Eddy and I decided to enter the 1st ever Orange County Adventure Race since it was only 15 minutes away from Eddy’s house.  As usual, we never train or prepare for these things.  We figure that we are in such awesome shape that these races are nothing!   This race consists of 1 mile of paddling, 5-6 miles of mountain biking and a 3-4 mile run.

So as usual, the night before we are running around trying to find an inflatable boat and some life vests.

The race started with a 1 mile run to three checkpoints.  At each checkpoint we had to pick up some parts that would be used to make our boat paddles.  Once back at the staging area, we put together the paddles with tie wraps and duct tape and pumped up the boat.

The boating part would have been easy if, we could paddle straight and we knew where we were going.

When we hopped into the lake we counted about 40 boats in front of us so we figured we were in the middle of the pack.  When we exited the lake we only counted 15 or so boats behind us.

The next activity was a short obstacle course and a 6′ wall to hop over.  Then it was off to the mountain biking section.  The biking section was fairly easy it was half on dirt and half on pavement.  We really couldn’t catch or pull ahead of any bikers because it was mainly flat.

Lastly the running section came.  We usually call this, the walking section.  I think we lost probably another 10 places here with our very slow jog rate.

Our final result was 2:45 which put us around 29th place out of 40 or so 2 person teams.

Being from Phoenix, we were at a distinct disadvantage from the start against the locals.  We drove from Phoenix to Flagstaff on Friday night.  Despite it being 90 degrees in Phoenix, it was 35 degrees at night in Flagstaff.  Race time was at 8:00am Saturday morning at the Flagstaff Athletic Club.

There were approximately 25 teams entered and the race started off with a puzzle about a body of water surrounded by glass.  Obviously since we had never been to the Flagstaff Athletic club we did not know that they were talking about the pool, but since most of the contestants immediately ran in that direction, we just followed.

Floating in the pool were a bunch of numbered ping pong balls.  Each team had to find the ping pong ball with their number on it.  A few teams jumped into the pool and grabbed their ping pong ball.  But we decided not to get wet and waited for our ball to float to the edge of the pool.  Before it got there, a girl from another team gave it a nice push towards us.

Once we got our ball, we were given our passport with a list of places that we had to visit.  At each location there was a person who would stamp the passport to prove that we had been there.  There was one un-manned location in which we had to write down the answer to a few questions.

Location #1 was a park, we rode our bikes there and then had to search the field for an Easter Egg with our team number on it.  This took alot longer than expected.  We had to comb the field twice and we almost missed it on our second time around also.

Locations #2-#4 were all clustered in the heart of Flagstaff.  The second location was a rock climbing gym.  We had to climb up to the top of a rock wall to get our passport stamped.  The third location was a outdoor store and we had to toss a few frisbees into a disc golf hole.  The fourth location was a bike shop and we had to change a bike tire.

Location #5 was a pizza store.  However, it did not open until 11:30am.  There were a few teams waiting outside.  This the was amazing race equalizer.  We decided to head to the next location instead of waiting around.

Location #6 was the Lowell Observatory.  Being an observatory, it was located at the top of a hill so it meant some climbing on the bike.  The climb wasn’t that bad.  Many other teams were walking their bikes up.  When we got to the top, we had to answer a few questions about the history of the observatory.

After getting back from the observatory, we went to the pizza place and picked up a doughball.  There was no task to complete there.

Location #7 was at Buffalo Park.  Buffalo Park has a 2.5 mile hiking trail that we ran to run.  An addition, we had to remember some facts about the statue at the beginning of the trail.  We weren’t thinking!  We finished in just under an hour.  We could have skipped the task and incurred only a 45 minutes penalty.  If we were thinking correctly, we should have just skipped it after they told us how far it was! Lesson learned, think before you do!

After Buffalo Park, we returned to the Flagstaff Athletic Club.  We placed one spot away from last place in 3 hours and 57 minutes.  The race covered about 15 miles on bike and 4 miles on foot.

We totally missed a location/checkpoint.  How?  It’s because on the folded passport they listed the locations on the right side numbering 1 through 7.  The sneaky bastards stuck a location on the left side within the instructional text which were the race rules that they had just gone over.  I’m sure most people ignored that side because it read verbatim to the director’s speech 3 minutes prior.  We were told to read the whole passport.  Only 9 of the 43 teams caught it.  Lesson learned, take time and read everything, even if you think you know everything!

We lost alot of time just looking one step ahead.  We would be on Main street and know that we had to make a left on Colby St.  Once we made the left, we’ve pull out the map and look again for the next street to turn on.  Even the times that we tried to remember 2-3 streets ahead of time, we were never sure and had to stop and check the map again.  Lesson learned, make a plan and make an effort to remember it!

One example of this were these two girls that seemed to be really fast.  Then caught up to us on the 3.5 mile run and we had a chat about the next location.  We looked on the maps and all agreed on a route to take.  Then they took off on their bikes.  I mean they were gone.  We couldn’t even see them further up the road.  So it was really odd to see them come up from behind us later on that same route!  Where did they go?  As they passed us, me being Mr. Niceguy said “You’re going the wrong way.”  I showed them the correct directions and they were off again!  If it was for a million dollars, I would have let them keep on pedaling.  They ended up finishing just ahead of us, but they had missed a location so they incurred a 45 minute penalty.  So we ended up beating them.