Race Report - Pikes Peak Ascent – 2008
The anxiety over the weather conditions started the Wednesday prior to the event. Different coworkers and friends would come to my desk or email me to update me on the projected forecast for the weekend and to get my take on how that was going to impact the event. The weather forecast was mid 50s and rain in Manitou for the race start and 20 degrees at the top with storm force winds and 4” of snow expected above the treeline. Somewhat of a chance for lightning and thunderstorms throughout the day. Oh and add some freezing rain and hail into the mix. My biggest concern was what the heck I was going to wear. Not finishing the race or being turned around didn’t even cross my mind. I figured I am fast enough to make it to the top before the thunderstorms – they will hold off until 12:00. If I start at 7:30, finish in 4:30, I’ll be at the top by noon so I’ll get there before the usual thunderstorms start. So I put the thoughts of potentially not finishing to the back of my head. I settle on some tech capri pants, a long sleeve tech shirt, my paclite gore-tex jacket with hood, a headband, and some wool mittens.

Up early at 4:45, it’s raining, it’s dark. I get dressed in my full outfit and head outside to see how I’m feeling temperature wise. I get outside under the rain and I feel just right, actually a little warm but I figure if I get hot I can always take off layers. That will be a better strategy up top to have the jacket, esp with the snow prediction. But I’ll be generating a lot of heat and the water proof gore-tex will keep me dry so I should be just fine. Plus at the top my sweat check bag will be waiting for me. In that bag I packed a fleece jacket, a pair of long pants, and a new pair of socks.

I eat breakfast, fill my camelback, and throw in some food. I also put my target splits and my nutrition plan that I’ve carefully crafted in my jacket pocket for easy reference. I wake up Chris and he drives me to the race start where I jump out of the car ready to go, ready to start the race.

At this point it has started to pour down rain – and I mean HARD. I am already cold and a little wet. I look up and can’t see Pikes Peak, or even any of the foothills surrounding Pikes Peak, but they are all completely engulfed by the clouds. I am thinking to myself, I would never climb a 14er in these conditions, not with my inexperience, but I figure if everyone else is game, so am I. I am not a quitter, my parents would never let me quit anything when I was little – I’m not about to start now. I can be cold and wet but I’m GOING TO FINISH THIS THING.

Luckily the rain let up a bit for the race start. I’m actually getting warm running up to the start of Barr. I wanted to seed myself toward the front so I wouldn’t have to worry about passing too much. I see what everyone had told me about how close everyone is packed together, it is like a line all the way to Barr Camp. I am annoyed by people passing me who are breathing really really hard, there is nowhere to go because everyone is so close together and plus these people are going to end up having to slow down shortly because they are already probably anaerobic thereby slowing the whole line but I digress. I am berely breathing hard at this point because the pace is slower than I know I can go but I figure I can save some of it for above A frame when I’m really going to need the extra energy.

I am pacing a little slow to reach my goal of 4:30 but I end up making up that time on the downhills and I end up at Barr Camp in 2:19 which is a little slower than 4:30 pace (2:17) but I don’t care. At this point I am completely drenched from head to toe, my pace and nutrition plan has been completely erased by the rain and I don’t know any of the other target splits from here. My gore-tex jacket did not keep me dry at all, the rain was just soaking right through. Luckily my feet were dry and my hands were warm from my wool gloves. I am following my nutrition plan of eating every half hour and stopping to drink Gatorade at most of the aid stations.

We continue upward to Bottomless Pit, thunder every few minutes or so. I commented to someone how sad I would be if they turned us around at A frame. Though I said it I still didn’t really think it was going to happen - I was still very optimistic about the whole thing. I then start to see groups of twos and threes running down the mountain. I figure they are doublers (racers doing both the Ascent on Saturday and then the Marathon on Sunday) who had finished the Ascent but just wanted the extra miles on their legs (I don’t know why but at that point I thought it was possible). Someone asked them if they had been turned around at A frame and they said that they hadn’t but they had heard that they were planning to close down the race at A frame. I didn’t think too much of it, I figured they were cold and decided to hell with it.

