Swimrun Knoxville 2021 race report.

Editor's note: This IS a co-written race report, but after Amy wrote most of the words, Trista didn't find much to add. There are a few Trista comments in here, though, in red, so they will be like delightful toy surprises in the bottom of the cereal box! (Is that still even a thing? I have no idea, so clearly have no children.)




This one was not originally on the schedule. I figured after Lake James, Rockman (if it happened) would be the next swimrun, the next time I'd see Trista. But then Karen asked me if we were doing Knox, because she wanted to go and do it with her brother. I couldn't pass on a chance to see Karen! Plus Trista was undoubtedly going to do the race anyway, because that's who she is, and I'd have significantly less FOMO if I did it with her rather than watching her do it with someone else.


Then it didn't work out with Karen's brother, and briefly it looked like Trista might actually already be committed to race with someone else at Knox anyway, and the whole thing was very confusing for a while, but ultimately it settled into a solid plan where Trista and I got to do one last practice race together before Rockman, and Karen and Meredith got to check out how well they would do as swimrun partners! Add in the Swaggy Zaddys, Marcus and Lee, and you have.. well, the entire long course line-up, as it turns out. There were only 3 long course teams registered, and we were it!


Other than insanely long 4am security lines and the longest I've continuously worn a mask since this pandemic began, my first flight since Fall 2019 went well, and Trista picked me up from the Atlanta airport, then we drove to Knoxville to meet the rest of the gang. 


Trista got new shirts made up just in time for the race! #iykyk

Cracker Barrel, shake-out workout, packet pickup, social media overload, handstands, and then off to bed.


Handstands and wheelbarrows in the hotel atrium at 10pm, as one does.


Race morning was super low stress. Short drive to the race site, plenty of parking, real bathrooms (half of which had toilet paper), lots of dogs to pet.


It looks like there's a spotlight shining on Trista's socks. SPEAKING OF WHICH..


Sock reveal! Knox fox sox!


This was going to be a warm race, which is not my favorite kind of race. Having heard such good things about the Ark Vigg after Swimrun Austin, I decided at the last minute to go ahead and pick one up, and managed to get in one short workout in it the weekend before the race. I also decided to go super minimal under the wetsuit since it was going to be so warm, and wore just a sports bra and some new sports briefs. I put on a LOT of under-wetsuit lube, lemme tell ya, because this configuration had only been tested in a 60 minute swim and 20 minute run.


Matching Ark Vigg wetsuits!


We all gathered up at the start line, all 28 registered teams/individuals, and the race director asked us 6 long course folks to raise our hands. We did, and she said to the volunteers, "Those are your long course athletes." Trista yelled out, "We look like everyone else!" because every one of us was wearing a swim cap, goggles, and identical purple singlets. 


2/3 of the long course teams! Why is Meredith so TALL here?!


And then it was go time!


The first run was short, 0.35 miles, through some lovely forest. Well, first it went by a zipline course and all sorts of fun-looking park activities, and I suggested we abort the whole thing and do that instead. Nobody else was having it, so we continued on. I had thought that short and long course had the same first run and first swim, but about a minute into the race, short course split off to the left and we went right, so clearly I had no idea what the course actually was. This will be a theme.


And then it was just me, Trista, Karen, and Meredith! The Zaddys had, of course, taken off at a much faster pace. I suggested they might already be done with the race.


The ladies stuck together for the first run, which was super fun. Meredith asked if I was writing my race report as I was running, and I started trying to narrate writing my race report as it was happening. "And then Meredith asked if I was writing my race report as I was running.." It was very Neverending Story.


As we got to the water, the swim entrance had a big hop down a ledge onto a super muddy bank and then into some deep underwater mud. Karen said, "Really? Already?!" Only 0.35 miles of warmup before the dirty fun began! The 8-9-or-10-times Amy-Trista partnership understandably transitioned a little faster than the first-transition-in-their-first-time-ever-doing-a-swimrun-together Karen-Meredith partnership, and, spoiler(!), we never saw them again during the race. Emphasis on "saw"!


It was my understanding, from pre-race chatter, that the first swim, which was a river swim, was the coldest swim. And it wasn't bad at all! A little chilly, but much warmer than the water had been in the Quarry, which we had swam in the day before and would be swimming in later. We like the chilly water. It was good.


