A funny thing happened over the past few weeks. I’ve had post after post started concerning the Death Race, yet I couldn’t finish any of them. There were things I wanted to talk about: the concrete bag, the ravine (dear God, the ravine), yet it all seemed too forced, too fake. And I had no desire to write a book recapping the entire 60 hours.

In other words, I’m on Death Race burn out. And I’m over talking about it, or thinking about. Or even worse, thinking about the 2013 Death Race. There are already over 200 people signed up for it (what. the. hell.), and the chatter about the “Year of the Gambler” has already started with a vengeance on the Death Race FB group.

Meh. mehmehmehmehmeh.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Death Race. I do. And perhaps I’m grieving the year long wait until the next one, but these past few weeks I’ve been all out of sorts. I feel like I’m spinning without a purpose. And readjusting back to “normal” life (sans DR-prep) has been tedious.

Physically, I’m fine. I got back into the Crossfit box two days after the race, the feet are healed (aside from an unrelated toe injury suffered while intoxicated this past weekend), and I’m feeling as strong as ever. The DR failed to beat me physically (eat it, Andy & Joe). But mentally, I’m still not all there.

I suppose I’m in a different situation than a lot of my fellow obstacle racers that have a summer chock full of races. For me, the DR was the “end” of my season: the culmination of a busy winter/spring that started with World’s Toughest Mudder in December and hit SERE(x2), the WDR, GoRuck, Tough Mudder, and Civilian Military Combine along the way. Granted, it’s been a hell of a ride: 2nd female at WTM, 1st female and 3rd overall at WDR, 1st female and 1st overall at CMC, and 2nd female at the Death Race. And now I face down the summer without any races scheduled in the foreseeable future. In place of races are a string of weddings.

And I hate it. I mean, post-DR I said I was relieved, and excited to get back to “normalcy”: a life without a race every other weekend, without constant gear-whoring, without constant chatter about race prep, without a crazy training schedule hauling packs of bricks up 40 flights of stairs.

I lied. I totally lied. Because I’m lost as hell, and looking for the next thing.

Yes, I know there are plenty of races out there this summer/fall. Unfortunately, friends aren’t too keen on me skipping their weddings to go run through mud. Conflicts abound, and I hate it. Every race I want to attend (including the glorious Ultra Beast that I get depressed thinking about missing) has a dear friend pledging their eternal love to some poor schmuck (kidding! love you guys) on that same weekend.*

So yes, it’s a contradiction: I’m burnt out on DR-stuff, but I’m yearning to jump back into that world at the same time (acknowledging, of course, that standard Spartan Races and Tough Mudders are apples and oranges to the DR).

So what do I do? I wake up, I go to Crossfit, I go to work, I hang out, I play volleyball at the beach. But I’m trying to find that passion that drove me all winter/spring long. Without something to train for, I’m spinning my wheels.

Perhaps it will become clear in time. Perhaps I need this break. Perhaps I will drive myself loony. But for the time being, I suppose I should try to be “normal.”

*Weddings are blessed events, I swear. To my friends getting married, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than getting wasted at your wedding, inappropriately hitting on your younger brother/cousin/sister in law/priest, and making a fool of myself on the dance floor. It’s just shitty luck in terms of scheduling.

As we began the 6hr drive back to Philly from Vermont, I broke out my legal pad and a pen and began to list all the tasks we completed in the 2012 Death Race. Despite having just spent 60 hours out in the woods of Pittsfield, VT, even then I had trouble recalling the sequence of events. And these past few days, my mind has been constantly churning over things that I think happened, things that I wish had happened, and things that I wish I had changed. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to come to terms with how I FEEL about my Death Race experience, and what it is that I’m taking away from it. This will probably end up being several posts as I distill the events over the next few days and weeks.

After the Winter Death Race, I wrote a post about how its easy and fun to be in the lead at the Death Race; the real test of strength and self, however, is when you have fallen (or feel like you’ve fallen) helplessly behind the leaders. Given my success at the WDR and CMC and other recent races, it’s a feeling that was foreign to me, and one that I could only talk about in the abstract.

Until now.

For the first time, late Saturday night and the wee hours of Sunday morning, I experienced what it felt like to be at the bottom of the pack. In last place. And in that position where you start to question whether you are going to make it through because there is SO MUCH ahead, and people are SO FAR ahead of you.