Another 20 minutes passed and the trickle of two or three people coming down had turned into a stream of people all reporting that the race is closed past A frame. But no one had actually heard it from an official, it was all just rumor at this point. So I was determined to get to A frame and hear it for myself. But the trail was narrowing and the further I kept going the more I was hearing comments from everyone who was coming down telling me to turn around, that people who were trying to continue up were just in everyone’s way and were making it slower for them to get down. After 20 minutes of what felt like paddling upstream on a river with a very strong current and while being yelled at constantly I decided it wasn’t meant to be and I finally turned around and joined the line.

The journey back down was sad and slow. There were hundreds of runners all in a line trying to get down and there were still people trying to go up so our progress was slow. On my way down there was a woman with the same build as my mother (5’4”, probably 100 pounds soaking wet) who was shaking uncontrollably. Luckily there were people there helping her who sounded like they knew what they were doing. I couldn’t help out because I had no extra clothes that I could offer and I wouldn’t know how to handle hypothermia. There were two guys behind me who were trying to keep their hands from freezing – “put them in your crotch is the best method” I heard someone shout out. I don’t know how they’d manage to keep walking while holding their hands in their crotch. Interesting. We were all just frozen to the bone. Soaking cold. Shivering. Finally the line thinned out a little and I was able to run. I ran as fast as I could all the way down to Barr just thinking about the wood stove in Neil and Theresa’s house and hoping I could go in and get dried out a little before making my way to the bottom.

I arrive to a big line to get to Barr where we have to give them the bottom part of our race numbers and it turns out Neil is there taking numbers and I say hello and he commiserates with me about not being able to finish the race.

I get closer to the house and find that there is tape up so you can’t get into the house (since they were helping man the aid station) so I then realize that in order to avoid hypothermia I had better book it down to the bottom immediately. I drink some Gatorade and chat with one of the volunteers who gave me the summit report – 8” of snow, 19 degrees with strong winds, conditions were too dangerous for the volunteers up there which was why they had to shut down the race. At that point I had heard it from an official volunteer which made me feel better. I continue down the trail, glad that I have the extra body fat that I do so that I can stay warm. I also start thinking about how if they had let us up to the top that a lot more of us would have had hypothermia. Especially the racers who only had garbage bags as rain coats.

I make my way to the bottom, meet up with John who is walking and I end up chatting with him all the way down. By the end I was in some major pain and ready to be done. We get back to the bottom and stand near the tents in the rain, just longing for food and water. But we didn’t know where to go and we didn’t want to expend extra energy wandering around looking for it. So we wait. Not saying a word. Getting more and more soaked. We didn’t care. I’m looking at everyone with finishers shirts and I’m angry, disappointed, sad that the race was over, that I hadn’t finished. That I couldn’t finish. What a journey, 4 months of hard training, of getting up both Saturday and Sunday at the crack of dawn (or earlier) to climb Pikes Peak, Elbert, or to do Section 16. Running at lunch, hiking after work, trying to balance training, friends, Chris, and regular house chores. All that effort and I couldn’t even complete the race. I was stunned. Finally John’s friends (who had all finished the race) let us know that we could get a tiny Subway sandwich at city hall. We walk slowly over there and go inside where it is warm and dry. Wow, does it feel good to be inside out of the rain. But I knew Chris was coming for me so I got my food, said goodbye to John, and headed back out in the rain to wait for Chris. Chris came only a couple minutes later and I happily collapsed in the car. My race journey was over.

