My Wild Wendigo Top 10

2010 has been a year of firsts — first time to lose weight since high school; first time to fall through my house floor (separate post on this later); and first time to compete in my first ever adventure race!

Brady and I entered the Wild Wendigo Adventure Race this past February. After 4 miles of crooked paddling in a kayak, 15 miles of mountain biking in the mud and 4 miles of trekking with our tongues hanging out, we finished in 5.5 hours and smack dab in the middle of the pack — 6 out of 13 coed teams. While we’re proud of this wild accomplishment, we’re still a little bummed about our finish. You see, Brady’s motto of “attacking the mud” during the mountain biking portion of the race cost us a mountain bike, $450 and an hour of time.

This race also taught us a lot about our competitive “spirit,” our communication skills (or lack thereof), and our ability to break our one promise to each other in the first leg of the race — to NOT blame each other for anything!

In honor of completing our first ever adventure race, I developed my own Wild Wendigo Top 10 List.

Top 10 Ways to Keep a Marriage Together After
Running an Adventure Race

1. Offer your husband half your fries after the race.
2. Take as minimal pictures as possible (husbands hate posing for pictures after 5.5 hours of pain)
3. Score two free beer tickets for your husband.
4. When your husband wants to go one way and you want to go another, don’t say “I told you so” when you discover he’s wrong and you’re right.
5. Don’t laugh or cry when your husband breaks his bike.
6. When husband breaks said bike, encourage him to run his bike more than 2 miles to the next checkpoint by offering him a brand new bike after the race.
7. Don’t make your husband lift a finger the rest of the weekend.
8. Suck it up when your husband tells you to finish strong.
9. Don’t give your husband beer pong advice. Men are better at all sports, including beer pong.
10. Agree to never, ever again tandem kayak together (or kayak at all).

And, to think, we get to do this all over again in September. Terra Firma here we come!

Pictured above: We really weren't this in sync.

Pictured above: Our first attempt at a free beer ticket. Fail.

Pictured above: Finally! A checkpoint!

Pictured above: Halfway through the biking portion. If only we knew what was about to come.

Pictured above: Brady's bike died 10 minutes after this picture was taken.

391 words.