And it was a really nice swim. Straight down the river, under one bridge, no boat traffic, very serene, Knoxville skyline up ahead, able to stay on Trista's feet, do-I-still-love-swimrun-during-first-swim check passed. I mean, Trista was having a lot of goggle problems, which meant a couple brief stops during the swim, but that gave us a second to chat, and to appreciate that there was enough current that when we stopped for goggle repair, we kept drifting forward noticeably. 


Our first swim was one mile at a 1:21/100yard pace, in open water, while wearing shoes. That's not normal for us, that's a current-assist.


The next run took us from that swim exit over to Mead's Quarry for the first time (of many), and I have zero memory of that 1.8ish mile run at all! I remember crossing a street and realizing "Oh! This is where packet pickup was!" at the very end, and that's it. There was an aid station here, and we got some water and headed off in the direction the volunteers told us to go!


Which was also a part we recognized, because we'd run this part in our shakeout run the day before. It took us onto a trail where we ran by a guy who was just going out fishing, carrying a bucket. We joked that maybe he was going to do a triathlon. #buckethumor  And then we hooked a sharp right to run down to the water. This was MUCH more comfortable wearing shoes than it had been the day before when we walked to the water's edge barefoot, and it took about 5 minutes of nonstop whining and limping and complaining to get across the sharp rocks.


We had decided that I would lead for this swim! The Quarry swims were only 400 meters, so low stakes if things didn't go well, and Trista pointed out that there may someday be a race where she isn't feeling great and I'll need to pull her on the swims, so she should get some practice. Fingers crossed we don't end up there, but she made a good point!


And let me be clear, I'm ALWAYS willing to lead. I'm not just a complete mooch. But she is  a significantly faster swimmer than I am, and while I can hang in her draft in open water, putting her behind ME means she has to slow down, which isn't comfortable for her, and doesn't make sense if our goal is to go as fast as possible. (Which it will become obvious from the videos and stories in this race report is CLEARLY always our goal.)


So I led! And she cleverly chose to have me lead in the only swim where we had to swim DIRECTLY INTO THE SUN! I spent most of the swim blind, but fortunately we had swam here the day before, and I knew if I just kept near the right shoreline, I'd end up.. probably where I needed to be. Eventually. At one point we went by a safety kayak, and I asked the lifeguard to please just point in the rough direction I should be going. That helped.


Then we finally got up to a line of buoys, and with the help of another kayaker, discovered we were to go on the outside of those, around the buoy, and hook a sharp right into the shore.


Success! I led the swim for 400 meters! And Trista got to learn how hard it is to draft off someone slower than you, and how much effort I put into not hitting her feet with my paddles every other stroke! (I'm neurotically conscientious about that for no compelling reason.)


We had to crawl over a buoy line, and THEN IT HAPPENED. TRISTA FELL. Granted, in the water, so it wasn't as dramatic as my oft-reviewed fall at Lake James 2018, but it was still good. And as we looked up on the shore, there were at LEAST 3 people pointing phones at us when it happened! I was so excited to share this footage with you right here in this race report!


Except.. the only thing we could find later was photos. Which are still amazing, and definitely better than you just taking my word for it, but still. Someone somewhere out there has video of it, and you bet your ass it will be shared if it ever gets leaked.



Fine, fine, it's not that impressive in pictures, but great recovery!


The swim exited at the same aid station we'd hit on the way in, and we got more water before we headed out. The volunteer told us to go right, then left into the woods. Cool, got it.


This next ~3.5 mile run was a bit of a comedy of errors. 


Looking at the maps from my run, and the mapmyrun links from the course details, I actually think we pretty much did it right, but we had no idea if that was true until after the race. First, random people had pulled up some of the marker flags. That meant we had trouble even figuring out how to get into the woods. We ran across the train tracks, then had no idea if we were going the right way, and we stopped and yelled back at the aid station volunteers asking if this was right. They seemed to indicate it was, so we kept going into the woods.


There was a flag at the edge of the woods, but then there were no flags. For a while. Minutes. Eons. I was convinced that we had gone the wrong way and needed to turn back, but Trista wanted to keep going, so we did, and after a disturbing amount of time, THERE WAS A FLAG. We were so relieved we didn't have to backtrack and get back on course. Nice job keepin' the faith, partner.


