Next!

Does anyone else ever do something dumb during a post-race high? Like sign up for another longish race taking place 13 days after crossing the finish line of the last?

I woke up Monday morning after the Rev3 fully expecting to not be able to move for several days, let alone several hours. I preemptively took the day off from work, told my hockey team I wouldn’t be able to make it to Monday night’s game days beforehand and was even initially anticipating having to call out of work on Tuesday.

Instead, I popped out of bed ready to go. Ready for a run. Ready for a bike. Ready for a race. I had nothing planned, Bill had to go to work and I was antsy. I convinced a friend to meet up for coffee and several games of Scrabble – I had to get out of the house. After two games of Scrabble (we split them, although my friend, who is currently growing twins in her uterus, spelled “twins” twice and “womb” once. Is that cheating?) I found myself back home and amazingly bored. Our gear was cleaned (ok, the nasty bikes still need some work), the laundry was done.

I obviously went to hockey and got out some of the antsy. By Tuesday night, though, the antsy was back. The race calendar was empty until June, making me sad. Bill and I poked around the interwebs to see what was going on during the one weekend we are free in May. Nothing.

They only thing that sort of fit into our ever-so-thrilling lives was the Yough Extreme in Ohiopyle State Park sort of near Pittsburgh. Ten hours, or maybe 12, of mountain biking, orienteering and whitewater paddling.

We thought about whether it was a bad idea and then went to bed. By the time I woke up Wednesday morning Bill had rented us a sweet yurt in the park. By the time I left for work we were registered for the race. No time to put a team of three or four together, just the two of us --The Haines Street Hustlers.

The most exciting part about the act of registering was the little box that said “What would you like the announcer to say as you cross the finish line?” The registration Web site was clearly geared toward tris, 5ks and 10ks that do sometimes have announcements like “Here’s Betty from Philly completing her first 5k! And next we have 97-year-old Huckleberry, our oldest racer today. Go Huckleberry!”

Adventure races, however, not so much fanfare.

Just in case, though, I filled in the little box. Behold, my masterpiece:
“Here they come! WHOOOOOOOOOOOO! Ladies and gentlemen, here we have the Haines Street Hustlers, the biggest BAMFs in all the land.”

No, I don’t expect this to actually be said as we hopefully stroll/roll/paddle across the finish line but please allow me to keep my dream alive.

The race is about half the distance of the Rev3 and better take us about half the time to complete. I am sure there will be some glitches along the way (there always are) but Bill seems prepared to pull me along and push the pace a bit so hopefully we’ll officially finish.

Despite being a shorter race than the Rev3 it looks like we will be lugging more gear and carrying heavier packs. We can use our own paddles and PFDs for the water section and I don’t think we will go through transition at all, let alone a half-dozen times like we did last week, meaning that we have to carry a race worth of food and water from the start.

I just hope it rains and hails because I am not sure I know how to race in the dry any more.