Friday, June 29, 2018

12 hour Blackops X Warrior Challenge

For the whole recap of the race, see my blog in ORM https://obstacleracingmedia.com/race/x-warrior-black-ops-12-hour-in-barrhead-alberta/
It was a great fun 12 hour race, I ended up running 8 laps with the 40 pound sandbag. Each lap was about 5.5km, total 44km with roughly 1800m in elevation ascent. To begin my story, all finishers were to complete their last lap between the 11th and 12th hour!
I started off the race on a team of 3 running some fun pace. On the second lap my friend had IT problems with the knee, so we finished running the second lap and took a break. The team ended up having some drinks and not the energy kind ;) He wasn't able to run without injury so he told me to keep going individually. I remained running the course with the sandbag because there was a podium for most laps with the sandbag. After lap 5 I was in first!
Every lap after that I just remained in the pit hoping second place wouldn't catch up so I can just chill there haha. Every time they crossed the finish line, I just headed out for the next lap. On my final 8th lap, it was pretty much a sprint to the finish. Caleb was chasing me down and he was coming fast! I ended up crossing the last checkpoint and reaching the finish line about 20 seconds before he did. I had another 20 minutes before the 11th hour so I just waited at the finish line, Caleb kept going. Knowing he crossed that finish line early he had to do another lap. He had 1 hour and 20 minutes to complete the lap. On a fast pace lap like the one we just did, it took us about an hour 10 or an hour 15 minutes, so he had to go fast! Little did I realize he could have just ran the next lap without a sandbag! That didn't even cross my mind. So he technically got first because he crossed the 8th lap finish line before I did.
It was a great race! Super fun, looking forward to more endurance races! Good job on all podiums, X Warrior had so many more than other obstacle races. It would be amazing to see thousands of people participate, we had about 300-500 here. The obstacles were also so much fun!

Monday, June 11, 2018

Lost Waterfalls Hike - Boquete, Panama

Cascadas Perdidas- Lost Waterfalls. Easy Hike, there are 3 waterfalls, total is 5km and 400m of elevation ascend to all three and back to the start. I went during the rainy season, so it started to rain once we got there. $2 taxi/bus to the start location. I decided to hike with a group of 3 from the Netherlands! They were great. Pay toll to enter was $7, which seemed expensive to see some natural waterfalls. We would have entered but the dog was barking. It was fun anyways! :)