Double 13

First I know its been a long time between posts but I'm ahead of Skip. Been busy gathering parts to build up my cross bike & racing this past weekend(more on that in a sec). Thanks to the generosity of one of OCC's sponsors I decided to build up the Green Machine with used/new parts from EBAY. So I'll end up with less than $400 in it. The bulk going to a carbon fork & a set of Tufos.

This weekend was the Berryman Adventure Race. Last year I did it as a 2 person with Cynthia & we smoked all the 2 men teams (we were actually the 3rd to finish a solo guy & a 4 man team beat us) by over 2 hrs to win. So I was looking to have a good race as a 4 person coed team this year. Cynthia raced this year to a solid 4th in the 2 person long with my buddy Jason Coleman (spelled DICKHEAD) whom I've shared an all too close night in a one person bivy sack last year during the Beast of The East. I was a little pissed @ myself for having to chase them for so long during the race. I wasn't superstitious before this race but I am now. We were team 13 staying in cabin 13. SO everything that could go wrong went wrong.

I don't recommend finding out your going to become a dad the week of an Adventure race(especially if your the navigator). Needless to say my body was on autopilot & my mind.. I'm not really sure where it was. We got off to a great start running the "prologue" to hit the bikes first & start building our lead. Well @ 5am in fog & riding a mountain bike @ 17+ mph its hard to read road signs. Not really thinking about the map we hauled some serious ass right past the turn we wanted. It only took me 6 miles out of our way to figure out I'd made the Fup off the century. There was a lot of cussing going on. Not by my teammates who were super supportive & positive but by me because I couldn't believe I screwed us that bad. So too make amends I put my head down & go into TT mode racing to CP1. TT mode not so good for looking for road signs, yep about a mile past it before realizing mistake. I did have enough sense @ this point to realize I wasn't in nav mode & told John "I couldn't find my own ass please take the maps". To his credit he took them & didn't say a word about my Fup & nav'd a great race, I was really proud of him.

After almost sinking to the bottom of a pond in a rubber raft with a hole the size of my head in it getting CP2 the pace started going better. By the end of the bike we've actually pasted a lot of teams. We hit the first mystery event which is a traverse across a set of cables. No problem but once you get in the middle they swing you about 180 degrees each way! From here we trek to the canoe. We had a pretty good boat leg. This was the first time I had been in the front of the boat with Doug steering though. He managed to make me have to duck under every low hanging limb in the river. I was beginning to wonder if he was paying me back for the earlier 12 mile transgression? Surely not since Doug is about the most upbeat guy on the planet.

Off the boats & on to the 2nd mystery event which even though Anna won't admit it I think was her favorite. We had to climb over varying size piles of round hay bales. This took a little team work with John pulling & me pushing Anna over. She only complained a little, why I don't know John & I did all the work. Off to the first transition & we've come from double double last place to 5th. We get another set of coordinates & now know how we're going to get back to our mountain bikes which we had dropped many many miles from the TA. With a long, long, run up road 2265.

John put in a great nav here & we managed to run(yes run) our way into 4th place by the time we got back to the bikes. Needless to say the bike is our strong point in AR. Depending on who you ask some think its our run but I'm pretty sure its the bike leg. By the end of the bike we were in 2nd! We pass 2 teams almost @ the same time & they had started the bike almost an hour & a half ahead of us!

By this time the sun had set & it was time to get back in the boats for a night paddle. This was my first time back in a boat @ night after my near death night time paddling experience @ the beast. It was pretty good except for my one flashback near a very large undercut boulder. Paddling by headlamp & glowsticks is an interesting experience.

After the canoe we hop out for a pretty long final trekking leg were the map (or lack there of) made us take quite the leap of faith in our final route choice. Luckily we were able to figure out the Ozark Trail wasn't on the map & it would take us almost directly back to the finish. We mustered up enough strength to run across the finish line in 2nd an hour & 10 minutes behind the team who beat us @ the Sylamore challenge. So factor out my F'ups & we should have won. Once again Team Dynamic Earth proved we overcome adversity & can come from behind to finish strong(this is the 4th time this year). Hopefully @ Nationals we'll put it all together & have that race that our potential says we can have.