Category: Sports

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Adventure Race #0

This would normally be the place where I’d write about GT Frost’s most recent adventure race:

“Half an hour after the start of the race, we were biking down the trail when a bear jumped out of the woods and tried to maul us. It took a swing at Brent’s head, but he whipped out our plastic shovel and stabbed it in its furry nutsack. The bear made an extremely unhappy noise and I was going to grab the first aid kit to ease its suffering until it smashed my bike into a nearby tree. That pissed me off to no end, so I kicked it in the shovel wound and took off with the bike on my back.

“We still had to cover another twenty miles to reach three checkpoints and head back to the transition area to use the inflatable kayaks, so I walked to the checkpoints, then another thirty miles to get back to the TA and it was uphill the whole way. Covering all that ground put a lot of pressure on my legs, so just as we got into the water with the kayak, I broke of my tibias and fibulas—it looked like I had four knees instead of two.

“That’s when the bear jumped us again. We were swatting its paws away with our kayak paddles, but it kept getting closer and closer until Brent squirted it in the eyes with his hydration pack, then whacked it with his compass, bloodying its nose. It was getting really pissed off, but then these killer piranhas swam up and started gnawing at its shovel wound…”

You get the idea. Unfortunately, we missed out on our 12-hour race scheduled for the 13th because Brent picked up a case of strep throat. No training runs and no race because he was bitching about some “I need to breathe in order to run” crap… I’d call him a wussy, but he saved my life with that plastic shovel, so I think that makes us even.

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Slash and burn

Okay, I guess it’s time to come clean: I’m not a lethargic sloth. I know it might seem that way, especially given that I’m still living in Studying-For-The-Bar-Exam-Land. It brings forth an image of me hunching over books, flipping through pages and pages of worthless material (if you ask most lawyers who have been practicing for a few years, you’ll discover that most of them have forgotten everything they needed to know on those fateful two days). So I read my books, write on my blog, occasionally get together with my friends… “Wow, he walked from the parking lot into the restaurant! What a powerhouse! I want a piece of that muscular ass!”

But like I said, I’m coming clean. I wouldn’t say it’s a muscular ass, but I hope it’s moving in that direction. As nice as it would be to have extra cushioning when I’m sitting around for hours on end, the jiggling back there while I walk would drive me nuts. Consequently, I’ve been working out. Doing a little biking, doing a little running around, even doing a little rock climbing. Why, you might ask? And I might answer “None of your damn business!” But I’d more likely say that it’s because I’m preparing for a season of adventure racing.

I haven’t the slightest idea how many eyes may have perked up when they read that, but it’s not exactly a wide-spread sport. You’ve probably heard of the big competitions in other sports: the Super Bowl, the Tour de France, the Indianapolis 500… you may have even heard of “The World’s Biggest Gang Bang VII.” (That’s my personal favorite, but the one down side compared to other sports is there aren’t any “dynasties”—the women are one and done. But it’s not hard to imagine why that’s the case.) What you probably haven’t heard of is Primal Quest.

It’s a big adventure race that tests a person’s physical and mental endurance well beyond that of other piss-ant sports. Screw the Boston Marathon—teams in Primal Quest will run for seven days on four hours of sleep. … Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration… they run on five hours of sleep. If you’re wondering what it’s like to hallucinate but you’re not into stuffing small plastic bags of powder into your rectum so the cops won’t find them, then adventure racing is for you. One day of pushing yourself as hard as you can with a half-hour nap and you’ll be seeing Santa Claus riding a flying octopus and flipping you the bird in no time.

For those a little more hesitant, a little less fit and a lot more sane, there are a lot of shorter races as well, but they have a lot of the same elements: biking, climbing, orienteering, etc. (Since I’m too lazy to write out a long description of everything that adventure racing entails, click here to learn more.) Given that it’s a team sport, I’ve joined up with my older brother Brent to form GT Frost. (Even though I feel obligated to not be too lazy to write a description about the team, you can still click here to learn more.)

Our adventure racing careers spawned in the wake left by my little brother, Justin. He’s a seriously hardcore, total badass when it comes to adventure racing. If you need proof, check out WEDALI’s website and see how many people’s worlds they’ve rocked. But for Brent’s sake, Justin broke away from his team for the “Spring Sprint” the last two years and joined “Team BEK-N” (we figured that was the best way to get people to pronounce our last name properly). The three of us would find a female to fill our roster, then hit the trail in the middle of May to enjoy the glowing sun shining down and a cool breeze in our faces. Or not-so-enjoy heavy rain spewing from the sky and an icy, gusting wind that made our nuts shrivel up into sperm-filled raisins. Amazing how much the elements can change from race to race, year to year…

But the organizers have changed the system this year: because people have been holed up all winter and want to get the hell out into the woods, the sprint race will be in the summer and this spring is supposed to last closer to 8-12 hours. Surprisingly enough, we opted to exert our independence by letting Justin return to WEDALI and running as a two-man team. In doing so, we abandoned Team BEK-N and became GT Frost.

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Man, that looks like it hurts…

I’d like to take a moment to thank The Powers That Be for making me a sturdy person.

I was playing soccer this afternoon and collided with someone. More specifically, my kneecap collided with his. You could hear the *CRACK* from across the field (at least I assume so—given that I was involved in the accident, I only know it was loud). He fell to the turf. I stayed upright, watching the guy hold his knee and roll around in pain. He needed help getting off the field. I stood around and waited for the game to start up again.

I’m not that big—about 195 pounds—but I’ve yet to run into or get kicked by someone on a soccer field and not jump right back up again. Conversely, I’ve left several opposing players on the ground who… well, they didn’t get right back up again. And I’m not even a thug anymore. I’m trying to develop a little finesse, learning how to maneuver and dribble the ball around people instead of barreling into them. If you flash back about a decade, I didn’t bother with that crap—I played defense and I could rumble with the best of them.

My favorite memory happened when I was about 16. We were playing in a tournament against the host team. They had a forward who… let’s just say he didn’t appreciate the art of defensive thuggery. As I kept pressuring him, he got more and more pissed off. It eventually came to a head when our arms got linked together at the elbow. Instead of letting go and running towards the ball, he tried pulling through my arm. Well, that was just plain silly—I kept my arm locked and pulled back. Neither of us let go and after a few more tugs, he spun around and punched me in the throat.

Why is that my favorite memory? A couple reasons:

  1. That was the first time I was directly responsible for someone getting a red card and thus kicked out of a game.
  2. It was one of my best acting gigs ever. After he hit me, I stumbled backwards, grabbed my throat and bent over at the waist (that way, no one could see me smiling as the linesman went to tell the center referee what happened).
  3. The final score was 1-1, but we played them again for the championship. Because of the red card, he had to sit out and watch from the sidelines as we won 3-1.

That doesn’t make me a bad person, does it? Enjoying the fact that I took advantage of his frustration? I mean, just because I was bumping him around doesn’t mean he’s allowed to take a swing at me. Think about Star Wars—Greedo and Han Solo are facing off outside the bar, talking smack until Greedo whips out his gun and shoots first. Then the ref runs up and gives him a red card. Okay, maybe it didn’t happen quite like that, but give a man a degree of poetic license here!

But the reason I mention it is because I’m becoming a little less “hands-on” while playing soccer now, trying to dance around Greedo and keeping the gun in its holster. It’s worked to a degree—I haven’t been punched in the throat in over ten years—but sometimes people don’t appreciate the effort I’m making. Sometimes they play really aggressively and someone’s going to get victimized. When that happens… sometimes you gotta cap ‘em. Pun intended.