It is a cold, dreary day in sunny Moab. Perfect for a big race. We start in wave fashion, with the four person teams, solo teams, and two person coed teams all going out in thirty minute intervals ahead of us. My dad and I stand idly by while the combined constriction of our life vests and backpacks cause our arms to fall asleep, as we watch some of the less competitive teams take their sweet time grabbing their kayaks and hopping into the Colorado River to begin their race.

"They're not doing themselves any favors by taking the full 12 hours," I comment.

"No shit." Dad and I share a slightly elitist, "if you came here to race, then race" philosophy. If it's your first time, just do a sprint race.

It's finally 8am and time for my dad and me to start. We line up under the giant red inflatable start/finish display that inevitably gets taken down every race because of winds. I tell my dad that I'm going to sprint my ass off for the first kayak in sight, and leave all the rest of these "endurance racers" behind. I'll secure the closest kayak, and when he gets to me, we'll haul the cumbersome balloon of a watercraft down to the first open spot on shore. The gun goes off, and I swing my now purple arms in a sprint to retrieve the first kayak. "Damn," I think, "everyone else had the same idea." Endurance racers are faster than I thought.

I am the first to the kayak, and the first to shove my fingers under the webbing to let others know that this is mine. A swift crack to the head with a paddle blade proves me wrong. I learn that day that it is an unwritten rule: both racers have to have their hands on the kayak for it to be theirs. Seeing as I am one individual, that was not the case. Finally, a few seconds later, padre arrives at the corral and we haul a less-than-optimal kayak down to a less-than-optimal position at the shore. I wade in waist-deep unintentionally to drag the bow into the water, and I thank my paddle pants and wonder how long this race is going to feel.

We start paddling, exactly middle of the pack, in an even rhythm, watching the rest of the competition drop away as they remember that they likely have 10 more hours of racing after the kayak portion. My dad and I secure a position in the breakaway and battle for fifth place with some nice fellows for a while. It is about halfway through the beginning of this battle when I realize my right forearm hurts like hell. In the adrenaline-fueled start of the race, I had gripped with my paddle-rotating hand quite a bit too hard. But I figure that the worse that'll happen is that I won't be able to grab my brake with that hand on the bike portion. It would make for one hell of a descent. My dad and I keep battling for this fifth place position, and I keep coming up with new strategies to go faster. Ten easy strokes, ten hard strokes; ten easy strokes, twenty hard strokes; twenty hard strokes, no easy strokes. That one works pretty well. Even though I can feel half the power of my strokes go into the flaccid sponge of a kayak, I keep at it because I'm fucking cold. We get out of the water fifth.

We haul our kayak out of the water and I start my cold-induced waddle over to the transition area where I strip off my paddle pants and life vest, and don a helmet and some manly arm warmers.

Transition areas are always interesting; you've got the people who started in front and are taking their time and the people in back who are competing for money all in one area. There are people sitting in lawn chairs changing their shoes, and there are people who run to not-so-inconspicuous locations to pee. There are the people who are planning on giving up, and people who plan on kicking it up. I am freezing at this point. Not the Joe-average kinda-cold, the whole body shaking, can't use your fingers cold. While I manage to fumble my gear on, I overhear someone say, "Why did that guy bring his kid here? Can't he see he's freezing?" I immediately dismiss it, knowing we'll stomp them in overall time, and decide to move on.

It's when I hop on my bike that I notice I'm at half my hometown's elevation. Passing riders comes easy, and the endless hills everyone warned of are just a stroll up West Sixth Street. It gets to the point where I am so comfortable with my ability to jam that I'll go to the front of the pack, talk to the guys there for a while, and then drift back to see my dad, and go all the way back up to the front to talk to the pros again. I do this several times, telling them I want an interval workout, knowing it will really get ‘em. It does. We got to the top of the "endlessly long hill" with little tax on me, and I know this is going to be a good race. As far as I can see there is flat road and gradual descent on slickrock. It turns out we would go farther than I could see.

The bike continues from the top of the endless hill down a flat dirt road for maybe three miles. We hit a few patches of sand that makes me think, "Well that's slightly annoying." But after that we get to a road, and being the road cyclist that I am, mi padre and I jam the four miles down to the turnoff to Gemini Bridges. This is where the real racing starts.

The road down to Gemini Bridges is a long washboard road that constantly reminds you where every bone in your body is if you grab onto the handlebars too hard, as I often do. This washboard road leads onto some deeply grooved slickrock, which if you fly over fast enough, is just like rumble strips on a highway. This is good, since around this time I am starting to get tired. I just get my butt out of the saddle, hold on for dear life, and ignore the monotony of ten miles of bumpy, teeth-rattling "road." Whenever I hear another bike on the rumble strip, I pedal ahead until I can't hear them again and coast. This works until I get to the bottom of the road, and the only is was up. Up through a canyon. Up through a sandy canyon.

You never really appreciate the heinousness of sand until you bike in it. That stuff sucks up tires, up-ends bikes, bleeds speed, and generally causes lots of frustration. Once you master the art of sitting your butt over your back tire and surfing the front wheel, and master the completely different art of ignoring the screaming pain shooting up your thighs, you're good to go. I never get that second one quite down, but enough so that I spend most of the time biking in the sand, as opposed to walking my bike in it, as most people were doing.

