You know, I really hadn’t been taking this race too seriously. Everyone assured me that the biking was no big deal, and I figured that my Gazelle training would be more than sufficient for the running portion. I was right, and wrong, but still had a fantastic time. In fact, I recommend that each and every one of you check the website right now to see if you can make it out to one of these events.

If you haven’t heard me talk about this race before, let me explain. If you have, feel free to skip this paragraph. The race is run by teams of two people and one mountain bike. Then… actually, just read the official guide or follow along below, it’ll be easier.

I met up with Ted, my race buddy, and our good friends Bill and Marcus, at the oh-too-early time of 5:30AM. I mean, c’mon, 5:30 on a Sunday? Anyway, we loaded everything into Marcus’ Escape and took off for parts unknown. I wasn’t even completely sure where we were going, and took advantage of the fact that someone else was driving to engage in that all-important pre-race activity - mutual trash talking and rehashing of past races. Ah, guys on the road.

Anyway, about an hour later we parked our car and spent the next 10 minutes unloading all our crap. Tires were checked, Gatorade was quaffed, and we were finally ready to make the 15 minute walk up to the start line. Parking was pretty much a straight line extending down the ranch road from the meeting area, so if you got there late you were pretty much screwed. Normal pre-race stuff, yadda yadda yadda, check any race report for details, skip forward an hour and now we’re at the starting line.

One thing I hadn’t really done was any kind of warmup. Oh, well. I did make a dash for the bushes with about 5 minutes to go, and tried to do butt-kicks on the way out and back, does that count? We were lined up in the second wave, “Male 56-69.” No, we weren’t cheating, the groups were based on our combined ages and since we’re both early 30 somethings, that’s where we ended up. The wave ahead of us goes, and we move up. Rather, Ted moves up - he’s stronger on the bike than I am and so goes first. Actually, judging from the fact that he was 4th overall at the recent Blanco tri, he’s stronger everywhere, but I felt weaker on the bike than I did on my feet.

At the sound of a cannon he headed off into the distance, and I shuffled forwards for a couple of minutes before the runners were released. This was my first trail race - actually my first time to do more than about a half mile on the trail - and it was pretty exciting. For reasons that will become apparent I wasn’t wearing my HRM, or any watch for that matter, but I know I was booking it. Well, not compared to some, but I did alright, quickly settling in to what felt like a slightly sub 8:00 pace and trying not to fall over my feet as we scrambled down the trail. Marcus started with me but fell behind pretty quickly.

Ever since last year’s Urban Assault race disaster I’ve been a little jaded about anything with obstacles in it, so I was very happy when I came across the first one here after about a mile. It was a simple 4′ fence to scale. Easy. I located the bike in a couple of seconds and was on my way. In my excitement though I didn’t take the time to raise the seat post, and I was very unsettled over the rough stuff. Nothing that rough, mind you, but some concrete drainage bumps (think high, angular speed bumps) and loose shale. My time on the bike wasn’t great, but it was still respectable and while I didn’t gain I don’t think I was passed much here either.

At the second obstacle I was clever enough to lose a minute or so. Ted had reached it first (we’d both had one bike leg and one run leg, he’s faster, and he had a head start) so I handed the bike over (no adjustment needed) and headed back for the obstacle. There was a line so I waited for 3-4 people in front of me to go, then got nervous and double-checked with the volunteer if the people who did the bike leg also had to do the obstacle - I couldn’t remember. He pointed me towards a completely different one that I’d missed somehow, which had a much shorter line. D’oh! I dashed over to wind up right behind Marcus. Double d’oh!

This time we had to climb up about 15-20 feet on a rope ladder. Well, more of a rope grid, about 12″ square, up the side of a big inflatable tower. I was very conservative here, since one of my primary goals this time is not allowing a fun race to kill my NYC chances the same way that I did last year. By the time I reached the top, turned around, and slid down the ramp on the other side (fun), Marcus was long gone. Still, I wasn’t about to let that get in my way and headed out again.

I’d been doing a comfortably hard pace on the run, about 10K effort, but it turned out that a lot of my competitors had been pushing themselves much harder than they should have done on that first leg, so I started picking them off one by one. It wasn’t more than a few minutes before I came up on Marcus again, then left him back behind me for the last time. At one point I had to scramble down a pretty tricky gravel hill that was giving the bikers a really hard time, and a few times there were some rocks that I had to be careful over, but other than that this was just a nice fun run in the woods. We ended up with a pretty solid uphill and, even though I see uphills as my weakest point, I didn’t have to walk and passed a lot of people who did.

