There are a few things I would never claim to be. Actually there are many things. But two of the top attributes that I proudly claim to possess are persistent and optimistic. From the very first edition of the Endless Mountains Adventure Race I knew I wanted to be a part of it. The first year even had (most of) my name in the title! I remember telling my teammates at the time that I wanted to give it a try and being scoffed at for even considering such a major feat. But as I said, optimism is in my blood.
I was able to play in the sandbox of the second edition by taking part in the Lite race as well as turning back around after my race ended and volunteering for the full course. I felt like I was back in my childhood, the little sister who desperately wanted to hangout with the older cool kids, but was just on the outskirts of the in-crowd. Seeing the field of racers come in to the TA I was helping to man was inspiring. While many were top tier athletes, I also enjoyed hearing the stories from the racers who were more at my level. I knew it was possible, but still maybe not probable, that I could join their ranks one day.
Every year that an Endless was held, I tested the waters of my pool of teammates, and every year it seemed the same. Finances, family obligations, and honestly, fear, was keeping them from even remotely considering signing up. And then there was a glimmer of light. After racing in Rootstock's 2 Rivers in Philadelphia, Becky Lemont and I reconnected and started a text conversation. I threw out the idea of taking on Endless as an all female team. We're both pretty decent navigators, and while Becky is most definitely a stronger mountain biker, we are pretty evenly matched in the other disciplines. Together we vacillated between "We're ABSOLUTELY doing this" and "Common sense is telling us its not the right time."
I think we were at a pretty set "this isn't happening" point when Becky went out to dinner with her teammate from 2 rivers, Dan Sziller. Over pizza, the man somehow convinced Becky that doing the race was not only feasible but dang near the best idea ever. Once Becky was 100% on board, you know where I was. Dan had taken on Endless every year it's been held, and he was a logistical guru and gear junkie. His well earned knowledge of not only the format, but also his uncanny ability to see the course through the eyes of Brent, the director, was an edge we needed. Becky suggested we team up with Dan to take on our first expedition, and I trusted her judgement and agreed.
When it came to a team name, I had already had one picked out for just such an occasion. My late father was known to be an optimist. Like to the point of irritating my mother. During a snow storm, Dad had been on a flight and planned to have Mom meet up with him at his final layover and together they would go on for a Caribbean cruise. I remember helping Mom to dig out the car from the feet of snow encasing it while she complained that Dad was "Irritatingly Optimistic." The term stuck for years. Now, facing a race of enormous proportion, and with a team of unlikely members, we had to be optimistic to think we could make it. I proposed the name to Dan and Becky and it was welcomed with laughter and agreement. Dan stated he would make up the Irritating portion and Becky and I would encompass the Optimistic side. Sold. We were now Team Irritatingly Optimistic.
Over the next 7 months our group chat was nearly nonstop. If I had a particularly busy day at work, it wasn't uncommon for me to come back to the chat and find over 50 unread messages. We met up a handful of times to get to know each other and "be as comfortable with each other as humanly possible." Dan emphasized that almost constantly, and it started to give me "the ick" as my daughter would say. Teammates can make or break your race, so I knew I had to be vulnerable and honest with both Dan and Becky, but we weren't moving in together or getting married as a thruple. We were racing for 5 days. Calm down.
After months and months of anticipation, the Schematic finally released in mid June. This was the moment Dan had been waiting for. His absolute favorite part of racing is the logistics and meticulous thought process that goes into organizing and charting the gear packing and timelines for the race. Within hours of the schematic being released, he had an excel spreadsheet with distance, time, and elevation estimates for our race. We knew we would never ever ever be able to completely clear the course, and we had agreed to go for only the mandatory unless an optional just so happened to drop in our lap. With a conservative sleep strategy, and time allotted for each TA as well as fatigue as we progressed through the race course, Dan had mapped out our timeline to a finish at 8:30am on "day 6." What was even more coveted was the packing list he provided to Becky and me. His packing system with bags for each TA and bags in those bags for use and packing at the TAs were clutch. I can tell you without that system and those lists, my race would have been a totally different experience. He was an invaluable teammate at that point.
Chris, my husband, had rearranged his schedule at work so our 4 boys wouldn't have to be alone much during my extended absence, but I still had severe "mom guilt." Our youngest is almost 8, but being as we homeschool and spend an exorbitant amount of time together, me being away for 9 days was going to be a shock to his system. I poured into the boys as much as humanly possible in the days leading up to my departure, and while I know they were fine, and it really wasn't the end of the world, I still questioned my motives and for a brief second considered backing out of the race. But, as my friend Brittany says "racing makes me a better mother, and being a mother makes me a better racer."
Race week came upon us and suddenly it was the night before I was planning to head north. Becky and Dan had decided to ride together since they live relatively close to each other. I had considered meeting up and all of us riding together, but decided to go solo so I could "swing" out to Bernsville Pennsylvania and visit with my daughter who was working at a summer camp for the season. I left our home bright and early at 4:30am after writing a goodbye note and countdown chart until my return on the whiteboard in our kitchen. I climbed into my pre-packed car and headed north. After 4 hours I arrived to Camp Calvary and spent a perfectly wonderful 3 hours with Annika going out to breakfast and lounging in hammocks at the top of the hill. All too soon it was time to head out again and after a few tears, a bunch of tight squeezy hugs, and thousands of promises to "not die out there" I drove off from camp, waving until she was out of sight.
Once I was back out on the larger highways, I voice texted Brittany and Zach, who were also racing in Endless. Their third teammate had backed out only days before, so they would be taking on the race as a two person coed team. We discovered that although they were driving up from Georgia, we were actually within miles of each other on route 78. We texted back and forth for a while until our GPSs sent us in different directions. I ended up on the Taconic Parkway while they stayed on larger roads. While the Taconic was scenic and beautiful, it lacked any decent reception and the podcasts and 90's anthems I was enjoying on Spotify were replaced by twangy country music and classic rock radio stations. I didn't mind.
