Adventure Sprint Triathalon

As some fraction of you fair readers may be aware, I just “competed” in an adventure sprint triathalon this past Sunday (October 3rd, 2004) in Richmond. “Compete” is in quote marks there because winning, or even coming close to winning, was not among our goals. Finishing is good enough for me: we were there to have fun. My own personal goal was to see if we could finish in under four hours: The event looks “easier” than a marathon and I’m sure from past experience I can pull off an under four hours (based on my recent experience of running the Montgomery County Marathon in the Parks in 4:42? Never mind the logic: I did Iowa City in 3:16:57 once. But that was twenty years and fifty pounds ago.). But that four hour figure is based on pretty much nothing and I’ll be perfectly pleased to just finish.

Turns out that will be a good thing.

The theory behind the Adventure Sprint Triathalon is that part of the adventure is not quite knowing what is going to happen. It is not just a course, but an obstacle course, and done as a team of three together. The web site on the race is very vague: 5-7 miles of running, 10-15 miles of mountain biking, and 1-3 miles of kayaking, with about ten (I counted four: they must have mean base 3 or something) special events. The vagueness is deliberate: you do not know exactly what you are getting into until the evening before the race when they announce at least some parts of it.

On the afternoon before the race, there are a series of clinics on the events. Some are useless: lots of interesting stuff about ways to be really competive in the mountain biking section, for example, but all information you would have to have had several months ago to implement and practice. The one useful thing from this particular clinic is they talk about strategies for how to work with a challenge of three riders but only two bikes, one of the challenges they might throw at us. The elite team doing this clinic explains that they all got identical fashion clip pedals, so they have the same gear and they “leapfrog”, changing up who is running and who is riding so no one person gets exhausted. We will not end up having this challenge, but it proves to be potentially useful information.

Another interesting clinic that they give twice is about the kayaking, and they also have practice kayaking sessions which Evonne and I take advantage of. The kayaks are inflatable canoe shaped things with seating for one or two (in theory) and Evonne and I practice two person techniques. Thinking I have it down after the practice, I nominate myself to be the rear paddler in the boat for two with Evonne and have teammate Grant take another kayak on his own, under the theory that the practice and my arm strength will be best for the task (not entirely false assumption, but it will turn out that Grant is actually the more experienced kayaker and it will show). The James River is currently in heavy flood from recent rains (including the visit of Hurricane Ivan two weeks before that put much of the riverfront in Richmond under water), and the kayaking portion of the event is just above the fall line, so a bad false move and a poor recovery and you are not only out of the race, but about to go down the rapids. I’d estimate them at Class II or III, but these are not glorious kayaks and if you shoot the rapids, it is going to be because you are inexperienced and just the sort of person whom should not be trying this.

I should add that I have never met Grant before the afternoon before the race. He is there with his wife, Jill, who is also running the event with two of her college friends, Margs and Liz, in the all-female team The Sirens. Our team is Amish Army. Don’t ask, I cannot explain it either. But team names are interesting: there were also such teams as Three Older Women With Too Much Spandex and Three $80 K-mart Bikes. Evonne's friend Sean is also here (and the pictures you see in this weblog are all courtesy of Sean, by the way) and Liz’s friend Jesse (What, another one?) who also is getting the camera and cheerleading duties.

After the clinics, we all gather for the orientation. And this is where the vagueness of the website starts to make sense: Most of the race is supposed to be a surprise, and now is the moment they will reveal it to us. First, they go through the basic orientation stuff. When the transition area (where you can store bikes and gear) opens in the morning, some of the basic rules we already know (you cannot get any help of any kind from anyone outside the race, so this includes having your own water, food, bike tools, etc.), some basic rules we do not know (bikes have to be walked on Browns Island getting in and out and dismount and mount areas for the island, and the stage across the major bridge over the James will be strictly enforced, “scootering” is not allowed), and then onto the moment of truth. First event, 6.5 miles of running. Then suddenly the organizer asks if there is anyone here who does not know how to swim. And promises that whether or not it is raining and no matter how slowly you chose to run tomorrow, you are going to get wet.

We are swimming? In the James River? In flood? Oh dear me...