It’s crushing, yet incredibly humbling. The funny thing is, for the first 24, 26, 28 hours of the race, it wasn’t that way. I had the fortune of randomly getting a kick ass team (holler #7s!!) that carried that kayak and slosh pipe with such speed and grace that we took a nice rest with Andy up on Bloodroot waiting for the other teams, made it first down to Chittenden Reservoir for our leisurely swim, and arrived first back at Roger’s for our exam. Things were going swimmingly. I was strong, I was quick, and I knew as long as I stayed out ahead and kept a quick pace, there was nothing that was going to hold me back.

But as all Death Racers know (and I learned), things turn on a dime. And for me, it was the unfortunate choice to play into the Betrayal theme when it came to the stake task. Our team of 3 searched for an hour on that mountain to find our #13 stake, and it was nowhere to be found. What we did find, however, was a different stake. After calling around for that hour looking for the owners of the stake, we made the decision (as did 90% of the other teams), to change the number on the stake and call it our own. We were convinced that Joe and Andy had intentionally screwed us that there were no stakes with our numbers on it. Granted, a few teams (perhaps 2 or 3) actually found their stake, but everyone else was frustrated and at wits end.*

So we turned in our stake with no problems, and set out to chop our wood, still in the lead. My wood was split and I was ready to haul it over the mountain back over to Amee, when Peter Borden, a race director, called out all the cheaters and asked for us to fess up if we had done so. As many of you know, I race with Bryan Selm, who is perhaps the most honest and stand-up Death Racer I know. So we looked at each other and knew immediately that we needed to confess.

Told to leave our packs and our wood, we were forced to trek back over the mountain and get in the duck pond at Amee as a punishment. And there we stayed for over an hour while others made up precious time. Once released, we had to make the trek back over to Tweed to get our wood and then head back over to Amee.**

Back at Tweed, the reality of how much time I had lost started to set in. Bryan and I made the strategic decision to carry all 12 logs in one trip back over the mountain to try and make up time. This meant, however, extreme slow going. So as the sun rose on the third day, we passed by racer after racer coming the opposite direction, already done with their wood and heading onto the next task (or the task after that). Inside, the feeling of defeat started to build. I was hours and hours behind. In fact, I believe Bryan and I were dead last.

It was a position I’m not used to being in, and one that I brought on myself. I suppose I had set expectations for myself: I’m a competitive girl, and I was in it to win it. As I sat there on the mountain crying, I was reminded that I was being a stupid brat. No, seriously, a stupid brat and a crybaby. And I was. I was pouting, I was whining, and I was self-righteous for no good reason. I was disgusted with myself. And I was told that I could quit, or I could nut up, change my attitude, and move on. I couldn’t change what happened, but I could control how I behaved the rest of the race. And at that moment, I let go. As soon as I let go of the idea that I HAD to win this thing, and accepted the fact that all I could hope for is to finish it, the proverbial weight lifted off my shoulders. Hours behind, and with nothing to lose, I decided that finishing was the only goal, even if it meant finishing in last place. (still a finish, eh?)

From there on out, I hauled ass as much as possible, making time up where I could, but generally focused on moving through the tasks and ignoring the laundry list of things that lay ahead of me. It killed me to see other racers so far ahead of me, to pass by them and figure out what they were on to next, and how many more tasks I had to go. But in that battered emotional state, I learned how strong I could be. It would be easy to give up at that point, to throw in the towel, to say eff it and go have a beer, given the long road that stretched ahead. The thought never crossed my mind. I stepped forward with a new humility, and a new outlook on the race.

So when I finished the roll at 60 hours and some change, and Joe told me I took 2nd place in women, I must have looked at him like he had 3 heads. “Impossible,” I thought, “I was SO far behind.” But, as I said earlier, things in this race change on the drop of a dime, and in the end, perseverance will pay off. So I could care less about the kettlebell and the place — what I am proud of is finishing despite feeling like the odds were stacked against me.*** Finishing despite creating a hole so deep I felt like I couldn’t dig out of it. And finishing despite that voice inside my head yelling at me for being so far behind for so long.

It’s a lesson I needed to learn. And a humility that I needed to experience. And I’ll carry it with me to the next race and beyond.

*Side note: as we were changing the stake number, another racer came up and threatened to rat us out unless we gave him half the stake. Call it hunger and exhaustion, but at that point, the race had turned nasty and I didn’t like it. Perhaps the closest I’ve ever come to blows with someone, but we gave him half. Unclean hands all around, I suppose
**Other cheaters had hauled their wood back over the mountain BEFORE confessing to cheating. So while they had to endure the duck pond, they already had their wood back at the farm and didn’t lose that much time. So, let’s be honest, there was no incentive to confess as early as we did. It’s something that I’m still mulling over in my head, but something that I do not regret.
***Self-created, I suppose.