Eventually I found myself back in civilization and cruised through multiple college towns where the liberal definitely outnumbered the conservative. The mountains of Massachusetts had a totally different feel than the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina where I have been mainly racing recently. Before long I started to see signs welcoming me to North Adams and I felt myself begin to bubble with excitement. This was quite literally years in the making! I was soon going to immerse myself in the world of expedition racing! YESSSSSSSS!!!!
I pulled into the parking lot of Hoosac Hall and serendipitously parked right next to Dan's car. Gear and racers littered the lawn and sidewalks. I climbed out of my car and took a quick lap around the parking lot to see if I could find Dan and Becky, or really anyone I recognized. I spotted a few familiar faces, but no one I had a direct friendship with. I texted our group chat to see where they were hanging out and within seconds saw my teammates. We scurried up to each other and shared a big group hug and squeals of excitement. We were doing this!!
Entering the dorm, Dan and Becky lead me to our rooms to drop some of my gear and see the layout. We were assigned 2 rooms so they had allocated one as our gear room and one as our combined sleep room with Dan having pulled a mattress from the gear room and set up camp on the floor. We grabbed our med kit and required gear we had to present to race staff and headed down stairs to check in. After a quick chat with Brent and having our team and individual photos taken, Abby asked us to sit down for a prerace interview. I don't know why it made me so nervous to speak into a microphone, but after just a few minutes we had given a short synopsis of our team dynamics and goals for the race. Dan had to chat with the MRS packraft guy for a ridiculous amount of time, and finally we had to check in with Jim, who was in charge of peaking at our mandatory gear to make sure we were prepared. He asked if anyone was medically trained and I ensured him that my hospice nursing experience would come in ever so handy if things got real bad out on the course. Thankfully, I also have a decade of ER experience, and Dan took the Wilderness First Aid course, as required. We were good to go. Around this time Brittany and Zach arrived and I scampered over to greet them with hugs and high five's. I chatted with them for a few minutes before returning to my team and heading back upstairs.
We did a little pack organizing, chatting, and bike box packing. Our gear wasn't to be checked in until the next day, but we brought it all down to weigh it so that we could make the following day smoother. Everything was within specifications, so we closed the door to our gear room and committed the rest of the evening to just enjoying each other and our situation. We enjoyed a greasy dinner at Tilly's Tap and Tavern, a slightly run down establishment attached to a dilapidated bowling ally. What the establishment lacked in ambiance it made up for in delightful waitstaff and delicious food. With bellies full and plans further discussed, we headed back to the dorms and our last relaxed and unpressured night of sleep.
The next morning, after sleeping in as late as we could convince our bodies to rest, we sauntered down to the closest gas station and grabbed our caffeine of choice. Settling into Adirondack chairs in a cozy courtyard, we spent the next hour or so chatting and reveling in our upcoming adventures. I discovered again, that while my team and I shared a few opinions and perspectives, we also differed in a vast amount of others. Variety is the spice of life though, and we didn't need to agree on everything to be a great and copacetic team.
The clock ticked by and soon it was time to head down to the hall for the prerace briefing and course fly over. As our norm, we arrived early. Rather than sit in the stuffy hall, we plopped down in the shade of a maple tree in the front yard. Brittany and Zach joined us and introduced themselves to Dan and Becky. I am such a jerk, and am the worst at remembering not everyone I know knows each other. Eventually our group came to include a few other teams and we all enjoyed a few minutes of laughter and conversation.
Entering the hall we found seats toward the front and to the left. The seats began to fill up and looking around I spotted plenty of familiar faces and just as many new faces. These were the people I would be sharing a life changing experience with. I would see them on rivers and roads, trails and towns, in forests and faraway corners of remote tracks of land. We would cheer each other on and commiserate at TAs. I absolutely love the people of AR.
As expected, the fly over was a sobering event. No matter how mentally prepared you think you are for an event of this magnitude, watching that little spastic moving dot trace through your next 5 days of nonstop racing is terrifying. While we knew we wouldn't be covering the full course, even half of what that little frantic dot was outlining was a humbling sight. There were cheers, sighs, gasps, and moans over the roughly 8 minutes of course presentation. What the flyover didn't cover was the teamwork, resilience, muscle fatigue, existential crises, and irreplaceable memories that would be had on the course over the next 5 days. No presentation could prepare us for that.
After the briefing we were given our course booklets and sent on our way to finalize our packing, hand over our gear bins, boxes, and bags, and settle down for our very last sleep in a bed before the race. We made quick work of dropping off our gear and headed to our room to pour over the course booklet. We noted an embedded trek on our first stage that housed 13 optional checkpoints all tucked in close together at Fort Ticonderoga. Becky and I moaned in unison at the thought of skipping such a beautiful cluster of points since they were optional, and Dan had pounded it into our heads that there would be no optional points to be had until much later in the race. Much to our delight, when we pointed it out to Dan he said, "Oh, sure! We would be fools not to go for that." Becky and I stared wide eyed at him for a solid minute and then yipped with excitement that we would be scouring the historical site the next morning.
The sun was setting and we needed to eat, so we found a take out shack almost adjacent to the dilapidated bowling alley we feasted at the night before. Over wraps and sweet potato fries, we conspired and plotted our plans for the next 5 days of the unknown. We turned off the light and willed sleep to take us over at a decent time. The next time our eyes would open we would be starting out on a monumental endeavor. I prayed, plotted, and slightly panicked, but eventually fell into a shallow and dream filled sleep. Tomorrow couldn't come quick enough.
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