Since I've moved to Colorado I've started to seriously consider the whole idea of climbing all the 14ers. I think that just kind of happens when you live here and you like to do outdoorsy stuff. So I printed out a map of the Colorado 14ers and there are two with "Wilson" in their names - Wilson Peak and Mount Wilson. And the best part is that they are near Lizard Head Pass! I love it. I must climb them both. So Wilson Peak is easier, it's a class 3 climb (meaning some bouldering but you should still survive if you don't have ropes and you don't do something incredibly stupid) but Mount Wilson is a class 4 climb (meaning you best have ropes if you wish to survive). In addition neither of these mountains have trails to the summit. I got spoiled by Pikes Peak and Mt Elbert where it was so easy to get to the top! Hmm, so it sounds like I need to get some topo maps, brush up on my compass skills, and potentially learn how to climb! I better start working on my arm and leg strength!
Photos of Mount Wilson here: http://www.14ers.com/photos/peakmain.php?peak=Mt.%20Wilson

This is just crazy - apparently I will be doing 53/54 14ers, Culebra can be left off the list! I am NOT paying some rich guy $100 to climb up a mountain that he has never even been up just because he owns the property! That is just wrong!
http://www.gazette.com/articles/culebra_39032___article.html/list_climb.html

5 days til the Pikes Peak Ascent! It's a race to the top of Pikes Peak involving almost 8000 feet of altitude gain over 13.2 miles.

My journey to get to this race started back in March when one of my coworkers, Shawn, told me that registration for the Ascent was the following day. My response was "What's the Ascent?" He described the race - it's a brutal half marathon hike/run up to the top of Pikes Peak. He didn't sugar coat his experience doing the race the year before (which wasn't the greatest, he had major blisters and his legs were done with 2 miles to go). Despite his story I knew I had to sign up, this is just the kind of challenge I crave, it makes me get out there and train, plus it would hopefully help me get back my strong, lean body that I had lost in the process of moving to Colorado. So on March 12 as soon as registration opens I'm on the website madly typing in my info, desperate for an entry. The race sold out in 30 minutes and I was IN. Oh my God, I'm really doing this.

I had let my fitness go bigtime during the transition from Maryland to Colorado. It was a really stressful and scary thing to do all by myself so I told myself that it was okay to gain weight, that I would lose it once things settled a bit. I estimate that I gained about 10 pounds and I lost a significant amount of my fitness by working out only when I felt like it. So here I am, some extra weight, berely able to run continuously for a 5K (I had been doing Jack Quinn's runs on Tuesday nights), and berely able to get through a step class at the Y without passing out from lack of oxygen. So I had 5 months to get myself back into tip top shape, lose weight, and get used to not only the altitude here in Colorado Springs, but also the altitude at 14,000 feet where there is 43% less oxygen than at sea level. Yikes, this was a lofty goal.

I followed Hal Higdon's Intermediate 1 Marathon training plan. I decided to substitute climbing 14ers for my longest "runs" at the end of the program.

On June 29th I hiked up to the top via Barr trail, same trail as on race day. Started around 7:00 AM, the first part of the hike was tough, it is steep and I wasn't warmed up. Once I got going though I found a groove and got going. I didn't push too hard, this was supposed to be an easy hike.

View of the summit as I'm on my way to Barr Camp. The pile of rocks is the summit. I'm walking up there! Today. Right now in fact.

After the 7.8 sign to the top it started to get tough. I see a guy ahead of me walking, his pace was good but a little slower than mine, I catch him, we chat for a bit, and then I decide to jog a bit because we had finally gotten to the flat part of the hike (there's only one so I gotta take advantage of it)! Then I get to the dreaded 0.5 mile to Barr Camp sign which means that the trail is going to start getting really steep and rocky, I think it's an old river bed. It's a LONG TORTUROUS half mile but the reward at the end is Barr Camp!

Barr Camp is such a welcoming sight. I take advantage of the port a pots and stop in and say hi to Neal and Theresa (Barr Camp caretakers, people can spend the night in these lean to structures there or they can stay in their house) - Theresa always remembers me, I don't know how she does it. This particular day she was helping a group of people from Ireland with their options for getting to the top. She was strongly urging them to either drive up or take the cog, that it would be a long day going to the top and then hiking back down. Hopefully they took her advise! I said hi to the guy who I had talked to on the trail, he wasn't planning on going to the top otherwise I would have offered to hike with him to the top.

