OCR World Championships Day 3

Today was the team relay and the charity trust races.

A team consists of 3 people. I was originally going to be on a team with two others from Cor.Fit, but they backed out of the World Championships, so Tracy and I decided to do a team, and find a third. I put a post on the OCR World Championship Athletes Facebook group, and a lady from South Africa (who was born in France, and has lived in England and other places), took us up on our offer. Her name was Cyrie.

A funny story, I was typing a message to Cyrie on my phone, and I started it with "Hey Cyrie. ..." and hit send after the rest of the message. After it was sent, I looked at the message, and damn autocorrect changed her name to Cutie! I was partially horrified and partially laughing out loud. I followed up with another message apologizing for calling her Cutie. She laughed, said it happens often.

Me, Tracy, Mandy and Jon headed to the event about 9:15. Mike went earlier with Graham, as he's racing with Graham and Lucas at an earlier time. Our heat was at 11:00am.

The team event consists of four legs, a speed (running) leg, a strength leg, a technical leg (obstacles) and a team leg, where you have to work together as a team. Tracy was originally going to do the running leg, Cyrie the technical and me the strength, but Tracy didn't think she could run after yesterday, and Cyrie had destroyed her hands on the obstacles yesterday, so we totally switched everything. Cyrie did the run, Tracy did the strength and I did the technical.

It was a blast. Cyrie started, and did a 4km run, then tagged Tracy, who had to do a 2k run with a bunch of feats of strength to perform; carrying a 50 pound bag on the shoulders while going over and under huge logs, pulling a large, metal rocket on a rope out of the water, carrying two large bags of rocks (called a farmers carry), carrying a concrete block around, etc.), then she tagged me, and I did a short run with a bunch of (mostly) rig obstacles (monkey bar type of things, swinging from rings to ropes and other hand-holds, etc.), then I tagged the both of them, and the three of us had to carry two very heavy boulders on a platform around a short course, a rope climb, and then up and over a 10-foot wall. The catch is, you had to work as a team to do each of them, especially the 10-foot wall. For the wall, I climbed in Cyrie's shoulders, then grabbed the rope near the top of the wall, and pulled myself up and hung down from the wall while Tracy tried to grab my ankles and then climb over me to the top of the wall. She's pretty light, so it worked ok, with the help of Cyrie supporting her. Now with Tracy up, Cyrie had to try the same thing, and she would grab my ankes, and try to climb up my legs, then she would try to grab my shirt, but got my shorts instead, and pulled my shorts part way down. (This was happening to everyone, not just me....there were a lot of full moons during this.) She couldn't make it, would drop back down and try again, but no go. I was getting tired of hanging with a woman hanging from me, so I'd have to pull myself up periodically and give my arms a rest. We tried a few more times, but it wasn't working. Finally I dropped back down, and hoisted Cyrie up, while she hung on the top of the wall, and I ran up and grabbed her ankle. I was able to jump high enough to get her ankle, then get enough grip from my new shoes to propel myself to the rope at the top and grab a hold of it, and got up. With all three of us to the top, we climbed down the other side, and ran across the finish line. So much fun, I've never done a team relay before.

We ended up 63rd out of 84 that completed the team relay (i.e. all team members finished with their bands), so not great, but we all finished with our bands and got our medals. Last was the charity trust race, which is more of wind-down. No timing chips, no pressure, all the money goes to charity. Tracy, me, Mike, Mandy, Jon, Lucas and Graham (all Cor.Fit) just walked the whole course (7k). Jamie, another Cor.Fit'er also joined for a bit, but ran ahead as he has family waiting for him. I took my camera for this, and I didn't do many of the obstacles, instead took pictures of some of the obstacles while the others did the ones they wanted to do.

With that finished (I think it took maybe 2 hours to walk the 7k course), it was celebration time. The weather was even nicer today than yesterday, we sat in the outside event area, in the beautiful sun, had beers and pizza and brownies and celebrated our accomplishments.

All-in-all, I was successful in getting all four medals, with a "completed" status in all races (i.e. they didn't cut my band off for failing to do something). There were a lot of people complaining on Facebook about cheaters, people hiding their bands from the marshalls, putting it in their pockets or underneath long sleeve shirt, so they could keep their bands even when the couldn't complete an obstacle. That sucks, but what can you do. I'm happy in the knowledge that I didn't cheat and was successful, if not particularly speedy. (Did I mention I hate running?)

The other thing is, you can sure notice the difference between the runners that are trying to do OCR and the OCR'ers that are trying to run. Haha. It's amazing to see soooo many fit people (especially guys) that just can't do obstacles. So many of the rigs, guys will try 3, 4, 5 or more times to try and swing across rigs of various sorts, with different hand holds, and just can't do it. They stand around, blocking the lanes, I have to push through, and just pick a lane, ask them if I can go ahead and then fly through it. It actually kinda makes me feel good! Screw them and their muscles and six-packs. I can do obstacles and you can't, na-na-na-na-na-na.

Lucas decided to arrange a celebration supper in town at 6:00 for all of us, and also for his family (his parents and grandparents came over to cheer him on, along with Graham's dad). Funny thing, all of the restaurants in Brentwood all close down at about 5:00pm on Sunday's, so the only place to really get food is at your hotel. We were all staying at the same hotel (Premiere Inn), so that worked out well.

 We ended up to bed around 10:00pm that night.