Well our team survived the Moab Adventure Xstream race. I did not run 22 miles but I am giving myself credit for at least 22 miles of running effort wise. I did not come out completely unscathed as I crashed on the bike three times and really banged my right knee really hard on one of the crashes. The weather was cold and worst of all wet most of the day leading to some extremely difficult mountain bike riding at times as some of the sections over the course were on what they call slickrock and we discovered why it is called slickrock. One of my teammates crashed five times. Fortunately no race ending injuries for our team but I will have to see how my right knee fairs. I hit it really hard on a piece of solid rock. At the time I was in a lot of pain but quickly jumped back on the bike and just ignored it. At the end of the bike leg I took a peak at it and saw some good blood running down the leg but did not have time to really care and took off on the run. Luckily it did not hurt during the run. The first real chance I had to look at it closer was when we were waiting for the rappell. At that point I was a little concerned as it was swollen up pretty good. Continued on as it was not really hurting. By the end of the race the swelling actually had gone down a little so I was a little happier. Overall I think it is just a pretty good bruise as it is mainly just stiff and sore today with only a little swelling. Ice and Ibuprofin are my friends today. Other than the knee the rest of the body is tired and only a little bit of soreness. We will see how this week goes running wise. It was an awesome race and I have a lot of respect for the professional teams after doing this and seeing how fast they really are. I am not sure I will rush out to do another one any time soon but I had a blast and experienced a whole new type of racing and pain. Below is my race recap. Before the race they do not tell you the order of events or distances, you recieve these at check-in time the night before. This leaves some planning and preparation to be done on race night. In the past it had always started with the kayak and then bike-run-rappel-bike. At race check-in we found out it would be bike-run-rappell-bike-kayak. The distances this year went heavy on the mountain bike side with some very hard and long climbs. The race started at 8:00 for the 37 or so competitive coed teams. So you had about 148 mountain bikes all crammed on a two lane road for the start. Our team got stuck behind some traffic at the start but we made our way up to the back of the lead pack of teams right before we left the road and started to climb on the dirt roads. The first leg of the bike would be a real gut check as it was a total climb fest followed by a very slick, fast and technical downhill section. When we turned off road we were at about 3,800 feet and commenced our climbing. Over the next 5-6 miles we climbed about 2,000 feet and then it did not end there as it did level out a little but we still were climbing gradually until about the 20 mile mark peaking out at about 6,400 feet. The first 5-6 miles was some of the steepest and toughest climbing I have ever seen. Not only was it very steep but it was also very sandy and muddy in spots as well. It was bad enough that everyone had to get off and walk throughout many sections as it was impossible to ride. Our team actually was doing quite well at this point. We then turned downhill and began to really fly. Maybe a little too fast as this is where we had our crashes. As none of us are very experienced moutain bike riders we would lose control around some turns that were tighter than anticipated and when you hit the slickrock in a turn with too much speed things were not so pretty. We still held our own at this point as a bunch of rookie amatuers. The run leg doubled back on the bike course so we were able to count teams and we determined that we were in 7th or 8th at the end of the bike leg and transitioned to the run. We knew we had a strong run team so we took off on the run at a good clip. However, one of our teammates started having stomach problems and cramping up a little so we had to slow down quite a bit. At this point no teams caught us even though we slowed down. The run leg was about 6 miles and the last 5 miles was all up hill. The climb was similiar to the big hill on the Striders course but lasted for 5 miles and was on slickrock and mud. The run was easy for me as the pace was slow enough to not really make me work too hard. However, I did strap a rope from me to our teammate that was hurting and pull him along which made me work a little bit more. Once we hit the top we got to truly have a blast and rappell off a 300 foot cliff. This was truly the best part of the race. Nothing like hooking up to a rope and leaning back over a cliff and walking off backwards. 300 feet is along way up when you are looking down over your shoulder from the top connected to a rope. The last 100 or so feet was a free fall rappell as the cliff cut back and away from you and you went straight down. Again this was the highlight of the race! We were then back on the bikes and this is where bad luck came our way. Shortly after jumping on the bikes again we had one teammate get a flat tire. It took about 15 minutes to fix the flat and get going again. During this time a couple of teams passed us but we were probably still in the top 10 as far as we could tell and feeling pretty good. We took off again and caught one team and were gaining on another when our luck took an even a bigger turn downwards. At the base of the last big climb and with about 10 miles of biking left one of our teammates bikes derailer snapped completely off. For those that do not know you cannot pedal a bike without the derailer. We were doomed at this point and realized it was now a fight to just figure out a way to finish. We attempted to make the bike into a single speed bike as a derailer is not needed if you can do this. As we worked on the bike we watched teams going streaming by over what was about 45 minutes of attempted repairs. Ultimately we could not get it to work at all and decieded to walk the last big uphill section and have him coast down the other side. At the bottom of the big hill we had about 6 miles left but it was all flat and down so we hooked a tow rope up from one bike to another and towed to the kayak transition point. Overall we had lost at least an hour in repair time between the two incidents and probably a little more due to having to walk and tow a rider the last 10 miles. However, we were determined to finish at this point and were happy to have made it to the kayaks. The last leg was about 9 miles down the colorado river paddling for what seemed forever. Paddling hard for a long period of time was very painful and a lot more work than I anicipated. This for me was the toughest part of the race and I was extremely happy to see the finish. The official race results will be posted some time on Monday so we do not know our overall finish amongst coed teams but we are pretty sure we dropped well out of the top 10 after our mechanical failure. We finished in 8 hours and 46 minutes and did notice that one of the teams that passed us when we were broken down finished in 7 hours and 44 minutes and was 9th place. So we were on track for around a 7 hours and 30-40 minutes finish when that occured is our best guess. At the least the top 4 teams are professional teams sponsored by Solomon, Nike etc.. and it showed. The winning team was Team Solomon and finished in just under 6 hours which is really moving. This is truly another sport that I did not know much about going into it but I have a lot of respect for it and had a great time. I'm not sure if I will do it again next year but we will see. Well that is the long story. I'm not sure how many will read it but thought it was worth posting for those that may. Hopefully the knee is ok and I recover quickly. Now that this is over I guess it is time to focus strictly on running again. Oh yeah the total distances were roughly 43 miles by bike, 6 miles running, 9 miles in the kayak and 300 feet by rope!
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