Above Barr Camp the trail has some LONG switchbacks, nothing too steep yet so I'm sticking with my comfortable pace and I'm happy with how little I had so far been affected by the altitude. I'm passing people right and left here which is pretty cool and I'm following 2 girls ahead of me, I'm trying desperately to keep them within my sight. I'm excited to get to A frame (apparently there is an A frame shelter here) since I had never been on the trail from a little below A frame all the way to the top - unchartered territory - I had no idea how my body was going to react to the altitude under exertion. I was nervous and excited at the same time. I am closing in on the two girls, this is very exciting for me, I need to ask them about my hands - they are at this point swelling up like sausages and I was getting a little concerned. I pass A frame (it was just a sign for all I could see, I wasn't about to hike around searching for the shelter at this point) and then I catch the girls. One of them turns out to be a PT who specializes in hands - perfect! Both girls show me their hands and they have the same thing going on, they tell me that they normally don't wear their rings on these hikes because of this problem. Sigh of relief! My hands aren't going to explode - that is good news! :)

I hike with them for 10 minutes or so, they have done the Pikes Peak Ascent in previous years and loved it, today they were just doing an easy hike. I start to not be able to breathe and I have to slow down. They keep going their same pace as if it was no effort at all. I stop, drink a bunch of water, eat some food, and just prop mysef up against a rock. I watch them as they get farther and farther ahead of me. No chance of catching them again. I start hiking again and the nausea sets in. I feel like I'm about to puke at any moment. I press on, just concentrating on moving myself forward, careful with my feet placement, and careful to not topple over down the pile of rocks. I have to stop periodically and just sit down. This is brutal. The top looks so far away still.

After a lot more trudging I reach the 1 mile to the top sign! Only 1 mile to go, excellent! I can do this. How long can 1 mile take me, couldn't be more than 20 minutes or so. But at this point my legs are really starting to get tired and the nausea is getting worse. Then I hit the sign for the 16 golden stairs. This part of the trail is basically a bunch of rock stairs leading closer to the top and then you still have to get through tons and tons of switchbacks. The top STILL looks really far away. So I rest against yet another rock (luckily there is no shortage of rocks up here) and a woman is heading down the trail and asks me how I'm doing. I tell her about the nausea, about the Ascent, blah, blah, blah, I think I thought she had endless amounts of time to hear about all of my problems. Then she asked me how I was getting down and I said I had no idea, I was planning to shower in the bathrooms at the top, try to find some tourists who didn't look like kidnappers, and beg them to allow a stinky exhausted hiker to ride down in their car with them (or on top of the car, I didn't care). Back up plan #1 was to try to take the cog railway down. Back up plan #2 was to attempt to walk back down. I had no idea really. I couldn't think with the lack of oxygen and the nausea. She told me that she had 4 people in her car but that she could take one more and I just about gave her a hug on the spot! She said she wasn't entirely sure she could take me though b/c one of the other people who was riding with her might have offered the spot to someone already - that they were on their way up from the bottom, she had driven their car up to the top to meet them. She was on her way down to meet them and hike the rest of the way back up with them. I was so excited that I might not have to beg for a ride, what good luck!! So we exchange names and I tell her that I'll meet her at the top, I'll be passed out somewhere inside.

I press on, I take it one switchback at a time, resting A LOT. That last mile took me 45 minutes, not exactly the 20 minutes that I had planned. :)

The top!! Check out those storm clouds coming in, hiking down might not be the most pleasant (or safe) option!! I've been told that you should try to get off of 14ers by noon and it was already past noon. I needed to come up with a plan fast.

I go inside, eat some freshly made donuts (I figure there is no way I could eat the same number of calories as I burned today so what the hell), and started scoping out people. The harley dudes are a NO, the couple with the million kids is a no, they probably won't have room for me, the other people that look like hikers are probably a no. Hmm, I better go find the woman who offered me a ride, she may be my only option.

