Hmmm… where to start…

I have this friend, see. She and I go waaaaaaaaaaaayyyy back with hockey and our friendship extended past the all too brief times that we were teammates and defence partners. She’s both a genius and somewhat insane. They go together far too frequently, eh? She’s the good kind of crazy and loves mountain biking and adventure racing and was always asking me to sign up for these events with her. While they all sounded like cool events I was always really hesitant due to the cost and time and travel involved and I kept saying ‘no’.

Back in May she brought me out to volunteer with her at Storm the Trent since it was a great opportunity to see one of these races up close and, hey, you also get a discount if you choose to race it later. Not much to say about my volunteer experience since we were way out at a distant check point but I met a lot of cool people, got a sunburn cause I was a cocky idiot, and it did make me pretty curious to try one of these races out for myself even though the cost was still steep. Next thing I know, she asks me to compete with her in Storm the Ten with a bunch of random people she knows and I say yes. The fact that I didn’t have to worry about navigation at all for this one made it a great place to start.

I wish I could say I really focused and trained for the 1.5km paddle, 5.5km mountain bike, and 3km trail run (which equals one lap) but I didn’t. All of September I was pretty much in maintenance and injury avoidance mode; just light cardio and making damn sure I didn’t do anything stupid because my friend would have killed me if I backed out of the race. The running distance didn’t scare me at all since I’ve trained for much, much, much longer. I wasn’t overly concerned about the mountain biking since I used to go out all the time. Our team captain was providing us with a canoe and our choice of kayak or canoe paddles, so that was a relief. She and I share the belief “kayak paddles, ftw” and I’ve never even used a proper canoe paddle. The week leading up to the race was also pretty chaotic with my university going on strike and all. Our team consisted of a veteran captain, my crazy friend, myself, and 3 other rookies since we were competing in the Team Womens-6 category. Our generous captain even lent me one of her old devinci bikes since mine was in no shape to go for a joyride let alone on any trail.

I now interrupt this very boring blow-by-blow account to rant a little. It’s probably all my fault even though I thought I went in with an open mind and placing no real pressure on myself to accomplish anything other than not dying out there but I didn’t enjoy this race as much as I thought I would. Getting hurt during the first third of the first lap probably didn’t help my state of mind at all and the long downtime that followed only furthered my discontent but I’m not too sure I’ll ever do another one of these. Maybe if I went it would be with a smaller team or as a soloist but I know I couldn’t afford it unless I started selling games or took on a second job. As cool as these events are I think I need to accept that they are not for me right now and I shouldn’t stress over it. Let’s skip ahead to the start of the race.

Sean, the guy in charge of all these wacky races, always comes up with some devious way to make the mass start spread out so people aren’t falling over one another or taking a paddle to the face. A good idea, in theory, but I question the execution. I was soooooo glad I wasn’t doing the first lap since the starter pairs were given a map to open right at 9am and then they had to run to the top of the ski hill for a check point and then run back down and to the canoes for the first proper leg of the race. As I watched the mass of people start climbing the hill I overheard another team cursing in jest that they should have had the sense to give their mates some garbage bags. Me, not having slept the two days prior, couldn’t figure out why they said that until teams started heading down the hill. I’m sorry, I mean taking headers down the hill. Either Sean was trying to thin out the racers in more ways than one or he, too, forgot that in the early morning hours grass is wet.

My first lap with my friend could have certainly gone better. When it came time to dock our canoe after that leg I immediately got my lefts and rights mixed up which, while funny, wasn’t terribly helpful! After a short run to our bikes it was time to ride up the mountain biking trail to the running route. zomg. I stink at mountain biking. We did a short ride as a warmup earlier in the day but I discovered I had new issues that hadn’t occurred to me before. My partner was riding her own bike so she had the pedals with clips and the shoes that clip into them and she decided that she was going to just run in those instead of switching in the transition zone. The bike I was borrowing also had those clip pedals but I don’t have those shoes and I have big feet so it’s hard to borrow. While I’m sure those pedals are awesome if you are properly equipped they are somewhat tiny and even in my small track (running) shoes I was still slipping off them time and time again and all the bumps and roots and drops weren’t helping matters. Then there’s that whole, “wow, I really suck at mountain biking” thing! I actually managed to have a spectacular wipeout that nobody really saw. I feel horrible about it since I probably killed a tree while not thinking and saving myself. See, while biking uphill there’s a steep slope to the right and I basically went off that. Realizing that I did not want to fall with my bike I went to grab something, anything, to try and slow, if not outright stop, my speedy descent. Fortunately for me, I grabbed a tree and the bike+pedals took its revenge at being dumped like this on my legs and eventually came to a stop at the bottom, tossing my waterbottle away in the process. So now I’m muddy and bleeding (not that I know it yet) and embarrassed and pissed off and hanging by a tree. Which slowly starts to crack so I am reminded that this situation sucks so I scramble to the ground and grab my bike and carry it up to my waiting friend who probably wonders why she asked me to do this with her in the first place :)

