The race started with a three-legged race that turned into a two-mile beach run. On the way back we had to do a short ocean swim, then low crawl through the sand and go over the 10-foot wall for the first of many times that day. We transitioned to our bikes, went over a set of three 8-foot high hurtles, that we had to deal with every time we exited the transition area, and road the bikes down the beach to the eight foot wall, the other wall that we would go over many times that day. After that we took off on the first biking section that was about eight miles long. About the time we started on the bike trail, the rain started and it poured down the entire time we biked, at times so hard we could barely see.
We finished the bike by going over the 10-foot wall and into the transition area and then headed out on 4-mile run that took us to our kayak which was full of water from the rain because we left the cockpits facing up. Due to the design of our kayak all the water can't be drained out when it is turned over, so after getting out what water we could from the kayak, we set off for the first kayak check point with some extra water weight.
At the kayak check point we were on PineIsland and had to navigate to four objectives and return to the check point before we could start the second kayak section. On the second kayak leg we made a turn we were sure was the correct one, however, someone told us we were going the wrong way. The other boats with us turned and went the other way so we did too. Mistake number two. After a short while, we realized we were going the wrong way and turned around, but lost about a half hour.
We arrived at the kayak portage point and were knee deep in muck trying to get our kayak out of the water and up a steep hill. Fortunately, teams were helping each other to the top of the hill. At the top of the hill we put our wheels that we were using for the first time in a race on the kayak. We put them too far back and along with all the water in the kayak from the rain it unbalanced the boat and made it difficult for us to portage. Mistake number three. Eventually we found a cup and got most of the water out of the kayak just in time to portage down the beach and go over the wall before entering the transition area.
Then we took off on a 5-mile run with the usual preliminaries. At the end it was over the wall and back to the bikes for another eight miles to the finish. Finally, it was the last time over the wall and a finish time of 11 hours and 8 minutes. We finished 30th out of 51 teams.
Jakson, the race director gave us some very nice shirts and hats to wear for our interview. We were really looking forward to the interview on the following Friday and talked to the producer several times during the week. We arrived at the studio early on Friday, the 9th and brought a lot of equipment with us. We had live interviews scheduled for 6:40 and 8:40 pm. We talked to the reporter, Chris Osborne, for about a half hour about the questions he would ask and how we would answer. When the first interview started Chris asked entirely different questions somewhat to our surprise. We did not realize until after the interview that he did not remember the questions he was going to ask us. The second interview went better than the first but we still weren't sure what Chris would ask. After the interviews he told us it always looks better than it feels and he was right but had he asked the questions we were expecting the interview would have gone better. We still had fun doing it and got seven minutes of our 15 minutes of fame.
Our next race is the 100 mile Coastal Assault in mid-September in Florida.
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