This part of the trail was wiggly and confusing. It was also beautiful and so much fun, but there is an intersection you go through multiple times, and each time you go out a different way. I think. There are flags in multiple directions! There's also a volunteer stationed there, but he doesn't know where you've been, or if you've been doing it right. And the whole race we had REAL trouble with volunteers telling us to do the short course course. We almost went the wrong way multiple times until we clarified that we were long course. I mean, yes, there were only 3 of us out there, but we really wanted to do the correct course! Plus, THEY ASKED YOU TO LOOK AT US! Did you not memorize our stunning faces?!


This part sort of reminded me of The Maze course at Walnut Creek in Austin. Very winding trail, and we managed to see Lee and Marcus going by on a nearby trail (who told us they had gotten lost, and warned that it was very confusing), AND could hear Karen and Meredith behind us! It was like we were all together, except not actually together! At least we could yell at each other!


Trista generally has at least 5 favorite parts of any race.


We cruised through this section, enjoying the green and the shade and the soft ground, often convinced we were completely lost. At one point we came back through the volunteer-manned intersection again and he asked us if we'd just finished the (I forget what he said) Loop. We were like "We have ABSOLUTELY no idea." He asked us if we'd been down this one trail yet, and pointed. NO IDEA. He pointed a direction and told us to go there. Trista said, "When do we do THAT trail?" and pointed to a trail we didn't think we'd been on yet, but which clearly had a flag. He said, ".... Later." REASSURING.


But we kept on keeping on, and eventually came out of the woods again! Back to the train tracks and the aid station! Trista knew we were supposed to do the Quarry swim again at that point, but thought we were supposed to do it backward. So we ran to the aid station and asked the volunteer, who told us that we were supposed to do another normal Quarry swim. So back to where we'd just come from, then the Quarry trail again down to the water. On the way we saw the guy with the bucket again, walking down the trail. I was starting to get suspicious that bucket guy was actually an unsettled ghost, haunting this part of the trail with his bucket.


Then another 400m Quarry swim! Uneventful. The sun was no longer an issue, so obviously it was Trista's turn to lead again.


We failed to get any photos of the Quarry, so here's a great one from the kayak volunteer!


Hit the aid station again after the swim, and I really wished I'd brought my reusable cup with me. I'd brought it in the car, but hadn't started the race with it because there hadn't been anything about it being cupless. But unfortunately they'd run out of cups. Fortunately Trista was willing to share hers, even though she had assuredly peed on it more than once already. Quick rinse. All good.  


Then a ~3.5 mile run that I don't remember much of! It started on a paved trail, then eventually veered off into the trees. I think this was the run that had more obstacles: fallen trees and the like. And had a part that I thought was fairly Austin-traily. Rock ledges and dirt trail.


Trista's favorite part, and some hardcore parkour.


I think this is also where I performed my 5 minute anti-climactic not-fall. I tripped over something and pitched forward, and then fell forward so slowly while running, grabbed onto some foliage as I was falling forward, and somehow managed to recover and stay upright. Cartoon physics! Evidently it was loud, because Trista heard the whole thing but had no idea what was going on. It was one of those falls that takes so long you really have a chance to ponder all the various ways it's going to hurt when you hit the ground. I was glad none of those scenarios played out.


Unrelated, I also turned my left ankle on basically nothing at all. As one does. It scared me a little, because I couldn't initially tell if was badly turned, so I told Trista I needed to walk for a second. We did, and then it felt pretty okay, so we ran again, and thankfully it never bothered me again during the race.


Eventually we made it to some water again, this time another river swim! I never knew which rivers we were swimming in as we were swimming in them, but evidently this one was the French Broad River, which I dubbed the French Riviera once I knew that.


We hopped out onto a flat rock in the water to finish our transition to the swim, and there was a guy just offshore in a kayak. We joked with him that our transition wasn't going to be nearly as fast or impressive as the LAST team who came through, and he said actually we were beating them, because one of them had broken their goggles. He started to tell the story, and Trista was like "Wait, wait, back up and start again" and turned on the GoPro. GOTTA get this story on film.


Slow transition due to slow transition story.


Of course, by the time he told us the whole story and we asked follow-up questions, by the time we were finally ready to swim, it probably took us way longer than their slow transition had taken. #noregrets


Then we hopped in the water and IT WAS COLD. SIGNIFICANTLY colder than the Quarry, and significantly colder even than the first swim, which was allegedly the coldest! Shockingly cold.