Okay, next is “7++ miles” of mountain biking. ++ miles? Does this mean the ride will be highly technical stuff? Or just that someone has spent way too much time doing Object Oriented Programming? But at least it is way shorter than the advertised 10-15 miles. Mountain biking is the part that has me the most concerned since I have the least practice and experience and my training experiences have been an interesting mix of dismounting to walk and terrifying myself by trying to ride through places I probably should have gotten off and walked. Then about 0.75 miles of kayaking. Got it. Then “another 7++ miles” of biking. Uhh, it had not occured to me that you might not do all your distance in one go. This is going to be interesting... They also tell us nothing about the special events and promise us only that the directions for those events, which we will have to carry in a carry case with us through the race, will be given to us just before we start tomorrow morning.

This orientation will turn out to have a couple of lies, or at least be misleading. In fact there will more than one piece of misleading information given to us, but we will get to that as it comes.

Orientation also builds a sense I was getting through the afternoon already. Now I am a reasonably fit person: I can get up one day and hike 15 miles with a 40 pound backpack and, blisters not withstanding, get up and do it again the next day. I’ve trained for this event, admittedly not necessarily with incredible diligence, but I have no fears about completing the course in the maximum allowable time of six hours. But looking around the tent where we are all gathered (about 210 teams of three people each), I notice that these people look incredibly fit. I’m the lumpy looking one: this is not a place for someone with body image issues to be! Fortunately the kayak trail also gave me good reason to not be too intimidated by appearances as Evonne and I were able to outpaddle almost the entire field of try-out folks. There was two women who blazed across and a few others who showed skills comparable to us, but lots of people struggling just to make the kayak go forward. I think they are gym strong rather than field strong: the sort who can bench press four times as much as me, but couldn’t carry a backpack for a whole day of hiking.

After the orientation, we regroup and discuss having dinner together, but since Liz, Margs, and Jesse are staying with Grant and Jill at their home an hour away in Hampton Roads, they are heading straight out as they will have to leave the house around 5:30 AM to get to the opening of the staging area in the morning. So they head home and Sean, Evonne, and I wander through the restaurant district, without seeing anything that screamed that we just had to go there. At least not tonight: there's a number of interesting looking places with live music and Irish Pub, but when you are in the middle of working very hard to stay hydrated, a beer is a really bad idea. Near the end of our walk, we come on the Rivah Cafe and get waylaid by the greeter who insists we want to eat there and since it looks both reasonably priced and as good as anything else we have seen, we accept.

To find we are the only customers. Does everyone else know somethings we don’t?

Dinner proves to be quite good when it comes, and customers do come in. It takes us a little while to realize that it is actually not that late, but with autumn on us, it gets dark earlier each day and we had not realized it was only around 6 PM when we found the place. The wine list is tempting, but we stick to water and ice tea with our dinner.

And then it is off to our respective hotels (Evonne and Sean got a cut rate for runners at a hotel right near the waterfront and the race, while the special was gone and I found a low rate on the edge of town near the freeway through an online service) and call it a night. Before I turn in for the night, I set the alarm and spend some time with a map of Maryland fantasizing about possible canoe trips with my new canoe. But in good time, I turn in for the night.

The next morning, I get up, get a very quick breakfast, set up my stuff for the event, pack, leave, and park in the lot near Browns Island before the attendent is ready for us all, so I end up getting free parking. Whoa ho! Little thrills for little minds. Or is it that great minds are easily amused?

It turns out for all the fuss about getting to the transition area early to get the best spot, there is nothing to fight over: it is all more or less assigned. Our team number is is 12, presumed on the basis of Amish Army being up near the front of the alphabetically ordered list, since The Sirens probably entered and paid their registration around the same time as us, but are down around team 152 or thereabouts. The announcer gives us a slightly rude surprise: we must wear our helmets for all the events all day. Grrr.... I was really wanting to wear the cap for the run where it would soak up the sweat. The helmet is going to be a soupy mess by the end of the day.


Amish Army before the race. Notice the lack of mud.

They assemble us at the start line and we find the first of the lies from last night. No, we are not going to get our instructions a few minutes before the race as promised, but they will be issued at the first special event. This is so we cannot read them and plan ahead. Which turns out to be a good thing, but again, I will get to that. The race is also going to be started exactly the wrong way, with the co-ed teams like ours leaving right at 8 AM, the all female teams five minutes later, the all male and elite teams another five minutes later. In other words, all the fast people are going to spend the first hour or so smashing their way through the rest of us, trail ettiquette be damned. There is also no sorting out before the start line based on estimates of start times.

