Have you ever considered doing an adventure race? Have you ever thought about pushing yourself to the limits, then pushing harder? Well, me either, until my husband said he wanted to do the MR340. Many of you may not know what this is. It is a race from Kansas City to St Charles, Missouri on the Missouri River. It covers 340 miles. This is the longest continuous kayak/canoe race in the world! This distance is slightly more than the distance across Lake Michigan. The finishers have 88 hours to make it to St Charles, meeting required checkpoint times along the way. The winners will be days ahead, finishing in 30+ hours, going on no sleep. We will be somewhere in the middle. Our kayak will not yield us a pace to join the fastest. This will not stop us from trying though! 

To be honest, I had no idea what I was signing up for. This race is on his bucket list. He has talked about it for the last couple of years, but since we had little babies and I was pregnant he didn’t commit. The race date got moved from the middle of August to July this year, which suited both of us much better. So, I asked if he wanted me to be his ground crew or his partner. Figuring both would be fun. After a little debate I decided to join forces with him and tag along on the journey. I thought this would be a piece of cake and would be fun to be a part of. However, I really overestimated the speed of the river and the toughness of this race. After some research, and my paid entry fee, I discovered that this race is much more than a float trip. It will be a battle of wills…will we take a nap, will we be able to eat one more clif bar, will we drink enough water, will we become too hot in traditional life jackets, will we need more salty or sugary foods, will we pee in the kayak, will we still be a team at mile 340, will we stay in the kayak enough to reach our time goal, will we, will we, will we….

Our first training session really had me second guessing our potential. We took our slow touring kayak out on the Platte river one Sunday morning in mid-March. The river was low, and the air was chilly. I had just had two tough workout days back-to-back for my triathlon training, so I was a little beat down. We covered 16.25 miles in approximately 3 hours 45 minutes. This put us moving along about 3.4-3.7 mph…WAY TOO SLOW!!! At this pace there is little hope we would be going fast enough to make cut off times, let alone reach our time goal. I was so disappointed! I really thought we would go 15+ mph. I guess I hadn't thought about it much. My thinking was we are peddling this kayak, similar to a bike, so even though we have to overcome the friction of the water, there are two of us. We should be able to go almost as fast as I do on my road bike. Now, do you see why I was so disappointed?  3.5 mph is a long way from 15+mph. My head dropped and my shoulders slumped forward. We just paid a bunch of money to enter a race that we have very little hope of finishing and are likely to get booted out of after the first 50 miles. I couldn’t figure out how we were so slow. Then my husband, obviously the brains of the family, said "Well honey, how fast do you think we go in our fishing boat?" Ahhh, there was my lightbulb….duh, we cannot go 15+ mph, we are just two little people in a kayak peddling our butts off, not 15 thoroughbred horses packed into a motor, galloping downstream, on the back of a fishing boat. He also informed me that based on his research the average paddler moves along about 6-8mph. Which is still faster than 3.5mph, and a way from 15mph. It was this night that I realized I had gotten in over my head and there was no backing out. I had made a commitment to my husband and I was not going to let him down, or let him be tougher than me, not months before the race even starts. With all this new information it is time for me to get my head in the game. It is not going to be nearly as easy as I anticipated, but it will be a great adventure, or at least I hope so. Since I cannot back out, I have to figure out how to help my husband reach his goal, which is now our goal. It is time to laugh at all those thoughts about going 15 mph and to learn how to maximize our potential.

As we are about to embark on our first adventure race, I have been doing some soul searching. How tough am I? I suppose I do not know the answer to this, but I do know I am tough enough to not let my husband down! I tried to wiggle out of this a little last night as we were hashing out multiple game plans. I tried to "relieve" some pressure by suggesting if we are not on track to reach our time goal by evening the first day, we could take a little more time to rest and enjoy the race from a social level. I guess I lost sight of our secondary goal, which is to place in our category. My husband reminded me of this and said, without wavering, he wants to do the best he can, which means I have to do the best I can too! After all, I did decide to be his partner. I am reminded of a couple conversations I had with my dad and my high school XC coach during the days of old. They both told me the only pressure you have is the pressure you put on yourself. You have to relax the days before a race, you have to be calm and not get worked up. Until college the way I managed this was to stay busy and not think about the race until I was packing for it the night before. 

In college I had a coach that was going through grad school. I was in one of his studies. He had several of us visualize a race. We would relax, close our eyes and visualize a successful race we had, or the outcome we wanted to see happen. This really helped me to let go. I learned how to control my anxiety about a race. Instead of being nervous and letting my emotions run wild, I was able to calm my body and mind and see a positive outcome. Little does he know that I still use what he taught me all the time. I have been visualizing this race for months. When I visualize this race, I see lots of pain and fatigue, followed by lots of laughing and motivation. I then think about a saying I learned from my Great Aunt.

This is how I want to live my life! The challenges we face are what build our character. I know this race will not be easy, but I do know it is going to be a ton of fun and it will likely change my mindset on lots of things. This is one challenge I am looking forward too! I am ready for the "highs" and the amazing sun rises. I am willing to face the "lows" and aware that a lack of sleep is likely to cause these lows to be more extreme. I know there is no turning back, only pushing forward and I am very lucky to get to do this race with my best friend. I hope we still like each other at the end and that I don’t open my big mouth and say something rude to him. I am excited to go on this journey with him and experience the highs and lows that are to come.

We are a team, which I think is a great way to do my first adventure race. We have been training as such. Over the last several months we have been preparing for this race. During the cold winter months when everything was frozen up, we had many training sessions of us sitting in the bathtub together, yelling at each other. Once it warmed up, we pedaled our kids up hill to the YMCA pool, just so we could practice being capsized and swimming to shore. We have driven across the state of Kansas with our kids to run a half marathon on 2 or 3 hours of broken sleep, and we have raced triathlons on about the same amount of sleep. We have tested different nutritional supplements, such as OSMO Active, to help stay hydrated and not go into a calorie deficit. We have made multiple lists of things we need/want to take with us, and we have hashed out game plans. We are about as ready as two can be, without actually being ready. Bring on race day and bring on the challenge. There is no way we will not finish…the only question I have yet to answer is "How fast can we do it?" 

Though the end is not always what I focus on, in a 340-mile kayak race I am sure we will have plenty of time to enjoy our surroundings, our company, and what we are accomplishing. If you would like to follow us during the race, we start Tuesday morning, July 19 at 8am. You can track our progress at: 

http://www.raceowl.com/MR3402016/RaceMap2

We are boat number 2112, tandem peddle drive team, name DarkEarly. I will also try to keep things updated on the DarkEarly Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DarkEarly-900049300108344/ as signal and battery allow. In the weeks following the race I will be sure to write accounts of our adventure and things we learned along the way, so please stay tuned.

Don't be so scared of failing that you never really challenge yourself. The biggest failure any of us can have is never to try. If you want something find a way to make it happen. Work towards it in all that you do, and you will see success.   

Update: We completed the race in 49:59, barely placing us on the coveted list of racers who beat the 50-hour mark. We placed 14th overall and 2nd in our division. None of this we believed was possible. We just had a goal of making the 50-hour mark, but we had no idea that if you finish in 50 hours, you have outdone the competition, which is why so few per year make the cut-off. This event set in motion many other endurance events over the last 10+ years.

Happy Training,

Dark Early
Where the good become great!