Rss/XmlYour Worst Adventure Racing Moments
In the glowing cone of my headlamp - a couple hours after the midnight start of the Cal-Eco Kernville in 2000 - about all I could see were Austin's shoes, obscured by the many motes of dust kicked up by the racers we were chasing. I could also see Austin's backpack, which I held onto desperately, and his hand as he reached behind him to pass me yet another small chunk of carrot cake ClifBar.
But that's as far as my vision went. I was in the Pain Cave, big time, and it took every ounce of concentration that I had to hang on to his backpack, keep my legs moving, and fight down the giant bolus of nausea that the Clif chunks inspired.
My pained, narrow world view was caused by many things. It was my first 24-hour race. We were at 7,500 and running up to 9,000 feet. I was poorly trained. We were a rookie team trying to stay in the top 10. My elbow hurt, a bee stung me, the moon was in a weird phase. Who knows? But as Austin hauled me up the mountain, all I knew was that the Clif bar was coming back up.
I couldn't really talk, so I started quietly yakking on Austin's shoes without warning. I was too dehydrated to even get a manly puke going, so really all I did was spit chunks and make crazy retching noises.
Most people would get a little ticked about being sprayed with vomit. Austin was amused. We kept going. And the worst part is: this wasn't my low point in my adventure racing career. It wasn't even my low point in this particular race.
Everyone who's done a race has had these moments. Moments where you're embarrassed for yourself, where your careful construction of hard-case racer is completely shredded, and you're left to beg for help from your teammates.
My most ignominious moment ever came later in this race. You have to understand that Barger's Cal-Ecos were majestically cruel. This one had us bike-wacking at midnight for an hour and a half, then barfing on foot until 5 am. Then we set sail on a 40-mile mountain bike ride that included three crashes, four blown tires and over 20 miles of singletrack. When we did all that? We were less than half-way done.
Barger sent us down the Kern river, through Class III rapids in those crappy inflatables. We got dunked twice, almost drowned and popped the un-poppable Sevylors. After hours of paddling and a confrontation with a boat-borne Sheriff, we washed ashore at 3 pm.
Still ahead of us was a Bargerian Death March. Eddie, our friend and navigator, wouldn't even venture a guess as to its length. When asked, he just flipped his topos over and over, tracing a route that went the entire length of several 1:24000 quads.
Hours and hours later, after surviving the 108 degree heat and moving into our second night of a 24-hour race, we begged Eddie to give us some sense of how long it would take to get to the TA.
Ed finally pulled out the maps, did some AR math, and said with carefully flat affect, "Probably another two hours. If we do some running."
This was when I hit my low moment. I took off my backpack, slammed it on the ground, shouted profanities at the sky and sat down on the trail.
Petty, childish displays of emotion are not super-helpful in adventure racing, and as I sat on the ground, IT bands popping like pine cones in a forest fire, I realized I was being really, really stupid.
We were miles from a TA. I had signed up for this misery. These two men, patiently waiting for me to take the pacifier out of my mouth, were my good friends. I stood up and we staggered to the TA, withdrew from the competition even though we were in 7th place, and fell into a coma.
Both Austin and Eddie raced with me again, and they still do. I haven't embarrassed myself like that in seven years of racing - mostly because I still cringe with regret every time I remember my lameness.
But what about you? What's your shame? Your low moments that led to low comedy? Email me (gordon at outsidepr dot com) your worst moments from your race career, and I'll wrap them up for a future blog segment. The most embarrassing (and hilarious) will get a nice bit of schwag from Sugoi.