But off we go, and along the river and across the very long pedistrian suspension bridge under the freeway to Belle Island on the far side, and up into the woods. The trail is narrow and there is no room to pass, so we are always stuck at the pace of the slowest person around, which is a problem for me since I tend to go downhill slowly and uphill rapidly, the exact opposite of everyone else, which makes going up very hard on me since I cannot use my momentum. But we seem to set a reasonable pace over the hill on the island, noticing that the bike path is marked out as staying on the roadway around instead of the narrow trail we are on. That will make life that much easier later. We rejoin the bike path on the far side, cross a bridge to the shore proper, and then start wandering in the woods besides the railroad tracks, going through some very rocky and muddy spots that are going to be hell on the bike later, then ford a stream and have to run down inside the culvert. Ah, is this what the helmet is for? The culvert opening is maybe all of five feet high, so we have to run scrunched over. But on the far side, it is up into the woods and up the bank we go. It seems to be going surprisingly fast and indeed Grant confirms we are running 8-8.5 minute miles, which is a bit faster than we thought we would with Evonne’s ankle issues. The path winds us up the banks and up back onto the roads and across the James River again on the bridge. But there’s an interesting twist. Back on the Browns Island side, there is a huge backup at an unexpected obstacle. The all-male teams are starting to catch up with here and get a bit hyper-aggressive and try to cut in line, but just as aggressively get shooed back. The problem is that everyone needs to stop and go down a seven or eight feet long ladder one at a time, then turn around and run over a metal grate catwalk clearly intended for maintenance use only. So we have a bit of a quiet rest here waiting for our turn to get down and run the catwalk.

It is a slightly odd experience to be running on an open metal grate just a few feet wide with rails on either side... and the raging torrent of the James River in flood maybe all of six feet below us. The direction of the run is upstream, so the water kept getting closer and closer. After a hundred metres or so, the steel grate gave way to a wide round concrete pipe on which we had to run. That was okay, but it was a curved surface with a narrow space for us to be running along. And now the river is right up along the side of the pipe perhaps two feet below the top and there is no railing. Then it is only a foot below. Then lapping at the top. Then swirling over the tops of my running shoes. And while the shore ahead with volunteers and people with lines to throw us should we fall in, are all visible ahead, and things are backing up again here, it is still a bit of a ways to go and the pipe is now no longer visible at all through the murky muddy water. It is a job of pointing yourself straight ahead, taking it a bit on faith that the pipe is where you think it is and planting your feet carefully to not be swept off the side nor mistep. By the time we reach the assistant helping us jump over to the shore, the river is up around my calves and the pressure from it running down is hard enough that a misplanted foot is going to send me over the side. And this is a big pipe with water flowing over and around and under it, so it is at least six feet down in the water here. Eck! The guy behind me is getting anxious to force me to move along faster since there is no way he can pass me, but I have no intention of going too fast to be sure of my footing. The end comes, I catch up with Evonne and Grant who were ahead of me, and the frustrated fellow behind me takes off into the woods. It is a short run up towards the transition area where we encounter our first special event and get handed the special events instructions which we do not read as we are being told what to do by organizers and can see what others are doing.


Concentrating on the directions while teams do the cinderblock walk in the background

We have three cinderblocks and a blindfold and must cross a ten foot wide space touching each other at all times (I think: anyway, we did it holding hands the entire time) by standing only on the cinderblocks. Grant goes first, Evonne dons the blindfold and goes next, then I follow, picking up and passing the cinderblock to Grant to put further across and we sidestep all the way across at a reasonable but unrushed pace.

We were lucky: the instructions for the event were misprinted and said you had to do the crossing with two blocks, not three, and when The Sirens arrive a few minutes later, they would lose a few minutes reading the instructions, spelling and content errors and all, watching other people go across on three, and trying to work out what they were supposed to do. As it will turn out, we never need the instructions as we are told what to do at each stage, so the requirement that we have a map carrying case and bring the instructions with us will be a bit superfluous.

From there, we run into the transistion area, get water and a quick bite (I’m doing simple fruit cereal bars and water, but others have Balance Bars and fancy sport food and drink. I’ve found, even under the gruelling demands of a several hour long event like this, those things to helpful or necessary, and most taste pretty awful.). We’ve been on the course for not quite an hour now as we get our bikes and run with them down Browns Island, across the bridge, and into mounting area to pedal like mad to the suspension bridge again to get across to Belle Island and the trails over there. As we are going across, we see the first of the elite teams on their way back already. Well, we already knew we were not in their class.

