Southern Exposure 12 hr. Race

story by Paige

Team Crew Zen needed to do another race in order to put the “Bahamas Bust” behind us. The Southern Exposure provided just the butt kicking opportunity.  It couldn’t be more perfect...take on a puny 12-hour, piece of cake race in the week before the Odyssey, a great tune-up, no problem.  WHEW, what a rigorous, “little” race!!! 

We kept the team set up similar to the Bahamas race.  Mindy, Nancy and I raced together and Carey went solo.  Everything was looking great.  The race started with a 30 minute run, we felt great and looked sharp in our new RailRiders shirts.  We then jumped into our canoes and paddled and portaged towards the levy separating the Park from the Everglades.  All smooth as silk, until...

It was time to orienteer through a beautiful Everglades swamp.  How exciting!  The water was cool, sun was out, the mud was only calf deep and didn’t smell too bad...until about the furthest point out on the course.  Now we knew why they made us take our paddles with us (I thought it was to fend off gator attacks!).

With the muck now above our knees, the footing was precarious at best.  With out a paddle for support I fell several times only to find myself up to my shoulder in swamp goo!  Mindy fought some serious calf cramps and I think Nancy was probably the most sure-footed of us all.  We were trying to ignore the spiders and other swamp critters.  Our friends, Team Sweet Spot came across an armadillo graveyard full of carcasses (sorry we missed that one, ladies).

With 2.5 hours in the swamp behind us, we were happy to run and swim our way back to the main transition.  Next came some orienteering on our bikes through the bike trails at Markham and then back out to the levy where we had left our canoes.  We were excited to hook back up with Carey at this point. (We always miss her when she is solo).

In case we hadn’t gotten enough of the swamp the first time, we were back for more, only this time we had to pull the canoe.  I kept hoping that there would be enough water to paddle, but it wasn’t to be.  Yup, more fun slogging through the muck (our Sweet Spot friends delicately dubbed it “trudging in the diarrhea”).  Sorry for that mental picture, but it describes it well. 

Several more hours brought us to the main transition again and ready to jump in the boats for some more orienteering.  We had quite the system going with Mindy and I paddling.  We would pull up to shore and Nancy (who can run like the wind) would zip to the orienteering marker and punch our passport.  Some of the checkpoints were a little tricky, but Mindy and Nancy were awesome with the compass.  It helped to join back up with Carey and put our heads together.  I was the designated “boat water emptier” and motor, a role I carry out with honor.

Just to make things more interesting, a monsoon blew through and would continue throughout the rest of the race.  At least the sideways rain washed the stinky swamp stuff off of us and was probably the best we had smelled all day. 

All four of us decided to finish the race together and we now had a serious deadline looming.  Adventurous Concepts let us know that we had until 7:30pm (about 2 hours) to get to the ropes course or our race would be over.  It was time to bust a hump and as Nancy aptly put it, “We are going to have to leave everything on the course”.

We busted buns swimming and trekking back to the bikes.  At this point, we rode through what seemed like one continuous bumpy mud puddle out to CP10, back to CP 11 and over to the ropes course (about 16 miles).  We arrived with absolutely no time to spare and spent the next 45 minutes waiting to get on the ropes.  Luckily, we were able to kill the time by slapping mosquitos, six at a swat, and flicking mud off of our bodies.  The ropes were uneventful and we finished in 12 hours and 52 minutes.  We were whipped but very happy!

Thanks to Liane, Pam, Lisa and Staci for meeting us at the finish line.  It meant a lot.  Lisa - thanks for doing the swamp with us.  You are tough and we look forward to racing with you again.  As always, it is great to see and race among friends: Lisa, Team Sweet Spot, Pat and John great job and we hope to see you again soon!!