the hills seemed to go on forever. By the end of the race we were happy to learn that we had finished fourth in a very large co-ed division. Cool. Our chief navigator had done an outstanding job and we had raced solid, injury free and mechanical-issue free. We were pleased, and after finding out the results we did what we always do. After two days straight of eating simple carbs we showered up, went the nearest all-you-can-eat restaurant and went full-on carnivore. Worn out bodies starving for protein.
A week later we found out that we had qualified for nationals. Stunned, I emailed back asking how that could be. The top three teams had already qualified in other races, which moved qualifying down the next team. Us. In all the years I had raced it had never occurred to me that we would ever make nationals. Not even once.
Four months later we raced nationals. It was in November and freezing cold. One of my team-mates had been sick the week before the race, bonked hard in the middle of the race, could never recover, and we limped across the finish line ending up ranked just below the half way mark of the team line-up. Not a terrible finish considering we were racing against the best teams in the nation and considering that two of us had to care for an ailing team-mate. I wish it had gone better, but there are so many things that you cannot control during a race - mechanical failures, navigation errors, injuries, illnesses, weather, personality conflicts, and so many other things that had nothing to do with fitness and technical skills. Just bad luck that happens when you're pushing beyond your limits in the wilderness for hours and days without rest with a couple of other like minded crazies. It's all just part of racing.
Early in 2009 I drove to Chattanooga to meet up with a prospective new team-mate from Atlanta. We spent the day trail running and mountain biking together, seeing if we were physically and personally compatible. We both wanted to do a race at Land Between the Lakes up in Kentucky. As the day progressed I realized that I was stronger on foot and he was stronger on bike, but generally we matched up pretty well. Pleased with how the day had gone (and pleased that I had been able to keep up with him on bike in the mountains in back of Chattanooga) we headed off the trail and rode across the grass at a play park on the way back to our trucks. As I rode across a grassy ditch I hit a patch of wet leaves. Instantly my front wheel pulled hard to the right. I did a partial endo over the handlebars, landed hard on the ground with my bike wrapped around my legs. Unclipping from the pedals I unceremoniously untangled myself from my bike, and sat on the grass for a few minutes trying to catch my breath. My knee hurt.
I took a couple of days off training, slowly and gingerly biked on easy trails a couple of times as the swelling went down, and within a week I felt perfectly fine. The fall was forgotten. Fast forward and six weeks later I was on a trail at the Land Between the Lakes AR. Me and my male team-mate were hiking on a trail when I suddenly stepped into a hole. I fell down to my knee (the same knee) and the pain was bad enough for me to cry out. A few minutes later we continued on with the race and the fall was quickly forgotten. I had no problems with the knee for the remainder of the race, but by the time we had found our way back to Tennessee the knee was twice its regular size and I was limping. I took a few days off both work and training, RICEd my knee (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and went back to work. By that time the swelling had gone down, but as I walked down the hall my knee would unexpectedly and without warning, buckle.
I went to an Orthopedic surgeon who wanted to do an MRI. Right around that same time I needed an expensive truck repair and the cost of both was about the same. Truck repair - MRI - Truck Repair - MRI. I went with the truck repair. I had years (and years and years and..........) of personal and professional experience with athletic injuries. I could rehab this myself. I was sure of it. I spent the entire summer doing everything that I thought I needed to do. A complete cease of training. Low impact training. Gradual increase in intensity, distance, length of training. Cross training as much as possible. More rest. Plenty of ice. All of it, throughout the entire summer and by the end of that summer I was fit, strong, healthy, uninjured, back to training as long and intensely as I had been doing for years, and I smugly congratulated myself on beating an injury.
In September I agreed to team up with three guys in Missouri for a race in that same state. The race started at midnight (as so many of them did) and very quickly it was obvious that they were faster on foot than I was. To make better time we pulled out a tow rope (a common tool to assist a racer who may be weaker than the rest of the team on foot) and we all took off in a run. A lot of too fast down hill, and the pain was almost immediate. By 1am I had completely blown out my knee. An entire summer of rehabbing my knee shot to hell. I couldn't run. I could walk on flat surfaces and uphill, but traveling downhill was painful, unsteady and very slow. I could feel the swelling and was afraid to left up my pant leg and take a look.
We had been bussed to the race start, and were basically in the middle of nowhere. We had followed trails for a while but the race required that we quickly begin bushwhacking across country in search of checkpoints that we had plotted on the map. Travel was almost impossible. I couldn't do more than slowly limp along, up hills, down hills, over downed logs, around bushes, across creeks, bushwhacking our way slowly from one CP to the next. Every bushwhacking move hurt.
By 2am I knew I was done. I was going to have to drop out of the race. I felt terrible. For letting down my team. Once we got to a manned checkpoint I could drop out and they could continue, but whatever finish they got in the race would be unofficial. But it was what it was. Finally at 9am we hit the manned CP and I bailed on my guys.
A month later I had knee surgery for a torn lateral meniscus. A month after that I accepted a position with a Parks and Recreation Department in Alaska. That Missouri race was the last race I ever did. I raced for seven years in total. I value the experiences I had, the memories I have, the friendships I made, the places I went, the people I met and the challenges that I was able to overcome in this most crazy of athletic endeavors.
Do I miss it? No. Do I miss the goals I had while training? Yes. I'm at a point now that is close to where I was at way back when, before I started adventure racing. I have an elliptical and a spin bike and a mountain bike and use them all regularly. A kayak for summer paddling. I walk a lot but don't run anymore (chronic hip injury). My lifestyle is still active (but not competitive anymore) but this aging athlete feels a little...........lost. After so many years of focused and dedicated training (in martial arts, professionally, in adventure racing) I have not found much recently that excites me or drives me forward.
I did however spend this past winter focused on learning how to cross country ski. I'm not bad at it. Maybe a goal-less aging athlete just needs to take on a different kind of challenge. And Mt Borah calls to me. Maybe old dogs can still find ways to challenge themselves. Maybe.................