Then we started swimming, and I realized that, even though I'd mentioned earlier that I needed to zip my wetsuit back up before we started swimming, I definitely hadn't, and I was taking on a lot of shockingly cold water. Stopped to zip that up. SUPER FAST TRANSITION!


The kayaker started to come with us to escort us, but we said there was another team behind us, and one of them historically doesn't love cold water, so could he please hang back and wait to escort them. Probably neither one of would need the kayak. Hopefully. But this way if they needed him, he'd be there, and if we needed him, he'd eventually make it to us as they came through. 


We soldiered on into the cold water! It actually felt really good, just very unexpected. We were very glad for the wetsuit at that point, even if it isn't the warmest wetsuit.


Theoretically this was a 1200m swim, some current-assist, though it didn't seem nearly as currenty as the first swim. I know this because we stopped twice to take GoPro videos, because we are serious athletes committed to racing.


All the videos Trista had taken were in runs, and I thought maybe she might want a swim video. So I tapped her foot and suggested if she wanted swim video, this was a neat place to do it. Very pretty, big river, not currently any boats trying to kill us. (Which wasn't always the case.)


I thought we'd figure out how to get video of one or more of us swimming, but evidently that's not really a thing one does. Or maybe one needs special tools/holders or something. Anyway, we took video instead of us just hanging out in the middle of the river. And bothering some guys who were smoking and fishing. Their answer was suspicious, since it seemed much colder than that. #sideeye


Oh, and Trista did take video of me swimming. She'd say "Start swimming" and I'd swim, figuring she was gonna swim behind me one-armed, maybe, and take video with the other. But no, she stayed upright, sitting on her buoy, filming, and I was having to DRAG her by the tether behind me. Nice mid-race strength workout. Trista sounds like a real joy. 


Tortured swimming.


This swim felt long, not because of the cold, but because we couldn't see the exit buoy until we got very close to it. Actually, we got close enough to see it, then as we got closer, it disappeared again! Weird river geography problems. Fortunately once it appeared again, we were basically done with the swim. 


As we neared the buoy at the shore, we stopped to try to figure out exactly where we were aiming for. Looking for the logical/intended place to scramble up onto shore. Then a disembodied voice told us to swim up to the buoy and exit just before it. Trista said it was neat that this was an area with talking trees, but I thanked the random giant orange reflective sign that was up on shore. Turns out we were both wrong, and there was a volunteer up on the shore on a ledge!


We swam until we could stand, and found the shallows to be muddy and with a lot of random trip hazards. And Trista tripped over every one of them. There WAS a lot going on underwater, but also Trista just seemed to be having real clumsiness problems navigating this part. This was our first indication that perhaps things were getting weird.


We laughed at her clumsiness as we got up on the shore and tried to figure out how to get up on the ledge where the volunteer was. He said to let him know if we thought he could help, and I'm like "Yep, gimme your hand, dude, you're pulling us up," which he happily did. We probably could have scrambled up somehow (again, questionable given things getting weird), but if a young, strong guy is willing to help my ass up, I'm all in.


We had been commenting (while laughing and falling over) about how much colder the water was than we had expected, and he said other people had been saying that, too. (Those other people were probably just Lee and Marcus, since short course didn't do this swim.) As he pulled me up, he said, "Wow, yeah, your hands are really cold."


And now things got silly. 


We ran up to a paved path and hooked a right. Most of this run was on this greenway. Shoulda been easy. But we were a DISASTER.


We had known it was colder than expected in the water, but as I said, while we were swimming it wasn't bad. Somehow now that we were out of the water, our bodies and our brains just fell apart. Trista's Raynaud's syndrome had caused her fingers to turn white and have no feeling. Both of our feet were frozen and had no feeling. And we were completely scatterbrained. (Quiet, you. MORE THAN NORMAL, okay?)


I found myself running super close to Trista, and I realized it was because I felt like we were still tethered together, so I had to stick right next to her. We were not. We never tether on the run.


We kept finding ourselves walking without even intending to. This was not a walk-worthy run section. This was flat, paved, beautiful (if boring) trail. But we just kept losing the motivation to run.


Questionable, you guys.


