I had actually prepared fairly well for a race early in the season—maybe too well. On the Thursday before the race, I was completing a trail run when I heard a distinct pop from my calf and felt a sharp pain. It was so sharp and abrupt that I started looking around for a snake or a stray arrow from the nearby archery range. No Indians…definitely a torn calf muscle which reduced me to walking back to my truck. To set the stage completely, I had been emailing my partner Frank and he was quick to tell me he had injured his knee. This is racing talk, which loosely translated means, “don’t expect me to run as fast as last year.” Well, that is about all the excuses I can come up with now—but I am sure I will add more as I think of them.

The morning started with alarm going off at 04:45, which only one day earlier was really 03:45, and my body was quick to remind me of that fact. As is usually the case when preparing for an endurance event, you start off weeks before the race with grandiose plans of—“We will take first place in our division,” or something equally impressive, but as the alarm goes off on race day it becomes, “let’s see if I can finish ahead of the ‘Over 65’ division and not freeze in the process.”

Actually, not freezing was a real priority since it was 24 degrees when we showed up to the race site. We arranged the bikes and canoe in the appropriate transition areas and I ran a few steps to make sure I could at least run. I had not run since I injured my calf on Thursday, not wanting to make things worse, and it was time to see if I could complete the race. After handfuls of Motrin and a thick coating of “Icy Hot” I was ready for a trial run. While each step hurt, I still could maintain an acceptable pace, and figured I could at least finish what I started—and still beat the over-65 year olds—maybe.

At the start line, the race gun blasted; Frank and I had agreed not to try to start off like jack rabbits, but rather to warm up to the pace, and our strategy worked out fine. Roughly mid-way through the race was our first obstacle—a rock face that we had to free climb to reach the next higher trail section. This actually turned out to be a bit of a bottleneck because there were only a few route competitors who could climb without fear of falling. Once we had scampered to the top of the rock face we were greeted with more forest running. 3.6 miles later we emerged from the forest and faced our second obstacle—low crawling for 40 feet under an 18 inch high cable net.

After “the crawl,” we ran to our canoe for the paddling event. Frank and I were glad that this was flat water lake paddling, remembering our spectacular capsizing experience on the James River months earlier. Our only real concern in this event was avoiding being rammed by canoe-challenged competitors—of which there was an ample supply. In fact, in the course of completing two laps in Lake Cunningham, we were hit no less than three times by erratic canoes and kayaks. We hit the beach running after completing the second lap, and ported our canoes to the drop-off point and raced off to our mountain bikes.

The mountain biking started up a long hill which led to another long hill and another hill—you get the idea. Finally cresting the top of the hill we were directed off the dirt road through yet again another marked course through the woods. An hour into the race, the problem with this section of the course was trying to bike around the slower competitors on the very narrow trail (they were ahead of us because of a staggered start with the slower teams starting 10 to 20 minutes before our start)—we simply could not get around them safely. The large rocks and exposed tree roots were presenting a significant obstacle to some of the less experienced mountain bike riders. Before the race, one of the competitors was telling me that he had never even ridden a mountain bike, and now he was blocking our progress. Once we overtook the slower riders it was fairly straight forward riding—up and down the hills of Western Maryland.

The final event was another forest run followed by our last crawling event. By the time we crossed the finish line in 2 hours and 42 minutes, the temperature had raised to a balmy 42 degrees. We placed 7th overall in our division and 12th overall out of 157 competitors (only a minute separating the next 4 places)…not bad for a couple of limping dudes!