At 12am on Saturday morning, when most of NY was asleep, a YPO buddy, a retired Army medic I recently befriended, and I were riding mountain bikes through the woods in the pitch dark precisely sliced by narrow lights shining from our headlamps. We were at the start of an 18-hour adventure race that would take us running in the woods, mountain biking up very steep hills, and kayaking down a very shallow and cold river.
I was given a packing list, which included a wet suit, mountain bike, knife, survival blanket and first aid kit. We were told to meet in New Paltz, NY at 9 pm on Friday night, where we would get on a bus to travel to an undisclosed location about an hour away. The event would start at midnight. We had to ride around in the woods in the dark on mountain bikes, wearing headlamps and reading topo maps to try to find hidden check-points and gather as many points as we could.
We were the studs on the bikes. My Army recruit was an excellent move. He could read a map like his life depended on it because … well, his life had, until very recently, depended on it. When you have a bunch of guys in the woods riding around with headlamps, it’s hard for the other athletes not to follow the guys who look like they know what they are doing. So we had an ET-esque bike train behind us for a while. We were the popular guys, at least for a few hours.
We rode around in the woods in the dark on our bikes until 5 am, when first light was starting to break. We were so hot from the bikes that we decided not to don our wet suits for the 7-mile kayak leg. It didn’t take long to realize what a bad move that was. The water was low, so we were in the water more than in the boats. I was just hoping I would still have all of my toes and fingers by the time we finished, which ended up being 5 hours later.
When we got back on the bikes after kayaking our Army medic fell a little behind (it was actually his first time riding a mountain bike), and it didn’t take long until we lost each other which is a huge no-no in adventure racing. You must be within sight of your teammates at all times. This blip technically disqualified us from receiving an official score. But hey, it added a new twist for us, and we weren’t about to quit without finishing what we started.
We tried to find him 1980’s style, by just riding around and trying to guess where he may have turned differently from us. After an hour we realized that the 80’s were a long time ago and we have been completely deprogrammed, so we pulled yet another adventure race no-no and whipped out the iPhone. We emailed him, and he was able to direct us to the tree under which he was taking a nap. If I took anything away from this race, it’s the pride that I outlasted a sub-30 year-old ex-Army medic.
We found the finish line 2 hours after things were all rolled and wrapped up, but we made it home in one piece. And if being awake for 38 hours straights wasn’t enough, I was still able to join my daughter’s 9th birthday sleepover party in time for cake and the lengthy process of getting them to go to sleep. I always like to add my own endurance challenge to the end of every race.
What’s next???
