Last year I helped out at the Olympia Traverse, a multi sport event that includes a mountain bike leg, road bike, kayak, and running. It's a relay race but individuals can do the whole thing. It looked like everyone was having a great time, so this year I decided to do the whole thing myself. This was going to be a fun event since I had only been on my road bike twice this year, never have mountain biked before, and haven't kayaked either. But each leg would take about an hour so how bad could it be? I had an old mountain bike with cracks in the tires and no shocks, my road bike was ok, and I could borrow my brother in law's kayak. I took a test run on the mountain bike and the vibration was so bad it shook the bottle cage off. Not a good sign. My bother in law gave me a 10 minute lesson on kayaking and I was ready to go.

On race day, Dave, Matt and I showed up for battle. Dave was in about the same situation as me except he rented a nice mountain bike. Matt was a mountain biker so we knew he would get a big lead on us at the start. The mountain bike leg went as feared. My bike was hard to control and I couldn;t shift into the low chain ring on the climbs so I got passed by alot of bikers. Then I hit a stump and went over the handlebars but landed softly! I finished near the end of the pack and tried to make up time on the road bike. I passed a few people but I definitely was not in biking form. At the kayak, I found I was only a few minutes behind Dave and I could see him way in the distance. My kayak was fast, so I started passing people and catching Dave. I landed at the dock right behind Dave and immediately took off on the run since Dave runs twice as fast as me. But the other legs had taken there toll and I was just plodding along. After a few minutes, Dave caught up to me but with the same problem, just shuffling along. After the turn around, Dave waited for me but then took off since I was going to slow. Just before the finish, I finally caught Matt, and all three of use finished within a couple of minutes of each other. Glad for it to be over, but I will do it again next year, but I think I will train a bit first!