I’m definitely not a happy camper at this point and I know we have a looooooooooooooooot of biking left to do but, somehow and miraculously, I do get better as we go along. This is a relative term and in my world this means that I manage to stay on the bike, not hit anyone, not get hit, and hopefully prove that I’m not completely incompetent. At long last it was running time and while I’d love to say it went well, I still ended up on my face! For serious. We make it to the checkpoint without issue and laugh/cry along the way at the hilarious signs: see, there were some rockface climbs strewn about the slightly more flat sections so in those cases the course markers cleverly pointed UP. You just know someone was real proud of that one. Sadistic bastards. It was pretty funny though and we both wish we had a picture of it. But coming up to this one obstacle that required the use of a ladder to get over I turn my head back to see where my partner is at and *WHAM* I didn’t pick up my feet enough and caught a rock jutting out in the middle of the trail and went ass-over-tea-kettle until I was standing again. I was more surprised than anything and pretty much laughing at myself by this point but the co-ed team that passed us at this point thought it was impressive and asked if I was alright. Back at the bikes again I was presented with an obstacle that I thought would make me quit right then and there.

I may have cursed a lot. A LOT. And whined. I was definitely crying on the inside since I could just see my mangled self in the ambulance trying to figure out why I can’t feel my legs. Melodramatic for sure but after my uphill experience on the bike I was not at all confident in my downhill abilities. Throughout my cursing my friend and the marshall were pointing out that there was an alternate route and, failing that, I could carry my bike down. See, the first option was to go down this one wide path with really large rocks and gravel so I was terrified about making the turn before the orange tape where it just drops off to an even bigger incline. Option two was a grassy path was a super steep incline but no rocks and it was more of a direct line to where we were going. Option three was to carry the bike and not get hit by others in the process (this being the most important part!). Option four would have been quitting but that wasn’t really an option cause I have too much stupid pride. And I paid $100 to be here. And I guess I’m crazy too cause that grassy downhill was super ridiculously, dare I say, FUN! I was still terrified but at least I was enjoying it at the same time :)

This is me and my friend after our first lap and before I went to the med tent. Since I lost my waterbottle I figured I should refuel a little since my injuries were not exactly life-threatening. Before the downhill portion and at some point on the run I finally realized that I had been bleeding a while. My partner saw way earlier but chose not to mention it since it wasn’t super serious and knowing it was there wouldn’t have changed anything. She was impressed that it had bled all the way down to my ankle though since she had never done that before. Sadly, I was to discover that the actual cut itself went all the way down to my ankle and it wasn’t just a dripping line :(

Since we were here for fun and not as a serious endeavour we traded partners for our next lap which unfortunately meant that I had to sit out the next go since my new partner-to-be was still recovering from her lap. This is not her fault in any way, shape or form but I wasn’t pleased by this turn of events since I had not properly planned for the copious amount of downtime during the race day. I had brought a book but it was a book about sushi and it only made me hungry for something I could not have since the nearest sushi place I knew of was 100km away. Oops. The second lap I got to do was pretty uneventful except that I managed not to introduce my face to the ground during any leg of the race so that was a victory in and of itself! My new partner and I also both decided that ‘uphills are stupid’ (even though I was getting much better and able to keep my feet on the pedals this time around) so we just walked our bikes past where I fell last time. I took a quick peek for my waterbottle as we passed through to see if I could grab it and not leave it in the forest but it was either way way way down there or someone else had grabbed it already. My new partner was also totally cool about me sprinting up the last leg after we docked the canoe because I had been coasting the whole run with her since that was not her forte and I was just itching to go. Our captain and her partner couldn’t leave until both of us were in the transition zone but I still appreciated that I was allowed to fly up those massive stairs and really work up the incline just to burn the extra energy that was driving me a little crazy :)

A few laps into the race we checked and found out that there were 5 teams entered in our division and we weren’t sure how we were doing relative to them (co-eds and soloists were passing us pretty much throughout) since I never really saw any out on the course. It did feel pretty nice to find out we won! We kinda figured it out before they announced it since they did the men’s division first and we realized that our time was good enough to come in second there so we were really hoping that it was enough to take our grouping. Lo and behold, we won!! ^_^

Then I drove to my parents’ place, had a few plates of pasta, and was too tired to even shower before crashing for a long time.

THE END

This may be an anti-climactic recap but I can’t say I was all there on race day and I knew pretty early on that I wasn’t coming back for another any time soon! I’m oddly grateful that my school is on strike right now since I’ve been able to sleep as much as I want (too much) and not worry about getting to classes with how my legs feel and look. I wear pants now despite how uncomfortable they are cause I was sick of people asking who beat me up! I’m thinking that my next event will probably be a triathlon since I want to get better in a pool but my lack of a bike is still an issue. I know I can run a half-marathon with a good pace so I’m not sure that’s what I want to do and I need more strength training to keep my knees from hating me if I go for a full so what happens next, event-wise, is still up in the air! Either way, I’m really proud of all my teammates and I’m happy that we won our division ^_^

ps: Our team was J&J 28 Day Cyclers. Yeah, I know.
pps: we race in pairs for safety and cause that’s how it works in this division.