Mojave Desert Hot Times

So perhaps not one of my smartest planning moves to date, I’ve crammed the calendar a little too much. I returned from Italy last Friday night feeling down in the dumps, frustrated and pretty low. However, there was little time for self pity, I had another race to get to and I had to focus on maximizing my recovery. Since getting off the course in Europe, I went right to my compression socks, feet up and elevated. Hydration, good food, pumping the elecrolytes, Udo’s Oil and just eating LOADS of fruits and veggies, most of which through various VEGA products that I had stocked my car with. Cat picked me up in LA and took good care of me. Saturday morning she gave me an early B-day present to the spa where I enjoyed a full leg flush! I think it worked wonders – THANK YOU CAT – so appreciated. Then it was onto a full day of driving towards Vegas and Bolder City to meet up with my DART nuun Multi-Sport team to prepare for the Desert Winds Adventure Race.

I arrived into Nevada feeling pretty good I gotta say. My lungs were still flemmy and I had the cough but overall, the leg swelling was controlled and energy levels w

ere increasing rapidly (I credit that 100% to the food.) It was nice to be back in Bolder City, the race HQ, right in the heart of the Mojave Desert. We spent Saturday and Sunday preparing for the race and overall, it was pretty low stress. Team Bones was in attendance and we knew this would be our biggest competition – great crew of people who were going to make us work. And sure enough…….that is exactly what happened.

The race started at 8pm on Saturday night despite a whole fiasco of encounters with park rangers who were determined to stop the race. I will re-cap how this race went.:

100km Run/Trek - crazy foot section that involved slot canyons, rappelling and pack rafting. This leg took us about 24hrs to complete.

160km Bike – epic!!!! Super hot to start, loads of climbing, I wanted to die! Night came, temperatures cooled and we went into like a 6hr climb – moving at approximately 2km/hr – ouch!!!!

38km Run/Trek – feet destroyed, this was hilly and hot!! Huge canyon descent, wide open high desert and into a 6km pack raft section.

80km Canoe – 4 of us in 1 canoe!! HA – it was epic! 2 of my team mates we would drop on land to go up and over and down canyons and then the other 2 of us would paddle around and pick up!

How did it end? Well, we were back and forth with Team Bones the entire race!! We saw them lots, we passed them, they passed us. After a mandatory stop and some unusual race situations, it came down to a sprint to the wire in the canoe after 4 days of racing!! This was the most intense finish that we have EVER had in an expedition adventure race. Hard to believe but we crossed the line 48 seconds ahead of them!!!!! It was awesome!!!!

But………we decided in the end to call it a tie – we both would take 1^st place. There were just too many things that happened on the race course (that I won’t go into detail about) as to why we agreed on this. It was great to have that team out there – it kept us all moving forward, focused and competitive. This was an extremely difficult course, worthy of being a world championship event! Congrats to all the teams and to Druce and Robert for putting on such a great event!

As for my health, I say I felt about 75% out there. I struggled a bit in the heat but I think the fact that we got about 7 hours of so helped (ha – ya that sounds low but usually we get way less J. It was great to race with my team mates and friends – always lots of laughs on the course. Lungs are feeling as good as they can I suppose. I was lucky that this race was warm and although we hit some altitude, it wasn’t too cold being desert and all

I now find myself back up in Lake Tahoe, crewing for Norm at a SUP race and then headed out to the coast for a few days. I may or may not be Spain bound for world champs, YTBD in just a few days. Lots on my plate right now with a major project launch which I look forward to sharing with you soon. Have I taken on tooo much lately? Hell ya. Will I get through it? I’ll do my best……..

Adventure Onwards………..