VentureQuest: mountain biking mayhem and a shocking finish

Running is my exercise of choice. Mostly I run on my own, sometimes a route from my house around a lake, sometimes on the treadmill while I catch up on DVRed shows. I usually run a couple of local 5K races each year. The occasional 10K sneaks onto my calendar too. I like my running routine, but sometimes I need to bust out of the usual and do something my body does not expect. 

This morning I woke up at 5am to hit the road for VentureQuest, an adventure race with a mix of orienteering, trail running, mountain biking, and canoeing. I was one of three on a co-ed team of racers, each with our strengths, and all of us with one weakness: mountain biking.

My lovely steed on the left, with orange transition bag beneath

We signed up for this race months ago, so we had time to practice biking off-road. We just never got around to it. This wasn't the first adventure race for two of us, so only one third of our team could claim to be a complete novice. It shouldn't have been any kind of surprise that the mountain biking leg would be the stone in our path to finishing this race.

Stone in our path. More like the railroad tie in our single track. Followed by a steep downhill hairpin turn with a ravine one the other side.

I never shifted out of my next to lowest gear, yet time and again I pushed that bike up a hill. Worse, I rolled it down hills. Worst, we resorted to something we had promised ourselves not to do: bushwhack with the bikes. 

When we should have been making progress on the trail, we started having déjà vu. That darned railroad tie reappeared in front of us. How did that happen? We continued on, only to encounter it a third time. I won't speak for the guys on my team, but I was close to crying. It was disheartening. We were lost with a map and a compass, on marked trails, and we couldn't find our checkpoints. Our allotted time had run out half an hour ago, and we were losing points with each passing minute.

I'll skip to the end, where we emerged from the woods with grunts of relief, dropped the bikes in the transition area, and spent our remaining energy trotting to the finish. I was a mess, with bloodied hand, arm, knee, and ankle, but getting off the bike felt great. 

We had not completed the race, as we missed three checkpoints. We were forty-four minutes late, at the cost of five points per minute penalty. Whatever. There was watermelon, pizza, GORP, and the best Coca-Cola I'd ever tasted. We had arrived in the middle of the awards ceremony, and I cheered in between bites as I chowed down.

"Third place in the sport level, three person, co-ed division goes to Beer Guts in Spandex." 

What? I looked at my teammates, both with beer guts and wearing spandex, true to our team name. 

We laughed our way to the podium, where we each received a beer glass -- "3rd Place 2013" -- and a fleece beanie with the racing company's logo. We congratulated the other teams that placed ahead of us, and I showed off my wounds as I smiled big for the picture.

Team Beer Guts in Spandex: done is good. Let's go home.

***

A note on EX2, the company that put on this race, and orange wristbands

I've done a lot of races with a lot of different race management companies, and EX2 stands out. They have put on the absolute best races I've participated in. 

One of their longtime volunteers suffered a catastrophic injury while downhill biking with his family. In our group pictures today, we wore and showed off orange wristbands as a tribute to "Scud." To read more of his story, and to support his recovery, visit the family's blog, www.scudfries.org.