Belle Island is a nice ride on the bike: a pretty wide open fire access road kind of track with space for me to open up on the bike without running anyone down and, more important, where I am not getting run down by some of the more gungho energetic people behind me. Then it is across the bridge and onto the narrow paths we were running on an hour or so ago. And this is where things get a bit dicey: the testerone poisoned hyper aggressive men (draw whatever conclusions you wish from this, but it was always all male teams smashing people aside with sharp elbows) got a bit testy about passing here. On one section, we are riding on a concrete pipe (same style as the one we were running on just after the ladder), so there is no passing space, then there a concrete wall to manuveur around and no space on either side, but lots of space just beyond it. One fellow forces me into the wall rather than wait the two seconds it would take to allow me to get past the barrier and out of his way. Trail ettiquette be damned.

We have another stream fording and down into a different section of the culvert pipe where it is high enough to stand up and ride on the bike, which I do try, only to have a steep climb on the other side that requires dismounting just a few feet further on, another stream and culvert to go through, and now for the next several miles, we have a fairly challenging piece of trail. It’s a lot of rocky narrow trail with climbs and drops that would be at the limit of what I could do, but much of it I probably could do on my own, but sharing the trail with 600 other people, it is impossible to get the momentum to go up the steep parts and get out of the way gracefully for the more energetic people trying to force their way faster down the trail. Tempers get a bit frayed here, both from the course being hard and the stop and go cycle that keeps anyone from really building any momentum. At one point, Grant in the lead completely wipes out when his tyres hit a downed limb, he gets out of the way, I manage to get across slowly higher up without sliding out too bad, but I’m splayed out on the trail and faster than I can get out of the way, another woman comes up behind me and wipes out in exactly the same spot and way as Grant and chews me out for not being out of the way as she gets back up. I stay as much out of the way as I can and as soon as Evonne catches up here, and there is a break in the backlog, Grant and I force the limb off the course so it doesn't cause any more accidents.

Another mile or so on, after a few more interesting obstacles such as having to ride the bike on the top of a concrete wall over a stream with a five to eight foot drop on either side (but wide enough that Evonne, which she reaches it, has space to dismount and run beside her bike rather than risk a tumble), we have a very steep set of stairs to get down, which is where Team Balance Bar (the lead team) blazes past us: they are on their second loop around on the mountain biking already. Team Nike ACG and Team Red Bull will also make it past us here, more or less, within just minutes of each other. But the really technical riding past this stair step thing is much less prevalent and for the most part, we are able to actually ride on the trail from here to the bridge over the tracks, and from there the course is almost all fire track kind of surface the rest of the way back to the suspension bridge (though there is one tricky spot where we have a foot wide spot right next to a chain link fence and a steep dropoff with brush to go through, but we manage to ride through there without incident).

Near the suspension bridge back across the James River, my bike suddenly starts to ride very strangely. I push on, but I cannot keep up and Evonne and Grant pull a fair bit ahead of me here. It’s not ‘til I get to the bridge and dismount as required that I realize that not only do I have a flat tyre, but there is, in fact, a good four inch long nail sticking out of the back tyre. No thumb tacks here! I push across the bridge, chuck the nail in a rubbish bin right at the remount spot across the bridge and gingerly ride back to Browns Island to catch up to the transition area, point out the nail issue, get more water, another fruit bar, decide to see if the back wheel will magically heal itself while we are gone, and we head for the kayak part of the event.


Starting the leapfrog through the mud

But first we have to go to a giant mudpit where the instructions say to leapfrog across. Grant starts and he lands quite deliberately full body lying down in the mud. Quite without thinking, I follow suit. And after leaping over his arms, I land and hit my knees hard on some rocks underneath the mud. Naturally hardest on the left knee which is already giving me a little grief about all the demands of the day: it’s a long standing annoying, but not problematic, injury from my years of field hockey in high school. I’m a little more careful of my knees, and less careful about leap frogging to form (whatever that is: I thought leapfrogging was more of on-hands-and-feet hunched over thing than lying on the ground... or in very soft slurpey mud. Grant some time after the event tells me that we needed to lie down in the mud. Well, he was the one reading the instructions. Given the errors in the instructions already uncovered, I’m a little dubious that this is what was intended.).


Caked in mud!