Sheer happiness and exhaustion. I am thinking to myself - I just finished my first 14er!!!

I find the woman who I met on the trail, I can't remember her name right now! She has Doritos, gummi bears, sodas, and all kinds of stuff in the car! It was fantastic! I met everyone else, they were all ultra runners who were super cool. We had a really fun ride back down, I was sandwiched in the middle in the back seat but I didn't care, I was so grateful to be sitting down and resting. We regaled tales of past races and upcoming races, put in bets on the car's brake temperature (I won!), we all got along really well. I couldn't have asked for a better group to be with. Hopefully I'll meet up with this group again at some point! They dropped me off at my car, I offered money for the ride but they wouldn't accept it - they just said that if I drive up sometime that I should offer someone a ride back down - kind of a pay it forward type of deal. Turns out a few weeks later I would be doing something very similar, helping out another fellow hiker on Mount Elbert. All in all, my first 14er was a great experience, I enjoyed every second of it! Next time I do this hike, I will be racing it!

Please don't ask me about my significant other at work of all places!!! So there are 6 of us moving to Colorado from Maryland from my department. A week or so ago there was a meeting with the 6 of us plus a few members of upper management. One of the execs asked us to go around the room and describe our experience when it came to convincing our spouses or significant others to move to Colorado. I was glad that they started on the opposite end of the room because I immediately started to feel a little bit uncomfortable since I didn't have anyone to convince to move to Colorado. I knew that most of the others had spouses but I didn't realize that I would be the ONLY ONE who wasn't attached.

I looked around the room and noticed that almost everyone had wedding rings. I started to feel really sad that I was the only one who didn't have anyone else - no one else to help me in the decision making or to be a friend when I needed someone, to share in the excitement of moving. I quickly decided that now was the wrong time to have a huge emotional breakdown, that would not be good for my career, especially in front of all these high level management people. Bad idea. I had to get through this without even the smallest display of sadness. Or show how truly scared I was about getting out there and feeling lonely and homesick. Right now I need to convince everyone that I don't need anyone else to come with me, that I am independent, strong, and happy to be single. Ha. Couldn't be farther from the truth. Well, the first two are true but I really can't say that I've ever been happy about being single. So I came to the realization that my story was not going to be anywhere near what anyone else is saying. that I was going to have to come up with something really fast and it can't be anywhere close to a sob story. So I came up with the best story that I could think of. I said that after getting the email asking if anyone was interested in moving to Colorado Springs I went home and asked my cats and they happily agreed - they wanted a new challenge of living at 6,000 feet. They wanted more snow to play in. Okay, I didn't get into the snow or the elevation argument but it sort of went that way. They got the idea. Basically, please don't ask me about my spouse or significant other ever again. I don't have anyone, okay???!!!!

Am I really doing this? Am I really moving to Colorado? Do I really want to leave the town that I've spent the last 8 years of my life, where I've learned what it means to really be a grown up, had my first real date, my first boyfriend, my first broken heart, bought my first house, learned how to fix a broken toilet, how to install new electrical lines, new plumbing, cabinets, and I learned how to take care of myself, self reliance. I learned the importance of friends and family. I got in shape. I became a triathlete. I went from answering the phones and hating my job to moving up and into a job that I enjoy and that challenges me, and allows me to use my analytical and problem solving skills. I went from starving student to career woman.

So I had my interviews yesterday and they hinted that I'm going to be offered the position. So I'll be doing my same job (at least for now) and then potentially I might be asked to do projects that will be lead out there.

Am I ready to move to Colorado? Yes. The mountains, the outdoor activities, tons of biking and hiking trails, people who care about the environment, who try NOT to hit bikers and runners, a house with a garage, huge parks, open spaces. Am I ready to leave Baltimore? That is a tougher question. Really, I'm not leaving all of these memories and experiences behind. I'm bringing that stuff all with me. The things that I am leaving behind are the familiarity, the routine, my friends, my aquaintances, the Wine Underground, Volleyball House, my adventure racing team, ARMD, the Trail Snails, my coworkers (even though I'll talk to them I won't get to see them every day), the Avenue, and the eclectic interesting diverse culture of Baltimore, my house, my neighborhood, my neighbors.

