Ben Tshin

We finished! Unbelievably, 9 hours and 20 minutes after we had started the ARC Haliburton Enduro we crossed the finish line. Almost as amazing was the fact that we didn’t get disqualified and we didn’t finish last. Actually, we finished second last.

The race started pleasantly in nice weather but it almost ended in a death trap. We began with a short 2km jog to the first checkpoint where we picked up our canoes. (Funny note: our team name should have been “Team Keepafloat” after our identical life jackets) The next 2.5 hours were canoeing 7km and portaging 1km. Everything seemed fine until we jumped onto our bikes.

The bike section was supposed to be our strongest suit, but we encountered too many obstacles, mud pits, misplaced checkpoints and broken chains. We lost 30 minutes repairing a broken chain twice and 1 hour looking for a checkpoint that was moved the night before by race officials. Too bad they didn’t tell us.

In the middle of the bike section we had to do a bit of orienteering (ie: bushwacking). Evidence of this is my battered legs as can be seen if you ask me. We were good for the first beaver pond checkpoint (which required my graceful swimming skills) but we got a bit lost finding the next one. As we got back to our bikes we barely made it out under the cut-off time of 6.5 hours (around 4:30).

The next 4 checkpoints took us the remaining 3 hours as members of the team began to cramp up, forcing us to walk instead of bike. It didn’t help that we were also out of water, getting extremely tired and encountering more mud than we had ever seen in our lives — combined.

The three members of Team Fatboyslim (Gordon, Ani and myself) would like to especially thank our two water saviours at checkpoints 12 and 13 who saved our lives with “living water”. We wouldn’t have finished without their help.

After effects? Muscles so sore we couldn’t move. Mosquito bites counting upto 100 (on myself only). Memories of one of the worst physical days of our lives. Determination for next time.

Memories of being lost in the rocks and trees.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2003 at 7:20 pm and is filed under frontal lobe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.