Muleshoe Bend Adventure Race

On June 14th, Jamie and I did our second adventure race. This one was co-ed and we really didn’t know what we were getting into. The race website informed us that we would be biking, running and kayaking with some possible mystery events. All adventure races say they might have a mystery event, but they are usually pretty minor. We showed up to the race and there was a sign with the order of events.

The funny part about this is I had a dream the night before that we got to the race and found out that we had to swim too. I told Jamie about the dream on the way to the race and when she saw the sign, she said, “We DO have to swim!” Neither of us have trained in swimming for over a year now, so as we waited in line to sign in and get our packets we just kept laughing nervously thinking, “What have we got ourselves into?”

Luckily someone explained that the swim portion really entailed putting on a life jacket, running through the water (swimming if you wanted, but not necessary), and getting out where the kayaks were waiting for us. So, the race began with the running portion. We were running mainly on biking trails so it was really hard to pass people without running into trees. Jamie did great at passing a bunch of people, but I didn’t have so much luck, so we were separated for a while. We were supposed to stay within 20 seconds of our teammate, which we easily did, but I just couldn’t keep up with her. Then, we got to the swim part and after the hot run, it felt so good to get into the water.

Next, came the kayaking. Jamie and I have taken kayaking lessons, but never in an inflatable kayak. It was impossible to steer at first. Every time we shifted our weight at all, we would turn sideways. They told us to bring beach balls to sit on, which didn’t work for us, so we tried kneeling…. no go. So we ended up sitting on the bottom of the kayak. I had some nice chafing up my arms as my short little torso tried to have enough height so that the paddle could reach the water. Not our strongest event.

Onto the biking. The biking was awesome and hard. It was long. Jamie crashed 4 or 5 times and got some nice bruises and a little road rash. I endoed once and caused a crash behind me. Because of the tight trails, it was hard to pass people on the bike too, but we did alright. We ended coming in 10th in the female category.

This race didn’t have any navigation involved, but they set up some checkpoints you could find for fun after the race, if you wanted to. We decided that this could be some good practice for our girl adventure race at the end of this month. However, once we had finished the race, we had really lost steam. We kept trying to talk ourselves into it, but we just weren’t too excited about it. We started it, but quickly changed our minds and headed back.

Our families got there probably about 10 minutes after we crossed the finish line. Scott had been at scout camp all week. He rushed home, grabbed the girls and then headed up. So, we were quite the stinky family.

Our team name is AOKE – named after our daughters in age order: Audrey, Ocean, Kate, and Eden.

They also had a kids race afterwards that the girls got to do. They got singlets and medals for doing it. They now have more medals from races than Scott and I.