Southern Exposure #1

February 17, 2002

Nancy’s View

The Crew Zen girls split up for this race, picked up a couple of guys (Chris, from our support crew and John, the best thing about the Bahamas AR), and raced as two three person coed teams. Crew Zen was made up of Carey, Nancy and John and Crew Zen Too included Mindy, Paige and Chris. We decided on this new configuration for a few different reasons, one being that the race format didn’t allow for a four person all-female team.

As it turns out, the new coed configuration proved to be just what Crew Zen needed. We have registered for the (4 day) Beast of the East Adventure Race as a four person all-female team, and racing with the guys was beneficial to our training for that race. We were able to push ourselves hard, for a longer period of time, because we had help from the guys.

Crew Zen Too finished in third place for the three-person coed teams and Crew Zen finished fourth, just a couple of minutes behind.

We learn something from every race and this race was no exception. In an effort to go faster than Crew Zen Too, our team made some course mistakes. We think that we should have raced smarter, which would have made us finish faster. It is a hard lesson learned, but hopefully one we won’t have to keep reviewing.

Physically, we held up well. We estimated the distances for this race to be about 38 miles biking, 12 miles running (including the orienteering), 16 miles paddling, and 100 feet ascending. Not bad for one day of training!