On June 28th, we (Jamie Peterson and I, aka Team AOKE) competed for the second time in the ARG Challenge. It’s an all women adventure race that includes kayaking, biking, and trekking – finding check points as you go. Scott came and cheered us on with the girls and put together this little movie for us. It’s kind of long and I don’t know if it would be fun for anyone except us (me, Scott, Jamie and maybe Adam) to watch it, but I think he did a great job. If you want to read all the details, you can continue below. If you just want to cut to the chase, I’ll just tell you- WE CAME IN 7th PLACE!!!
Okay, the details: We started out at Fisherman’s Park in Bastrop where we were told to grab onto both of our paddles (one in each hand) and run one of us behind the other, to pick up our third teammate. We got the top of a set of stairs and picked up a raw egg named, Tom. It was kind of tricky to find a place to put Tom since we didn’t have our backpacks on and both of our hands were busy, but we managed. We ran to our kayak, got in and paddled 6 miles down the Colorado River collecting checkpoints (CP) #1, #2, and #3 along the way. It’s a good thing that we took some kayaking lessons this summer, because even with that help, most people were passing us on the river. By the time we got to the boat take out, there were probably around 15 kayaks and canoes already out of the water. We were pretty sure at this point, we weren’t going to make the top 10.
We ran to our transition area (TA) grabbed our bikes and headed out to find some more CP’s. Oh- and right before we headed out, we had a near tragedy with Tom, but I noticed him right before he fell out the bottom of my shirt. We switched him to a more secure location in my backpack. If he broke, we would have had a 10 minute penalty at the end. Anyway, we grabbed our bikes and headed out for a biking/trekking leg where we picked up CP’s 4-9.
We headed back and saw that Scott and the girls were there. The next part was a mystery event. We were given a black garbage bag and told to go down to the river and fill it up with water. We would then bring the bag back and weigh it. For each pound of water, we would get a minute of time credited to us at the end of the race. So, we filled ours up pretty good, but there were two teams ahead of us in line. We set our bag down for a minute and when we picked it up, the bottom broke out of it. Oh well. No credit for us. We got CP #10 and went on to the next part.
It was a hike and bike. Jamie ran while I biked to CP #11. It was pretty straight forward, but for some reason a lot of teams had a hard time finding it. We helped about 4 teams later on in the race while they were looking for it.
Next was straight biking. I have to say, our navigation was awesome on this part. We really didn’t make any mistakes. At one point we had two other teams around us and I knew that we weren’t supposed to follow the curve in the road, but didn’t want to give that away to everyone else. We slyly pulled over and looked at the map while they continued going, then we turned and went straight after they had passed us. If you don’t know Jamie, let me tell you, she’s a little bit on the competitive side. Me… I’m just there to have fun. After getting one of the checkpoints, Jamie wanted to stop and look at the map and I said, “Let’s do it somewhere else so people don’t see us right by the checkpoint.” Jamie said, “Wow! Look who’s getting all competitive!” I think it comes from watching a little too much “Amazing Race.”
We got back from that leg and headed out for the last bit of trekking. As we headed out, we were told by the race director that basically we were rocking, so off we went for the last 3 CP’s for a total of 19. We got back and found out we came in 7th and that those who beat us are all serious racers, so we were pretty excited.
I’m hoping that we’ll get more pictures from people who were on the course so when we do, I’ll add them on.