Adventure race.

Heidi:
Let me start off by saying that I WAY under estimated this race.  I was a little nervous (as usual for a race) but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  Secondly, let me mention that I love my husband very much and on this day we hit a new milestone of love and commitment.

Nathan went to the pre-race meeting and came home and said "you might want to kill me tomorrow....".  The race director (who is also a friend of ours) decided to add a sandbag course to the end of the race.

The race went like this:
4 mile gravel run
7 mile gravel bike
2 mile canoe (in which you had to drop your bike and climb this HUGE dam to get your canoe)
7 mile bike back
40lb sandbag course with at least 6 military crawls on the ground with your sandbag

Throughout this whole race you had to carry your backpack.  Thankfully I had a very small backpack and only had to carry some nutrition, my running shoes and my shirt & pants (oh, and a compass, whistle...).

The course was on the hilliest roads you can imagine.  During the run it was hard to recover on the downhill because it was so steep and gravel.  I was quite proud of my performance however.  I got on the bike and I can't even explain the hills.  And unlike road biking where you can gain speed downhill and carry some of that up the hill on the other side- mtn bikes on gravel don't get you anywhere!!

On at least 6-8 of the MOUNTAINS I climbed on the bike Nathan would catch me mid hill and put his hand on my back and push me up- allowing my legs to be able to do it.  I would have been walking a bunch of those hills (like many of the other bikers) if Nathan would not have done that.  I have no idea how he climbed them himself AND helped push me.  I seriously got emotional on one of them when he did this.

The first 7 miles of the bike went decent.  I got off the bike to head to the canoe and my legs were shaking.  I was so happy to see the canoe and it went fairly smooth. It was a beautiful day- sunny & high 50's.  Back on the bike and I had no legs left.  I got through it.   On to the sandbag.  I really didn't care about anything at that point.  I grabbed the sandbag, ran to the first crawl, fell on the ground and just started rolling through it and dragging that stupid bag, back up on my shoulder to run to the next one....

I was stunned that this race was so tough for me.  I felt like I had been working hard on endurance- running & biking- and I don't understand why I didn't have it that day.  It gave me a good view of where I am at and where I need to go from here.  Yes, the gravel is totally different- and the hills were tough to say the least.  Plus, the race was 4 hours for us.  I have never raced that long before.

It was a wonderful day spent with my husband.... and I must admit that it was sort of fun too....