Race: Nocturnal Challenge - http://www.pangeaadventure
This was our first night race, and by night race I mean the race started at 2:30am and ended at 7:30am.
To set the scene for you we were on the bike leg of our race searching for ECP 14 (Elite* Checkpoint) way the hell out in the middle of the nowhere. By nowhere I mean we hadn't seen another living person in an hour. To get to where we thought ECP 14 was located we had to ride down a muddy trail, stopping every 50 yards to pick our bikes up and carry them through knee high water. As exhausting as it was getting out there I knew it was going to be even more exhausting coming back.
After about 30 min of riding/slogging to get to where we thought the checkpoint was located all we see is a giant swamp with what looks like an island in the middle. Obviously we thought that was the perfect place to put a checkpoint right? Wrong. As we head out to the island we notice the ground is getting soggy, soggy soon turned into knee high water which turned into chest deep water.
So there we were, 5am in the morning, nowhere near civilization, wading single file through chest deep pitch black water looking for that damn checkpoint. We start cursing Greg (the race director) for having out in this hell hole when we see it... A gator,15 yards off to the side of us with its eyes shining back at us in the reflection of our flashlights. Then he went under. Then we unleashed a four letter word bombardment and double timed it back to dry land.
We never found that ECP (come to find out it was a couple hundred yards south of where we were) but we did find that big ass gator.
And that's the night our adventure racing career almost came to an abrupt end.
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