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What do normal people do on weekend? Sleep, eat, read, drink beer… I was deprived from all of the above: I participated in the adventure race in the depths of Allegheny National Forest. I don’t know who started the rumor that Max and I is Russian biathlon Olympic team on vacation (chilling out before heading onto Vancouver:)). Co-ed team #1 (Scott and Melissa) enlightened us on this fact. I wish I knew it before asking the organizers: “Could you please show me real quick how to use a shotgun”? First stage of the race consisted of 4 rounds of shooting, 4 rounds of trail running (6 miles in total) and penalty laps for each shot missed. Needless to say, we didn’t hit a single clay pigeon and were sentenced to 16 laps, which added an extra mile to total distance. Other participants seemed to be born with NRA membership so penalty lap zone was at our disposal:). Max thought there was some hope for us if we compensated lousy shooting with faster running. I didn’t believe so. I was sure we were the biggest losers (that’s how I should have named our team). I refused to speed up on the last laps – what’s the point? I was punished for my laziness: two teams beat us only by 7 and 17 seconds respectively. Max couldn’t get over it for a long time. Nevertheless, we were not the last to my surprise. Two teams did even worse. Probably, we would be able to improve our results on Stage 2: nighttime orienteering with a map and a compass. Something very well forgotten – I did it at school ages ago. Max had a very vague idea about orienteering as well. Besides, he has no sense of direction and relies on GPS in real life to the point of idiocy. Fortunately, we had several hours between the stages, and old good “youtube.com” provided a very good crush course on the subject. “Yes, we know how to use a compass” – I answered proudly when one of the participants raised his concerns. I guess he’s been traumatized by our shooting fiasco. I didn’t lie that much: we got all points. Actually, we were doing very well up to the certain moment when Max suggested an original approach to one of the distant checkpoints. It cost us an extra mile and who knows how much time. Again, he decided to compensate absence of brains with physical force. It didn’t work well. We used to pass same team strolling lazily through the winter woods, and they were always ahead of us since every time we ran too far and had to return back to look for a checkpoint… Yes, we got ‘em all after nearly 5 hours of running with headlamps on all possible terrains with no food and water. Frank said it would take about and hour and a half to complete the course... And why I decided it was applicable to idiots like us? Anyhow, we still were not the last! There was one team which finished even later. We drove somehow to our hotel and slept for 5 hours – next stage required us to leave the bikes at the transition zone at 6.15 am on Sunday morning. It was dark and cold, and we were sleepy. We didn’t pay much attention to what was going on. Next task looked pretty straightforward: run a mile, bike 10 miles, run 4 miles. “Teams, come to get your maps for running and biking courses”. Maps?? I though the orienteering part is over! Max, where is our compass? Lost in the piles of gear in the jeep… Ok, never mind. We’ll try to keep up with a pack for the first run and I’m sure we can bike fast enough to follow people who paid attention at pre-race meeting. Again, it started just fine. We picked up our bikes with the majority of the crowd and started pedaling uphill. There was only one tiny insignificant obstacle: ice. Biking on ice is fun for the first 500 meters. Then the novelty is lost, and you are trying desperately to stay on the bike. Uphill: impossible to climb unless you have spike snow tires. Even drugging dam thing up is tricky: slippery and time consuming. Downhill: near fall, used right foot as an additional brake, still on the bike; next moment was not that glorious – landed on the pile of snow. Back on the bike, picked up some speed, still steady and so on, and so forth… Max is cursing loudly – he hates biking on ice and has no idea where to go since we lost the pack of the leaders already. Let’s take this path, it looks better. Now what? We are on the intersection of snowmobile trails. Max, aren’t we suppose to RUN on snowmobile trails but BIKE on ATV ones? “I dunno, I thought YOU were listening”. Honestly, I didn’t expect a comprehensive answer from him. But it was worth trying:). To keep the story short: we took the wrong turn and went very far… Fortunately, I remembered where we made the deadly mistake. It took us 40 minutes to get back to the intersection. Max’s spirit is pretty low. He suggests us skipping the last portion of running since it’s pointless. I don’t think so: look, there are two teams in front of us walking with their bikes in no hurry. They just made the wrong turn to snowmobile trail but realized their mistake much sooner then we did:). There is a tiny chance for us if we speed up. We did. It appeared later on that we missed an important control point in the middle of the course since we were not listening to the instructions… But the organizers believed our word that we made the complete course (we did!) and they didn’t disqualify us. They definitely should have… Back to the transition zone… another fall on downhill…The guy behind me falls to avoid collision… Got rid of bikes and helmets… Now we have to run, but where do we go? Kindly, another team directed us to the trail. Uphill again… I refuse to run uphill any longer! The guys behind us decided to walk as well. Surprisingly, we didn’t get lost and made it to the finish. Again, not the last! I was very embarrassed then we were given a medal for the second place in co-ed division:)). It’s the United States: everyone gets a medal:). Scott and Melissa are veterans of adventure racing. They deserved the first place. The third co-ed team was lost somewhere on the biking course. Poor souls… It started raining just after we finished the race. Since we were a tiny bit faster, we ended up the second. In large “all boys” division same team won all three stages. There were also a couple of relay teams, but I wasn’t following them closely. In summary, we had lots of fun and probably will do better next time. Yes, we are going to do another race in April. The fun never ends! Or some fools never learn?