Total time to finish: 60 hours, 23 minutes
Place: 2nd female

Total approximate distance covered: 50-70 miles (depending on who you talk to)
Clif bars consumed: 8
Trees cut down to make a splint and stretcher: 3
Burpees completed: 575
Fires built: 1
Times we caught Andy sleeping on the trail: 2
Elapsed time spent in duck pond for cheating punishment: 54 minutes
Episodes of South Park watched: 1 (while in duck pond)
PB&J sandwiches consumed: 3
Pounds of concrete carried to top of mountain: 60
Times up and down the ravine: 3
Trips between Amee & Tweed over the mountain: 7
Minutes spent figuring out an origami crane: 45
Kanye songs sung: 3
Kayaks carried: 4
Times hit in head with slosh pipe: 5
Ping pong team number: 7
Times I threatened to quit: 3
Times I actually meant it: 1
Questions on the exam: 250
Exam questions that actually had legitimate answers: nowhere close to 250
5hr energy consumed: 5
Crying fits: 6? 7?
Bales of hay stacked: 15
Times I almost punched a child: 2
Hallucinations: 5
Laps rolled: 6
Logs carried: 23
Buckets of gravel carried: 13
Poptarts consumed: 5
Sock changes: 7
Bottles of Gold Bond used: 3
Times I uttered “this is the most retarded thing I’ve ever done”: 100+
Swear words used: ad infinitum
Death Race finishes: 2

[NOTE: My mind is still spinning and I’m trying to get a handle on everything that happened this past weekend, so a full post is forthcoming once I make sense of things]

When I signed up for the Death Race back in December, I remember talking to a previous Death Race finisher and asking about the race.

“What is it?” I inquired.

“A complete mindfuck,” he said.

Fast forward to today. Death Race 2012: The Year of Betrayal, is barreling towards us with a Friday start time of…noon? 9am? 10am? 6pm? Oh RIGHT. WE DON’T KNOW WHEN IT STARTS.

We also don’t know when it finishes, but that’s a given. (hence why my flight back to Chicago isn’t until Tuesday. I’m gearing up for 60 hours of goodness–anything less will be extra post-race nap and beer time)

As of now, we don’t even know the gear list. Pink bathing cap? Bonsai tree clipping? Axe? Knitting needles? Or is it chopsticks and just a regular needle and thread? I believe there’s a life jacket and maybe dress shoes in there as well.

My apartment currently looks like a war zone: covered with packs and clothes and gear and food and tools. 5 pairs of shoes/boots. Clothes ranging from heat gear tanks to winter gloves to various levels of compression tights for various temperatures. A smattering of wetsuits. Neoprene socks and gloves. Vaseline. Paracord. Gold bond. Waterproof matches. Cases of handwarmers, cases of Clif bars, and enough 5-hr energy to give Jabba the Hut a heart attack. Varying sizes of Camelbaks and bladders. A leatherman that I’m still figuring out how to use. Swim goggles. And a very confused Amelia trying to fit this all into suitcases to fly halfway across the country.

And in the back of your mind, you ask yourself the question over and over again “why am I paying to do this?” In fact, it’s a question that we asked repeatedly during the Winter Death Race, and I’m sure I’ll utter dozens of times this upcoming weekend.

But, when it comes down to it, we do it because it’s “fun.” As one of my favs, M. Petrizzo has on his Twitter handle, “my idea of fun is not your idea of fun.” Right on, sir. Our idea of fun is pushing ourselves to the limits: mentally, physically and emotionally. And it’s everything I expect the Death Race to do.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae. In the mind games and the drama and the rumors leading up the race. Will we be carrying logs up a mountain? or rocks? Do we have to swim with our rucks? Does “Sunday at midnight” mean Sunday night or Monday night? The more you agonize over these things, the more Joe and Andy (hi guys!!) are already winning the game.

It’s a race: there are winners. And I’m a competitive (as I’ve been not-so-gently reminded before, sometimes way TOO competitive-to-a-fault) person. But I need to remind myself that when you lose the fun from the Death Race, there’s really no point in doing it. We aren’t professional athletes: we are a bunch of idiots with a warped idea of fun going out to Vermont to climb some mountains, chop some wood, and have a good time with our fellow crazies. I need to remind myself to ignore the bullshit, stay out of my head, and run my race.

So bring the cryptic emails, ciphered codes, changing gears lists and all the mind games you want. It’s game time, and things are about to get REALLY fun. Can’t wait to see you soon, Pittsfield. xoxo

Et tu, Brute?