Wow, what a mess! Coming out of the mud pit, hobbling a bit from my knee, I figure I have added about fifteen pounds to myself with this mud. We all try to brush off what we can as we run down to get the inflatable kayaks. Where it is as we heard earlier: three life vests and three people, but two kayaks and two paddles. Grant and I settled ahead of time that I’ll carry Evonne as a passenger and he’ll go on the single kayak. Of course it turns out they are all single kayaks, but we get into the river and head off.

Part of the reason I thought I should carry Evonne was I figured I would be the strongest paddler amongst us. I’ve got good arm strength and endurance from smashing up and removing the rubble from a concrete sidewalk and old shed foundation this past summer, and I’ve been out on the water a few times and seem to have a better sense of steering and such than most in the past. Grant did not get a chance to practice yesterday whereas Evonne and I did and I am confident of my sense of the kayak. That confidence is not misplaced: even with the passenger up front, I make it across the James main stream in reasonable time and pace, even with a few quick breaks to try to splash water on my hands to get the mud off so I am not rubbing it into my hands as I paddle. But Grant is clearly far more in his element than I and gets all the way across and around the far buoy and to the pulloff point on Belle Island well ahead of us. We get there, and taking a cue from others, waste a bit of time splashing around in the shallow waters there trying to get the bulk of the mud from the pit off us. I get enough off my knee to see that it is not a horrible problem, but it is bothering me a little and certainly has some scrapes and might be swelling a little. Nothing that is going to stop me. We pick up the two kayaks and carry them to the next put-in point where Evonne leaves us to run across on the suspension bridge and Grant and I take off on our own, one kayak each, and power back across the James.

Some teams have opted to tie the kayaks together and have two paddling together, but I recall from the practice how tricky this is and I don’t see any team at this point doing it all that well. Of course we are well into the race by now and the competitive teams are well ahead of us by this point, so we are surrounded by other teams of comparable ability to ourselves, which is to stay they are not stellar, so maybe this is a good strategy with more skilled folks. All I know is that my seat back is not working for me at all and I am holding up all my weight with my back muscles as I paddle and while this is getting me across the river and upstream of the buoy as required, it is hard going and I am going to have a very sore back and an intense desire for a massage when this is all done. Alas, no such luck.


Negotiating the spider web obstacle

Grant easily outperforms me getting across, and Evonne is there to help us get the two kayaks across and take them back onto Browns Island, turn them and vests and paddles in, and step into the next special challenge just before the transition area. It’s a “spider web” where we have to have only two people touching the ground, team members always touching each other, and get across a webbing of ropes a foot or so above the ground without touching them. Grant takes Evonne on his back, and I hold her hand, and we step gingerly across.

I think the judges are bored or inattentive or just don’t care too much by now. I think I just graze one line and Grant thinks his shorts might have touched another, but neither infraction gets us sent back, so off we go and it is time to search for someone with a wrench to get my back wheel off.

Yeah, I got a cheap bike and it doesn’t have quick release. And my patch kit and crescent wrench are in the car. I think. Maybe they are on my dining room table at home. Either way, it does not matter because we are not allowed to accept outside help, so I cannot ask Sean or Jesse to go get it (if they are even there) nor can I run off the course to get them either. But we can get help from other teams. Grant finds someone with a Leatherman style thing with an adjustable wrench head and we try to muscle the bolts free with that, but cannot seem to get the leverage.

Fortunately, there is a fellow from Team Streak (At the time, I thought they said they were The Streakers, but let’s not get all Freudian here). Their team is the only elite team with no corporate sponsor. By day, he works on a farm in Pennsylvania and anyone who can armwrestle a tractor can certainly work the bolts free, which he demonstrates. He introduces himself, but I miss his name (Turns out it is, and I promise I am not making this up, Flash Barchick. Something tells me this is his, err, professional name.). Anyway, we get the wheel off and Grant gets the spare tube he has out... and naturally, it is a different size. Oh dear. Okay, now our strategy is that I am going to run behind Evonne and Grant. The good news is that I have heard that the second loop on the mountain bike is significantly shorter, like maybe four to five miles instead of 7++ (yeap, they misled us again, didn’t they?). Flash, bless his heart, instead offers me to use his bike. Suddenly I’ve gone from having a decent bike with a flat tyre to having a stellar bike with front suspension and everything. Flash is a bit shorter than I, so it is not sized and adjusted to me, but this is not a long ride nor am I going to hold anyone up any more with this. We’ve probably spend a good ten to fifteen minutes on this by now. We fuel up again, get water, and get back out onto the course.


