After my last adventure race, the Moab 12 hour, I was ready to get as many adventure races in as I could. They are, in fact, the bomb diggity. Nothing leaves more of a sense of satisfaction than coming over the finish line of an epic race ready to do another. Well, I found a way to get my fix of back-to-back adventure races . . . a 24 hour.

The family -1 Jacob and +1 Rhesa arrived in Summit the day of the race, kinda. The race starts at midnight, so technically we arrived the day before the race. As race custom dictates, mi padre and I found the best carbo-loaded item on the menu in the least busy Italian place in Frisco. In hindsight, spicy, meaty, lasagna was not a great idea, but what the hell, it looked delicious. As we chowed down, I refused to acknowledge the epic sufferfest that was looming 4 hours in the future.

The reality check finally kicked in when we checked into the hotel, with all its amenities (and eight pillows) rendered useless on the insomniac crew. In an attempt to get into the racing mood, I immediately dawned my super-badass-looking suit of spandex and lycra. I was looking black, red, yellow, and lethal. So I sat down on the inviting bed, mind completely devoid of the possibility of sleep, and started to map some checkpoints. Mapping checkpoints is by far the most enlightening (and sobering) of the mandatory pre-race rituals. Up until that point, the only thing you know about the race is that it spans an intimidating range of UTM coordinates.

Once the UTM points were plotted over all two of the 1:24000 maps we were issued, we knew our task, and it honestly didn’t look that daunting. With maps in hand, backpacks ready, and drooping eyelids, we arrived at the start line with half an hour to spare. We position our transition box, and stand around with our paddles and life vests (this time not nearly as tight). One thing we cannot help but observe is that we are the only ones in shorts and jerseys. Everyone else is decked out in their splash pants and jackets. We attribute this to being Leadville residents, and therefore more highly evolved creatures.

We line up at the start waiting for the always anti-climactic start to what seems like a big deal of a race. The siren, or whatever they used (once again, not that memorable of a start) went off and the 1 mile dash to the marina began. During the whole mile I smiled at the superiority of our clothing choice, as I was just starting to heat up. We got to the marina, got into the kayak and started paddling. What, in our hotel room, was an elaborate plan to follow a series of azimuths cleverly written on my forearm, quickly disintegrated into “follow that solo-racing bastard in the carbon-fiber shell.” We did just that. It worked for us, when were able to keep going in the right direction. You see, something very troubling happened recently. Mi padre and I are now approximately equal weights. Well, when you have to people of equal weights both battling to be the power of the kayak, you start to go off in some funky directions. This starts to get a little fucking irritating at about 2 in the morning. As I sat in the back of the kayak correcting for my dad’s decidedly one-sided stroke, I calmed myself by focusing on the tiny green lights ahead of us. I like to think I reached a certain level of enlightenment at maybe three-ish in the morning when we started to get close to the marina, as my left pectoral muscle just felt wet instead of pained.

This was not exactly far from the truth. When we got out of our balloon-like kayak, both of us were soaked head to foot. While the other half of my team was quite aware of the slow slip into hypothermia we were both experiencing, as he got out of the kayak about five times to stamp our passports, all rubber-legged and uncoordinated, I was blissfully unaware. In hindsight, the twenty foot portage of our albatross of a watercraft was probably the most amusing event of the race. As I rolled my body out of the bow, the legs beneath me reminded me that they had politely given all their excess blood to my heart to maintain a reasonable core body temperature. Thus, my bottom plummeted into the cold depths (about 6 inches) beneath me. But my team figured out a way to use the structural support of our body to move. Placing one foot methodically under our center of gravity, and then another, allowed us to get our legs moving. We soon surmised that the mile back to the Frisco Nordic Center would be a long one. (We now know that this phenomenon is called “gait ataxia,” and is indicative of a core temperature of under 95 degrees).

For twenty minutes we shuffled our hearts out. We shuffled until we could span longer distances with our shuffles, and maybe 200 meters from the Nordic Center, we finally hand the blood back in our legs. Fortunately, we had a large supply of extra clothes on hand in case of a rapid change in climate. We switched out of our jerseys and into some wicking shirts and fleece to begin our four-hour orienting section as twilight started upon us. And with our warmth came blood, and with our blood came digestion. The sinister spicy lasagna had lain dormant in our stomachs, but the running bounced and disturbed the sleeping giant. Fortunately, this problem was easily fixed because the race organizers were polite enough to unlock the bathrooms at the transition area (flush toilets in a heated room are, by far, the single best mid-race amenity possible).

As I left the dull mercury-glow of the restrooms, I began to realize just how bright my headlamp wasn’t.  I refused to admit that I was toolish enough to not have fresh batteries in my headlamp for a night race, but alas, it was. The good thing about a night race is that it eventually turns into a day race, which is just what happened in time to save my ass from my lack of preparedness.

So the orienteering began. We ran for four hours, gathering a total of half of the 30ish checkpoints.

And then we ran a marathon. There’s lots of running in adventure races. Luckily,  running is easy.

Then we scootered. For about 10 miles downhill, and it was glorious, even amidst the thunderstorm.

We checked in. We grabbed out bikes. And we biked to get all the checkpoints we could in the limited daylight. So we did. And we were the only ones in out class who grabbed a significant enough quantity of mountain bike checkpoints to “finish” the event.

The best part: sitting at the finish line, eating a sub, and knowing there’s a bed waiting for you at home.