1st Place AXS Adventure Race Vail

Just back from another weekend race near Vail, Colorado. This was only my second adventure race ever behind the AXS Moab race earlier this spring, but I was confident that our team would be able to come away with the win. The Zia Four Corners Adventure Racing Team consisted of soon-to-be 7 time Ironman Hawaii triathlete Brett Sublett, Xterra professional Shonny Vanlandingham, local triathlete and adventure race extraordinaire Tom Ober, and myself. The team to beat was Boulder Performance, so we set the tone early on the first mountain bike leg by putting about two minutes into them before the trail run/orienteering section. The interesting thing about adventure racing is that in the team format you are allowed to put slower team members on tow for the bike and run. This means that if one person is struggling to keep up and another is feeling stellar, they can link up and work together. We knew we had more athletic firepower than their squad when they put one of their team members on tow from the very beginning and kept her there for each of the bike and run legs where we saw them. We made a few minor mistakes on the navigation section, taking longer than Boulder to find some of the checkpoints, but after the second bike leg we held a considerable advantage, and we ended up winning by about 15 minutes when we finished after the second kayak leg. Of course it wasn't just that we had a more fit squad, because we also made a gamble on the second mountain bike leg, hoping that our decision to backtrack for a checkpoint would pay off. After discussing the decision with teams who completed the loop in order to get the second checkpoint, it confirmed that we had made the right choice. Apparently the section we skipped involved slightly more technical, and thus slower, downhill. Unfortunately the race wasn't all just peachy, because I took a decent tumble on the moutain bike near the end of the race, bruising and scraping my right side (see above). Of course it hurt and I'm pretty stiff today, but I'll recover well and race hard this coming weekend in Denver for the Harvest Moon Half Ironman. More to come...