Brave Bill

Bill must have showered in extra awesomeness this morning. He took out the trash (although he always does that), made dinner, and, as an added bonus, just registered us for The Edge adventure race this weekend. On Friday we were supposed to head to somewhere in Virginia for a weekend of trail running, mountain biking, camping, beer drinking, sleeping, dirt, climbing, lack of showering, camp fires, roasted marshmallows, head lamps, etc.

Our friend who we were meeting up with, however, had an incident while “light wrestling.” We aren’t sure what this means. Did he injure himself while rolling around with a 60-watt bulb or maybe while being gently body-slammed by Hulk Hogan? We are too afraid to ask and will therefore never know. What we do know is that a few of his ribs are now bending (?) the wrong way so the trip is off. Instead of spending 11hours in the car to do what we can basically do in our own backyard (although I am not sure if we would ever actually camp in our backyard in Germantown) we decided to stay home. I’ve been whining about the fact that I haven’t done an adventure race in 14 months, we had nothing else to do, Bill’s mountain bike is finally fixed, so he bravely signed us up.

Dave, Bill and I in the first race Bill and I ever did together.
Pleas note the historic Y100 sign and Bill's cargo net skillz.

Why bravely? The last time we did this race I pelted him with crabapples. Repeatedly.

It was sometime in or around the 2003-2006 time period. Or maybe 2002 or 2007. Sometime after we met and before we were married. I lived in awesome Royersford, a relatively quick bike ride and an even faster drive to Green Lane Park, home of the race. We started strong and only got stronger over the first section. We flew through our second section, a brief paddle followed by a run up and over a mile or so of steep power lines back to transition. We threw on our bike stuff and got ready to ride. Bill grabbed the map case. But not really. No map case. He’d* left it in the boat, a 30-minute run out and back. It’s hard to navigate an AR without a map. I am terrible at nav so I don’t really know what I am talking about, but I am going to go with it actually being impossible. In adventure racing you have to stay within a handful of yards of your teammate so we both got to go for a bonus run.

And the last race we did together. Don't we look awesome?

Teams we had been ahead of passed us all over the place as we started our run back. We got to the base of the first hill and I was really, really grumpy and having a hard time keeping up. I stepped on a crabapple and rolled my ankle. Bill took off ahead, not realizing I was a bit broken. I yelled, he didn’t hear me. So I did what any normal girlfriend would do. I picked up a crabapple and hurled it in his general direction. I missed by a lot so I decided to give it another shot. Impressively, I nailed him in the calf. He kept going. I tried again. I have mad skillz, as the crabapple hit him squarely between the shoulder blades. He turned.

“Did you just hit me with a crabapple?,” he asked. “Yup,” I said. “I am good at throwing.” “I see that. I can’t believe you hit me with a crabapple,” he said. “Neither can I. I am sorry,” said I. We kissed and made up (the bad part of racing with your boyfriend/girlfriend/ husband/wife is that it can be prime time for fighting, the good part of racing with your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife is that it is sort of sweet to do so and makes for a pretty badass date).

We finished the race exactly 30 minutes out of first place for our division and in the middle of the pack. So, yes, Bill is quite brave to suggest doing this race again.

*Adventure racing is a team thing, so it was sort of my fault too. I realize that now, in my old age. Also if you would like to do an adventure race, peek at http://www.goalsara.org/.