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12:30 in the afternoon and I’m cussing, “Where the hell is An-Jey? We have to be at Nemacolin Woodlands by 2:00pm for a team briefing.” An-Jey and I had signed up for the Grass Roots Racing sprint adventure race series—a four race series that runs from April ‘til August. There are even two make up races if your team misses one of the series races.

I give An-Jey another call on his cell phone. “Damn the bastard isn’t picking up! He must still be at home.” I leave a message, “Hey An-Jey, we have a lot of stuff to set up there! We can’t just line up and run. You have got to get to my place!”

An-Jey finally shows and assures Jen and I that we will make it in time—and he’s right. After hitting speeds near 100 mph we pull into the Adventure Center parking lot and start scrambling to find registration. Almost immediately we run into Curtis Mertz who points the way with a big smile. We rush up to the desk and find out that we need all of our mandatory gear to check-in. So we run back and Curtis tells us, “You didn’t ask what you needed.” What a #*&%!!.

The first adventure race of the series started with a prologue. Here a team could gain time different time bonuses by climbing to different heights on the climbing wall. There were 3 levels to rip off a piece of paper with a designated time to subtract off the total time it took complete the race. The other part of the prologue was a rope obstacle course suspended about 20 feet off the ground. To ensure safety each competitor wore a harness and had a via Ferrata system to clip into cables running along side of the ropes.

An-Jey and I lined up at the ropes course first. Bethann, one of the event coordinators, tells us that the current record is 4 minutes and 27 seconds. An-Jey and I look at each other with a cocky grin— discuss our strategy one more time—and line up. “10 seconds”— the staff begins to count down. As soon as they get to one An-Jey bolts. He starts climbing the pole first—already ignoring our strategy. “Oh well”, I think as I run up, clip the cable and start dashing across a single cable “tight rope”. I used my “Ferrata” clips to hold my balance. I quickly clip the next cable, grab my Ferrata clips again, and pull my self up on the next set of cables. We were moving fast as a team. By the end of the obstacle course I had caught up with An-Jey and the belay to the ground was a bit slow. For safety the race organizers had to belay the racers down the cargo net to reach the ground. As soon as my feet hit the ground I threw off the locking biner and An-Jey and I dashed for the finish line. 3 minutes and 15 seconds, the new record of the day.

On the climbing wall, An-Jey and I secured all the time bonuses available, so combined with our fast ropes course time we were in a pretty good position. But now we had the real race to contend with. We had no idea how we would do on the rest of the race as itconsisted of a 3 mile single track trail run, a 9 mile technical mountain bike, and a 3 mile night orienteering course.

We had some time after the prologue to basically go stir crazy. After an hour or so we gathered for the 6:10 pre-race meeting and were told what the rest of the course consisted of. We all then lined up at 6:30 and *BANG* begin. Ok so there wasn’t a BANG, but the pace for the run was a bit faster than I wanted since we needed to hold onto the lead teams. We knew with our time bonus and rope course time that as long as we stayed in the lead pack we would win. As we held onto second place, the lead team kept glancing back at us as we nipped their heels. Jumping over trees, climbing through trees, and even running across snow we made it to the transition. Almost…actually as we ran toward TA the race organizers were standing at an obstacle of “cobweb” made out of thin yellow rope. We read the instructions for “The Bat and The Spider.” The bat has to carry the spider on his/her back. The Bat has to wear a blindfold. Bats are blind, I guess. The Bat cannot touch the web or they get a 15 second time out. The Spider can touch the web but cannot touch the ground and has to be in contact with the Bat the whole time. After about 5 feet with An-Jey on my back, it dawns on us that An-Jey, the Spider, can pick up the web and I can walk under it. This didn’t go well. We immediately had race organizers shouting at us that we cannot do that. “Stop! You’re touching!” An-Jey immediately yelled back, “I’m the Spider, why can’t the spider touch the web?!!?” Then half of the race organizers realized that we were still following the rules. Then they began bickering among each other. I over heard one say, “Well that is not breaking the rules.” We would eventually win out as we refused to quit moving. Later they would tell us that it was a good job of thinking outside of the box. Little do they know we didn’t know there was a box to think inside of!

Our next task was the 9 mile mountain bike ride. The course was steep down hills with plenty of mud and rocks. It was almost as tough as Moraine. An-Jey had never ridden a mountain bike before but was barreling down some of the craziest stuff. We were leap frogging back and fourth with another team. They were faster on the flats and we were faster on the technical. This made for a good race. 2 miles in and no one but our two teams fighting for the top seed, then suddenly An-Jey is gone. I stopped and waited for him for a few minutes and began to wonder what could have happened. Then I see An-Jey coming down the hill. There didn’t seem to be a problem until he pulled up next to me. “Dude, my chain broke. I am sorry dude, our race is over.” Well, I am not sure what was said but we decided to not quit. An-Jey began pushing his bike through the technical stuff and up the hills while coasting down the hills. On the flats we would join arms and I would tow him for short distances. Now the race was just to finish the 7 miles of mountain biking left—with out a chain. We kept this up for quite some time and noticed that we were not passed by all that many teams. We started pushing our bikes up to the transition when Brooke and Jen came running up, “You are only 15 minutes behind the leaders!” We couldn’t believe it. The mountain bike course was so technical and it was pitch black in the second half that we were able to stay in the race. This gave us quite a shot of adrenaline. The orienteering course was all that was left. We got our points and had to do math to figure out what azimuth we had to shoot. There were no topographic maps—just a compass and headlamps. At first this was confusing because we kept underestimating our distance due to the darkness. Once we figured out that we needed to go further, the rest of the race was in the bag.

We ran through our ten navigation points and out-sprinted two other teams to the finish. Interestingly our podium places were based on that last sprint. An-Jey and I finished 2nd overall. Dave Battista finished 3rd in the Men’s and 4th over all. Curt Mertz finished 18th overall and 6th in Co-ed. ECPers were representing well. Sprint Series Race #2 is here in Pittsburgh, June 16th, 2007—AFAR (A Frick n’ Adventure Race). Team “Discipline Problem” will see you there!