My first Adventure Race!

Me, Jess, and Sara before the race

Race Report:

Start of the race was we had to send one member to do a run about 1 1/2 miles out and back to get the team passport, we sent Jess b/c she is our fastest runner. She was back in no time at all, our passport was as follows: run, canoe, bike, and then special challenge section. Other teams had the courses in different orders.

What we could have done differently on the run course:

We were still getting adjusted to the scale of the map so I'm not sure I would have done anything differently but if possible I would have not missed that one trail we needed to take to get the one checkpoint that we overshot.

Transition to the canoe. We got our passport stamped, grabbed our bailer and throw bag which I then carried up the massive hill. Fast transition here. Set my watch to go off every 30 minutes so we'd remember to eat. That alarm system worked well for me.

Canoe time!

5 miles around a Lake, pretty flat water with some wind, made steering a little bit of a challenge but not too bad. We had three checkpoints here and landing the boat was a little tricky a couple times especially with other boats coming in and out.

I was in the back steering, Sara was in the middle sitting on a crate that Jason happened to have in his truck (thank you Jason!!!), Jess was in the front. We worked well together, switched when we were tired, sang songs when we started to get frustrated at how long it was taking, overall I think we did well. It was annoying to get passed by all these buff guys with super huge arm muscles. If we only had those muscles we could go just as fast! This is definitely an area we all agreed that we needed to work on. But I think I did a good job of steering, there were some other boats that were going right and left and pretty much anything but straight so I felt pretty good about how we did despite getting passed by some boats.

At the end of the canoe section there was a team challenge where we had to tell the volunteer how to measure 4 units of water from a 3 unit and a 5 unit cup. Luckily it was from a movie that Sara had seen so she got it right away!!

What could we have done differently?

Train for the boating section, I haven't canoed since June when I did 26 miles down a river with my sister and nieces. The river really helped us along but I didn't realize it at the time...

Transition from canoe to bike, we had a bit to do here in terms of making sure we had all the necessary gear. Sara and Jess took a little longer in transition, I was getting impatient but eventually we set off.

Biking time!

Bike course...we chose to do a lot of it on the roads vs the trails b/c it was faster (advice from Sean, thank you)!! The part that was on the trails was tough, the trails were technical at points with a lot of rocks and roots. My training sessions with ARMD definitely helped me. Even if they were harrowing training sessions. :)

I was the weakest here, in fact I fell once while trying to get started b/c someone was coming toward me and I was rushing and I could clip out fast enough and down I went. I got some style points from a couple guys who were watching, they said at least I was graceful. :)

We really had trouble finding one of the points here. We had seen Sean on the way to the canoe when they were coming back from the canoe and he had given us a key pointer on bike #2 which no one could find (it was in a tree). But point #6 was tough b/c it was buried in these windy trails and we kept back tracking and everyone was trying to find it and there were people biking in every direction on this tough technical single track, it made it really hazardous (that's when I fell). We finally found it and then we were off to point 7 when we found point 8 which we weren't allowed to get yet (we had to get the bike points in order). So we finally went back to the place where 7 was supposed to be and all we saw was a bunch of racers changing tires. So we figured we had to find the point first and then go and change a bike tire as a team challenge. Well we spent a good 10 minutes trying to find the point but couldn't find it and then we went back to where everyone was and found out that there wasn't an actual point, that we just needed to change the tube! Ugh. So I changed the tube in a few minutes (I've practiced this as part of tri training and I managed to impress my teammates and the volunteer who was there verifying that we actually did it). We passed a bunch of teams at that challenge.

What could we have done differently on the bike?

Ask the volunteer before looking for the non existent checkpoint!!

Transition from bike to special challenges, we dropped our bikes, helmets, and headed over to the obstacle course.

