out for adventure

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
- Helen Keller

So it's been a few weeks since I last posted, but with good reason. It's been a crazy busy summer packed with writing, going to the beach, working out, doing Bikram yoga, the Olympics, movie watching, test driving cars, visiting parks, taking pictures, planning parties, cleaning, online magazine launching, chilling, and, oh yes, one very memorable Adventure Race, courtesy of Genesis Adventures.


To get the full specifics on it, I'd like to direct you to Alex's website, where he offers a minute-by-minute rundown of the the sweat, the pain, the excitement - 6 hours and 57 minutes worth (including a picture of one of the race map that on several occasions proved useless).

alexanderkblog.wordpress.com

The race took place on Saturday, August 2, in Allamuchy (pronounced with the "ch" sound, not the "k" sound...because I can only be corrected so many times) Mountain State Park, NJ, and according to everyone there, from the coordinator of the event to the adventure race veterans, it turned out to be one of the hardest races on record. The race results, which we got a few days later, proved it, seeing as how about 10 teams were assigned a "DNF" - did not finish.

Alex and me, however, aka Team Vigilant Monkey, did finish in just under 7 hours, starting at 9:00 AM and finishing three minutes before the official race cut-off time of 4:00 PM.

To sum up, the race was awesome, and really nothing like we expected. We actually (if you faithful blog readers can remember) took a prep course/daylong camp about two months ago during the last adventure race to better understand what we we were getting ourselves into, in Wawayanda State Park, NJ.

But you know how you study and study for an exam like the SAT or GRE, take practice tests, go over review questions, do the repetitive, straightforward problems, and still end up convinced that the actual test is more difficult than what you were told to go over? That's kind of exactly how this ended up. Consisting of three sections, kayaking, hiking, and mountain biking, this was the breakdown between the two locations -

In Wawayanda, we were on a lake, a big, calm enclosed lake, where lily pads and flowers were in abundance, on a hot, summer's day.

In Allamuchy, we were on a river, a tight, muddy, shallow-and-then-deep-when-you-least-expect-it, fly-infested, rocky, muddy (did I mention that?) river. Oh yeah, and there were waterfalls. I was covered in crap less than five minutes into the kayak portion of the race. Our paddles picked up more mud, seaweed, mulch, rocks, and unidentifiable brown stuff than I ever even thought sat at the bottom of a river.

Oh, and it was anything but sunny. Kayaking back to the transition point, the heavens opened up and unleashed all the rain that it hadn't unleashed all summer. And thunder. And lightning. When we got out at one point, thinking we should run with the kayak back to camp, we came up in a really thick part of the forest, where walking, let alone running, was out of the question. So we retraced our steps, but once at the river, we realized one of the paddles went missing, so I ran back into the forest to find it. And it might sound silly, but the day had already gotten so Lord of the Rings on me, that I actually entertained the possibility that river trolls had stolen the paddle out of the kayak when Alex was pulling it back, just so that one of us could go back to retrieve it, only to get snatched up, leaving the other alone on the river. Yes, the writer in me was still hard at work...

The kayak portion alone claimed two teams, who ended up stuck out there and had to drop out of the race.

Less than 2 hours for us, however, and we were back at the transition area.

Back to Wawayanda, where hiking was, literally, like a walk in the park. There were open forest areas, nicely marked paths, sights to be seen, and, of course, sun.

Allamuchy - everything was soaked. We were soaked. Our clothes were soaked. The forest was soaked. Any sort of traction that existed ever went out the window. Trails - non-existent. Checkpoints - few and far in between. The hiking was really what either made or broke teams. To be more exact, it was the dreaded Checkpoint 5 somewhere on some mythic stone wall that left people lost, confused, wandering and annoyed. It's funny how much a foggy compass, a wet map, and being surrounded by endless trees can really put a relationship to the test. Plus, there were ruins (and the river we kayaked on went through a historic, closed-down town) that I didn't even give a second look at - just to show you how frustrated Checkpoint 5 made me.

But we persevered and made it out of the forest in relatively sane condition. Back at the transition area, we grabbed our bikes, took note of how many bikes were still in their stands (thus the number of racers still in the woods), and took off on the third and last portion of the race.

Wawayanda - dirt bike paths, sun, some sort of direction.

Allamuchy - rocks, rocks, and more rocks. Wet rocks. Large rocks. Hidden rocks. The term for such bike paths are "bony," and these were up there with the boniest. It was on these paths that we met up with many teams still fuming from Checkpoint 5.

At about 3:30 PM, Alex and I started heading back to the transition point to cross the finish line. We had veered off the map for about thirty minutes prior to that, leaving us lacking in the the last few checkpoints (along with a good deal of other teams), but reinvigorated as well. The time to ourselves, in the middle of some of the coolest woods I've ever seen, by the largest boulder I've ever seen, was much needed and appreciated. It was the perfect note to end our race.

Well, actually, the bell they clanged for us as we crossed the finish line made a pretty good ending note, too. Right after we finished, I asked if there were any teams still out there, to which the coordinator responded with a laugh and an, "Of course!!" And I smiled, because it meant we did pretty darn good.

So that's the story. That was our race. More than once throughout the day my father's voice echoed in my head as he asked, "And why are you doing this again?" And more than once, I wondered the same thing myself. I ended up with cuts on my feet (most from wading in the river, pulling the kayak through gunk) and my legs (most from the hiking, where I think I must have brushed by every thorn and sharp twig in the whole forest), with pain in parts of my body that I didn't even know were capable of aching, with squishy socks that never really dried, with a river gunk-smeared bandana that attracted pesky insects throughout the whole race, with the realization that giving me a map does as much good as leaving the map at home, and with knee pain (there were few without a limp in their step at the end of the day).

Will we do it again? Of course we will. September, to be exact. To which my dad would ask, why is that? Because we have to. Because it was awesome. It was exhilirating. It was a challenge. It was a hardship. It was something unlike I've ever done before. It was 7 hours of realizing that if you want to, you will.

And then there's Checkpoint 5. Somewhere, at some point, some day, there'll be another Checkpoint 5. And we'll find it.

We have to.