Back in January or February I talked Lou into doing an off-road triathlon as a relay with me. I thought, “He’s been so good about being my cheerleader. I’m going to support him getting back into mountain biking.” A friend of mine told me about one that she had signed up to do solo. It’s an Xterra, which means a .5 mile swim, 12 mile mountain bike ride, and a 6 mile trail run. I proposed to Lou that if he did the mountain bike, I’d do the swim and the run. I could have picked a shorter distance race to be held on the Saturday before but I thought they were too short to hold much of a challenge for us. I’m not too proud to admit that I was wrong. Really, really wrong. This will NOT be a do-over event for us, and I doubt we’ll one day look back fondly on the experience. Amazed that we survived? Perhaps. We took this as a lesson-learned going forward in our adventure-seeking lifestyle. Mainly we learned to not sign up for anything new until we’ve tried it ourselves FIRST. We’re still going to do it, but we’re preparing ourselves mentally more than physically at this point. As I told Lou, if a 70 year old guy could finish the entire thing all by himself last year we can finish our portions, even if we have to push the bike up the steepest inclines and speed walk parts of the roller coaster run.
On the same trip, we learned of a local fundraising adventure that we committed to doing next year instead of the Xterra. Its called The Prouty, and the money raised is donated to cancer patient care and research. They raised over $2.4mm this year and counting. We already have a team to join and are just waiting for the 2013 registration to open. I’ll share details one we’ve decided which combination of kayaking and bicycling we’ll tackle.