As I finished up the run, I saw my bike lying in a really obvious place. This is a good thing when you’re trying to find it in a sea of similar frames. Still, the third obstacle was ahead of me - this one was another application of the rope grid. There was a frame, maybe 8′ tall, and a rope grid set up with about a 45 degree slope up and down over the frame. Scramble up (carefully), then down, then back to the bike. Marcus still hadn’t shown up by the time I was done, but I didn’t really think about it much at the time. I did make sure that I raised the seat this time and it made a pretty significant difference to my confidence level. The other thing I realized was that, instead of being nervous that my feet weren’t clipped in (I’d swapped out to standard pedals for the race), I could take advantage of that fact and just put ‘em down to push off whenever necessary. All that added up to a much better bike leg… at least for the first half. I even passed quite a few bikers.

About halfway into the course we took a left turn and headed up an incredibly steep hill. This was indeed the fabled Hill, and I (with everyone else) ended up pushing my bike for a good quarter mile. I was passed by 3-4 people, but passed more than that myself and managed to get to the top feeling moderately strong. Well, I was weak for a couple of seconds but soon got back up to speed, unlike many of my fellow competitors. This is where my endurance training was really paying off. A good finish, another hand-off to Ted, and it was time for a really easy obstacle, going over about 10′ of monkey bars arm over arm. I even cheated at one point when my grip slipped, touching a foot down and bounding towards the finish, which had me starting the run only about 5 seconds behind Ted. Of course, being on the bike he quickly outdistanced me.

The last leg was all about finishing strong. There’s no way to tell, but I don’t think I slowed down much between leg 1 and leg 5. I did some, I know, and I was breathing a lot harder, but I kept the intensity up as best I could. There were a couple of tricky downhills and my form was going to crap, bounding down with my legs out rather than doing fast-feet, which burned out my quads, but considering that I only had half a mile or less to go I decided that I really didn’t care. Besides, this way I could see exactly where I was planting my feet, something that mattered just a little bit more to me at the time.

As I rounded the final turn I saw a stack of people waiting for their buddies. We had to sync up at this point, and Ted fell in with me just before a rope net that we had to crawl under. This was a real belly crawl, the net was only a few inches off the ground and we still had our helmets on. This dumped us unceremoniously at the entrance to the mud pit - twenty feet of deep, sticky mud that we had to get through as fast as possible. This was hard! The first half was still pretty solid, and I felt my knees getting beat up, but kept on trucking. As we got further in it got wetter, and sloppier - slow going but easier on the arms and legs. I can’t wait to see the pictures!

With a collective groan we pulled ourselves to our feet and slogged our way around the corner to the finish line. The clock was reading 51-something, but that was for the first wave which was several minutes before us. We crossed over, but it was a bit of a weak finish to be honest after making it through the mud. A volunteer bravely offered to remove my chip band, and we spent the next couple of minutes trying to remove the tops off our recovery drinks without covering them in mud.

That was our race. We watched the finish for a bit, then headed around to the far side of the mud pit just in time to watch Bill and Marcus make the trip through. Sweet. Once we were all in we headed to the “showers” - basically a guy up on a stand with a fire hose who blasted you “clean.” I’d already tossed my shoes and socks into the trash rather than mess with them (I wore my old worn out Landreths - the same shoes that got me through Buda this year - and figured that this was the way they’d want to go out instead of simply fading into obscurity). Between the fire hose and about 50 regular garden houses, we got relatively mud-free and went back up to the finishing area.

This is where it got even better. We were able to get into the beer tent for free Red Hook beer (all you can drink, no less) and a perfect view of the mud pit. This is where you have to either question or appreciate the wisdom of a staged start - all the guys went first, then the co-ed teams, then the girls. This mean that by the time the first all-girl teams were hitting the mud, there was a bunch of moderately intoxicated guys, er, cheering them on. Not that I was looking, of course. Just offering support, me. I mean, I am married, and a huge wave of atheletic women in tight spandex covered in mud is just part of the race, right? Must’ve been the beer.

Anyway, our final time of 47:46.3 ended up being good for 31/99 in our age group, or 123/725 overall. Not bad for a first attempt. I can’t help but notice those four teams within 20 seconds of us though, and wonder where we could have picked up that time… still, that’s what next year is for, right?

I’d like to make a special shout-out to Richard Mendez and AJ Lee before I sign off; their time of 35:15.9 not only won them their age group (male 70-94) but beat the second place competitors by almost three minutes. Damn, but that’s fast. Fourth overall, for that matter. The team name, “Mad Gazelles,” should give you a hint of their training system. Maybe one day…

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