This was pretty fast b/c we were starting to run out of time at this point. We had a little over an hour left to finish everything and I wasn't sure how long all of this was going to take us.

Special Challenges Time!
Obstacle course - cargo net where we had to get a bucket of walnut fruit things and ourselves over the net - easy enough, we poured the walnuts into Jess's bag and put the bucket in my camelback and we climbed over the net in no time.

Next was this course where one person had to be tied in via a caribeener and follow the ropes around some trees and the other teammates could create slack in the rope and help guide the person by telling them to go over and under which rope, etc. etc. It was really easy, Sara was hooked in, Jess created slack, and I told Sara how to go over and under, no problem at all.

Next was the spider web where there were a bunch of ropes tied between two trees creating what looked like a spider web. The challenge was to get all three team members through without touching the ropes. Sara went through the lowest one b/c she was the shortest. Jess went through the second highest one while climbing on Sara's back and then landing on my back (Sara and I were on hands and knees on either side of the web). And then I tried a few different ways to get through a different hole (we had to go through different routes) but I was having a hard time. So after a few attempts Sara grabbed the front of me, Jess took my feet and fed me through to Sara. It worked like a charm, easy enough. I can't believe they could lift me, must have been the adrenaline!

Forth was the stretcher challenge where we had to transport a member of our team on a stretcher type thing 200 yards, down and back. We dragged her instead of lifting b/c I figured it would be easier, which it was. Jess was the "victim" and Sara and I dragged her down and back pretty easily. At one end I kinda dropped her a little too hard (I temporarily forgot it was a person that we were dragging, I was getting a little delerious at that point) but luckily she was okay.

Then we ran to the end and we were done!!!

Post Race:

Ate some food, waited for Kathy, Sean, and Jason to finish. They had finished the course in less than 4 hours so they were able to do an additional running orienteering course for some extra points. Turned out they made an error in judgement on one of the points which if they had gotten it they would have come in 2nd but since they got some other closer points they ended up placing 4th overall. They still kicked butt - they were competing against some realy tough teams. They were bummed though.

Our limiter:

Canoeing, we need stronger boating skills, stronger arms.

We were the only all female team to finish the course within the 6 hours and we had 45 minutes to spare! So I think we did exceptionally well especially since this was our first adventure race. Sara was an amazing navigator and Jess could spot those checkpoints from miles away! It was so much fun doing a race as part of a team. I like it a lot better than racing on my own. I hope to fit in one more race with them before I move to Colorado.

This was a ton of fun. I really wish I could do these types of races more often. This is totally my thing. I loved every minute of it. Requires strategy, teamwork, mental work, physical strength and endurance. What a challenge. I can't wait for the next one.

Post race:

The core ARMD group:

Colorado dreaming…on such a hot summer day!!!

I’m in a holding pattern! So this past May my company asked for volunteers who were willing to move out to the Colorado office, that they were expanding our IT presence in that office. I thought about it for a couple weeks, well actually a couple days, and decided that I was interested. There were meetings held to go through relocation information and to let us know that we were going to have to interview for the positions even though we would be doing our same jobs except that we’d be living in a beautiful place with mountains, fresh air, drivers who yield to runners and cyclists, outdoorsy, down to earth people, and no grid lock! Amazing! And it turns out that they will move us completely, starting with a 5 day trip for us and our families (hmm, for me can that include my sister who lives out of town and has her own family? Wonder if I can get them to pay her expenses too, I need a second opinion on houses out there after all…) Also included is everything from animal transportation to closing costs on houses on both ends and lots of other stuff. I couldn’t ask for anything else. So starting in June/July timeframe I started to get a little antsy about when I was going to move. And the antsiness has not gone away.

I’ve had a great summer in Baltimore, I can’t complain, the middle was brutal with the whole break up during my birthday weekend and all but overall it’s been great, beach volleyball, spending time with friends. But it’s September and the building is supposed to be done in December and I want to know WHEN AM I GOING TO MOVE??? They can’t keep this information from me forever!!!