Heading out for our second biking loop, looking like poster children for a Tide commercial

Just as we are getting onto the suspension bridge, we meet Liz running back across from the kayaking component.

As I said, it is more of the same as before, though instead of going through the second culvert and up the hill and into the technical climbing, we are now doing a bit of trail riding that is less challenging, down the stairway from hell, across the railroad tracks, and back. But while we are riding at a reasonable enough pace, none of us is even remotely trying to race fast at this point: we are ready to just keep together at a comfortable pace that does not exhaust us. Just as we are getting near to the suspension bridge back, we have to go back into that narrow space along the fence again which we rode without trouble last time, but Evonne is weak enough from several hours in a row of serious exertion that her handle on her steering is not as firm this time and she manages to take a pretty nasty spill here into the brush and is a bit in mild shock from it. She refuses to ride any further on this narrow spot and instead we all dismount and run alongside our bikes... at least for about a few seconds. Evonne is running so fast with her bike Grant and I cannot keep up with her and have to get back on the bikes and ride! The course opens up again shortly after this and it is all open path from here, so Evonne gets back on and we pedal for the suspension bridge, me carefully avoiding the spot where I think I picked up the nail, and back to the transition area, where I thank Flash profusely and he responds by coming with us to the next challenge out of the transition area (No, we are still not done yet!). I nominate Flash for sainthood (But can you see the Pope sanctifying a Flash Barchick? I doubt there’s an Imam around open minded enough to do the trick either. But here I am digressing again.).


Climbing Jacob’s Ladder

The first of the two obstacles between us and the finish line is the hidden secret thing called Jacob’s Ladder. It’s basically a slightly complicated set of monkey bars, save that they are all made of rope. We do not learn this ‘til later (thank goodness!), but Team Nike ACG was coming in a good clear second place for the entire event when one of their team fell and broke her wrist here, just a hundred feet from the finish line, and had to quit the race. Anyway, between the eager volunteers helping us, ourselves helping each other, and Flash’s instructions and help (all of which is allowed to make it across), we get through in good form.


Heading over the wall. The dude minus the shirt is our angel of mercy, Flash Barchick.

Now for the real kicker. We have to get all three of us over a 12 foot high wall. That’s about three and a half metres for your metric folks. We know the strategy and had a plan for this, but Flash disavows us of it right away. He wants to send me up second “since you send the weakest member of the team up second” (Thanks, Flash. Then again, you did just loan me your wonderful bike and help us across the Jacob’s Ladder and I am the only team member limping, so I guess I deserve that.). Evonne climbs up Grant’s shoulders, he stands up which takes her near the top, then a volunteer reaches down to help her get hands over the top and with Flash and I pushing her feet up, she goes over. Now we do the same with me. I am taller than Evonne, but a lot heavier, but manage to make it up anyway. Now I anchor the rope and let it down for Grant to climb, he scrambles up and over, we go down the other side, and run the last fifteen feet to cross the finish line after having been on the course for 5 hours, a minute, and some seconds.


Crossing the finish line!

After some self-congratulations for finishing, and a quick drink or five of water from the station set up there, I head for the first aid station to get the knee cleaned and disinfected, and we stand around for a very short period of time before Liz, Margs, and Jill show up and scramble across the wall to finish about eight minutes behind us (which is actually about two minutes faster than us since they started ten minutes later). They must have pedaled hard and fast to lessen the gap during that last mountain biking lap.


Amish Army after the race. We look happier than when we started, don’t we?

And that is the full report on the triathalon. We did go to a nice microbrewery afterwards for lunch, and since we were not worried about being hydrated for more running, we could finally actually enjoy a nice pleasant pint of the local conconcotion. I am sure the city will be wondering about the mad flush of mud down the restaurant’s drain as we washed up a bit there after having changed into more decent and less muddy gear, but still had mud past the elbows when we arrived. I think they were used it by the time of our arrival, though. I counted a lot of cars with bike racks in the parking lot, including the overall winners, Team Balance Bar, a couple of tables over.

After a pleasant lunch together, it was time to head off our seperate ways for home, which was a good two and a half hours of driving for me with the injured bike in the back. I got home and got three of the four things I most wanted in the world right then: a hot shower, a clean change of clothes, a nice glass of wine, and a really good back massage to loosen the knots from kayaking. Alas, Zorro is not trained in shiatsu techniques, so I had to do without the last.

Jesse