My dad and I finally reach the bottom of the 275 foot rappel on the bike. As he is the technical rider of the duo, he is there waiting for me at the transition area, all geared up and ready to go. I am not entirely opposed to declaring the day an epic right there and calling it good. But that's for pussies, so I ditch the bike, throw on my running shoes, take my helmet in hand, and start running the six miles back to the top of the cliff that I just spent my time biking to the bottom of. It is a long, uneventful run that puts some of that sweet lactic acid in the muscles around my ankles that is just became aware of. Only one person puts up a fight as my dad and I overtake him (we pass lots of people here; running is both of our fortes), but he is easily matched and defeated.

My dad and I get to the top of the cliff where we can see our bikes underneath, and we are ready to go. We have our locking carabineers through our belt and leg loops, our gate facing us, and our belts doubled back. We are squared away. The staff, on the other hand, are not. "We're going to need that through the belay loop."

"No," was dad's blunt and informed response. "That's fucking retarded."

We both know that we want to trust our whole system, not a crappy little piece of webbing that's not meant to be shock-loaded by bounding down a cliff. We finally amble down to the cliff side and tell the safety what's up. We are doing it our way. The safety man ambles over to the edge of the cliff un-safety-lined as if completely oblivious that death is just a strong breeze away, picks up the rope and attempts to hook it up to dad's ATC. Dad knows his shit and takes the rope and does it himself. Who wants to trust an unsafe safety-man? Well, I am perfectly content to let him hook me in while I eat a power bar and resist the temptation to jump and take him with me. Once I am hooked up, I start walking over the edge backwards and realize that the side of a cliff is a lonely place.

I want to get off of there as fast as possible, so I do what any sane person would do. I calmly, slowly jump down the edge of the cliff while savoring the smell of my burning bike gloves and contemplating how I'd fall if I plummeted from out of the bottom of my seemingly flimsy harness. Fortunately, none of that happens, and I end safely on the ground with enough time to walk away while a potentially lethal rockslide falls behind me, and a chorus of warning angels yell "ROCK!" above me.

This is it. This is the final transition, from harness to saddle. I have a 27 mile bike ahead of me, half of which is uphill and sandy, the other half is paved salvation and a sweet four mile descent. Soaring down a washboard road at 30 miles an hour and crawling up one at 8 with a strong headwind have quite a different feeling. The first part of the ascent is the sand that I hate so much. Since I have figured out the method for not sinking six inches under, I find riding is much easier, and it would've been, had there not been tourist jeepers kicking up sand around me. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to come and take the majority of the track for your mid-afternoon ATV/Dune buggy ride while there is a race in progress? These bastards seemed to have no problem ignoring my approach to a ledge and taking it for themselves, subsequently causing me to lose my speed and sink into that god-awful sand, only to have to walk my bike to the next stretch of solid ground to remount it. Bastards. I let them pass if only for my health, because those "green" Moab tourists seem to have the compensation thing down pat. "I use half the water to flush my toilet (to save the earth, of course), and twice the gas to go joyriding!"

Once I get out of the sand, I am home free. Kinda. Wind has the distinct ability to generate sand out of nothing, and put it in the most inconvenient places. So while I am riding up this hill that seems 3.75 times as long going up as it does coming down, I know what purgatory feels like. Every ridge I climb I know there is pavement on the other side, and every ridge my eyes are only blessed with coarse sand. But nothing lasts forever, and in two forevers I reach pavement. It is at this intersection of pavement and purgatory that I plop down with my pack, eat a bar, and talk to another plopped-down individual like we were two war vets just back from a tour. I eat and talk until my dad arrives. We take off and I never see that guy again.

This pavement is a blessing. Four miles of blessing, to be precise. I am tired and cold, like the sky is starting to look. So I do what I can, and I bike back and forth between my dad and some four-person-team guys only slightly ahead of him. Every time I go to pass the four person team, I take my hands off my handlebars, pass them going about 15 miles per hour above them, smiling and staring, only to stop 100 feet in front of them and wait for my dad. My dad knows he is a hella-fast descender and I am not, and there is a sweet four mile descent coming up, so he tells me to ride ahead as fast as I can, and I'll see how far I can get down the hill before he catches me. Well, I jam and I jam, but I'll be damned, Dad catches me a quarter way down the hill, flying down the steep, rock-studded jeep road at probably forty miles an hour, while I grit my teeth to keep them from falling out at a measly twenty.

When I finally reach the bottom of the road, dad has been waiting there for probably ten minutes, ten minutes I had spent regretting my tire's PSI of sixty. But it is road now, which means I have to tell my eyes that the world isn't vibrating anymore, and that really is the finish line three miles away.

"I'll pull," Dad politely offers. He's always willing to do the hard work.

"This is mine." I am on a mission. The road is mine, I'll pull. Well, I'll kinda pull. What turns out happening is I'd get into the perfect groove in the perfect gear, flip my thumbs up onto the bar, tuck in and go. I'd realize that I'd left dad behind, I'd drop back, and we'd repeat the cycle again.

When we see people lining either side of the finish line, I realize that this is not about me finishing hard, it is about us, father and son, finishing together. We pull in together at a pace that said, "Let's do another eight and a half hours."

I hop off my bike, dad hops off his bike, and we get subs and medals. We sit down and eat, get up and leave, and watch TV in the hotel. We go out to eat at 6:30 that night, where I realize that just an hour ago I finished a 65 mile and 275 foot race. The only thing I can think of is how much I'd rather be out there still riding still, running still, eating GU's, instead of sitting in this far-too-wide booth eating Mexican food. I had my high for that day, and eating Mexican food just wasn't cutting it in the Xstream department.

I'll tell ya, 12-hours are a gateway drug. This summer my dad and I are moving onto the hard stuff: the Summit 24 hour. You'll see us on the podium.