An Adventure to Remember

Bonnie and Ramiro have successfully completed our first adventure race. This was also our first team race which meant we had to stay together for the duration of the race. This particular race took place in Chang Mai and consisted of trail "running", mountain biking, swimming, kayaking for a total distance of about 35 to 50 Km ( about 20 miles). The "map" of the course before we started was "follow the orange ribbons from start to the finish; if you don't see a ribbon go back to the last one and try again". So with high spirits, two camel backs, some gel for fuel, two helmets and off we went into the unknown.

The course "runs" consisted of climbing up the side of a couple of mountains. There was even one point where we were using ropes to pull ourselves up the side of sheer cliff to get to the bamboo ladder to climb the rest of the way up the inverted cliff sections. During the kayak, we had to stop and get out and climb a tree (although Ramiro was tall enough, no climbing was involved), use a cargo net to get up a bank of the lake and even use a sling shot to hit the metal plate in the tree (which from a seated position in a kayak is not as easy as it sounds).

The nice thing was since the course was quite steep, it slowed us down so we could really appreciate the view. There was one part where a waterfall was shooting out about three or four feet from the side of the mountain before falling probably about 50 feet. Then there were panoramic views of the countryside overlooking lakes and vast lush forests.

So after about six hours of site seeing, we finally came out of the woods and back on the road to finish. We are still waiting on the official results, but we think we placed fourth or fifth in the mixed (man and woman team) division.

We did not bring our camera as we did not want to chance getting it wet or damaged. We did take a picture of the map, with our cell phone, when they reveled it the following day. The order went as follows, run, bike, swim, kayak, run, swim, and finally bike to the finish line (the only section we did not do is the red as this was the extra added for the extreme level). When we crossed the finish Bonnie exclaimed "I loved it" followed by Ramiro's "Never again." We see more adventure races in our future!