Gilmore Adventure Race

I want to make sure I do a quick mention of the Gilmore Adventure Race we did back on Sept. 25th with Justin and Audra {Trent's brother and his wife}. It was much harder than I expected it to be and looking back I'm very proud of myself for finishing it! I don't know if you've made the connection or not but I was about 5 or 6 weeks pregnant at the time. I felt lightheaded a few times but other than that I felt ok. Trent did awesome! I think he could've done another 12 miles. When we first arrived in Prescott we grabbed some breakfast at Cracker Barrel {my first time eating there, it was fabulous} and headed up the mountain to sign in and register. We got our number {96} and then we waited! There were two groups of racers the long racers which was 18 miles and the group for the short race which was 12 miles. The long racers went first. Talk about feeling out of place! These guys were serious! Some of them were even sponsored. We all couldn't help but crack up at how unprofessional we all looked in our homemade iron on t-shirts! We joked that if we ever do this again our team name should be "No Intimidation" haha! Once they left we waited for our turn. We got a little pep talk and were told the rules and then had 15 minutes to get ready and look over our map.

Before the race. Don't we look great! So unsuspecting!

When the race started we had to "run" {hello altitude! I was so not prepared for that. running for me was more of a walk/slow jog} to our next stop to get all our coordinates and plot them on our map. When I say we of course I mean Trent and Justin. They did all the map work which was really nice for Audra and I. Our first 2 or 3 stops were all hiking. It was a pretty intense hike! There were no trails so we had to trudge through the wild wilderness! :)

At the very top! All downhill hiking from here:)

The rest of the race was all mountain biking. Trent, bless his heart, has tried so hard to get me into mountain biking. When we bought my mountain bike a few years ago he was more excited than I was! It's just not my thing! So needless to say I wasn't super thrilled that the next 8 to 9 miles of the race was all going to be mountain biking!

We also had a few challenges along the way that we could either do or take a 30 minute penalty if we chose not to try it. We did each one and moved on in great time. The first one was building a bridge out of domino's. The next one was throwing metal washers into a hole that was a few feet away. The last and hardest was a puzzle. Only one of us could try it {we could help from the sidelines though}. It was pretty tricky but Justin got us through!

I'm not gonna lie to you I was miserable on the mountain biking part! {I may or may not have cursed under my breath a few times}. A lot of it was uphill and that's what sucked all my energy! I don't mean to make this all sound negative but I really hated this part! Trent asked me a few times if I thought I'd ever want to do this again. I'd just glare at him and say, "Don't ask me right now because the answer is NO!" I really kinda felt like I was holding everyone back. I was usually the caboose of the group. I can honestly say though that I did my very very best! I pushed myself as hard as I could and I'm proud of the fact that I didn't give up.

Before you could cross the finish line you had to scale a 12 ft wall! Maybe it doesn't look super tall in the pictures but believe me 12 ft is tall! We had a great strategy though and all made it over safely.

We finished with 7 minutes to spare! All in all this was a truly incredible experience and it really showed me what I was capable of. I don't think it's really my kinda thing but I learned a lot about myself and we really did have a lot of fun together. I'm glad I did it! Thanks Justin and Audra for being our teammates! Go team 4.0!!! {We are all Owen's and there were 4 of us...get it :)}