To add insult to injury, it was hot at this point. Mid 80s, and the greenway was not shaded, so full sun, and we were wearing wetsuits. Somehow we were both frozen and overheating. I said we were like fishsticks, frozen on the inside but burnt on the outside (totally stolen from the Simpsons, like most of the things I say, really), and we declared ourselves Team Fishsticks! It sorta sounds like Team Shitshow, but is more family friendly, for our younger fans (who do not exist).


Team Fishsticks!


It was mid/late-morning on a lovely Sunday and the greenway was full of couples and families out enjoying a stroll, and then there was us, wearing wetsuits and swimcaps, buoys strapped to our backs, weaving like drunkards and laughing hysterically. Introducing the world at large to the sport of swimrun.


Oh, I have no data at all for the French Riviera swim, because evidently I stopped my watch at the beginning of the swim. Did I accidentally hit the button, or did I instinctively hit the button when we stopped to hear the Zaddy goggle story? No idea. But when we finished the swim and I went to hit the split button, there I was at the stop screen. I hit start again and kept going. It took two "you've run an incredibly unrealistically fast mile!" beeps of my watch for me to realize that it was still in swim mode for this run, and finally I hit split again to get it in run mode. So I'm missing ~22 minutes of data from the race.


Somehow we made it back to the Quarry again, and then it was time for one last Quarry swim! 


I should note that, disappointingly, bucketghost was not here this time, so I guess he settled whatever earthly troubles he had and moved on. Or.. went home with his fish. Whichever.


This swim was uneventful other than the snake at the swim entrance. I wouldn't even have seen it if Trista hadn't pointed it out, because it was tiny and adorable and zigzagging through the shallows. Opinions may differ on the adorableness and welcomeness of said snake. He did not bother us, though.


Easy cruise across the Quarry, thanking the kayaker for keeping us alive all day.


This time Trista swam UNDER the buoy line, just to keep me on my toes. (I had no choice but to follow, or we might STILL be there trying to untangle the tether from the buoy line.)


The Quarry got busier over the course of the day, as people woke up and got done with church, etc, but it fortunately never got as congested as it had been in the late afternoon on Saturday. Not all that many drunk innertubers to dodge. But we DID get to enjoy a super thick cloud of cotton candy vape smoke as we ran up the hill to hit the aid station one last time.


Okay! Next to last run! Last "long" run! And what promised to be the most fun run!


A volunteer earlier had told us that she wasn't sure if she'd still be there next time we came through, so if she wasn't, we were to go LEFT after the aid station. She told us this as we were at the same point, going right instead. Got it. Next time, go left instead. And there was a volunteer there, at the left turn. Easy enough.


The volunteer said we were about to get to do a swim! We love swimming! It seemed a little weird she used the words "about to", since we still had almost 4 really technical, hilly miles to go, but whatever! Yay!


We took a right at the next volunteer, and yet another volunteer said he'd run with us for this part. We cheered for that, but then realized something.. was not right here. Trista asked one of the volunteers if this path led to the long, bouldery part, because we hadn't done that part yet, and the volunteer looked as confused as we were. We said, "Um, we're long course." And that's when we realized we were very much doing it wrong.


Back the way we'd come! Yes, we were supposed to take a left from the aid station, but the left was almost IMMEDIATELY after the aid station, and we had not seen  the flag, because we thought we knew which left it was, AND there was a volunteer  there, AND nobody told us any differently.


The volunteer walked us back to the main road in, which we had to cross, and said perhaps we could kinda bushwhack over to get on the proper trail. It sorta seemed like cutting the course, except we'd just added SO much extra distance by going the wrong way, it would more than make up for it. And it was a moot point anyway, because the foliage was way too thick to get through, so we hoofed it all the way back down to the aid station, found the right trail head, and were now officially finally on the next to last run!


This run was ridiculous, you guys. It started out straight uphill, past a graveyard. Solid, reassuring start. 


Upupupup, until we got to an overlook and looked down to see the Quarry! Remember that picture from earlier? Now we were here:


We briefly considered a cliff jump, but decided maybe it was a bad idea.


Then some winding, beautiful, fun trail, and then a volunteer telling us that they were pretty sure the volunteers further up the course had already left, so we were on our own. Ha. Okay, no problem.


THEN the fun began.


It started with a set of slick stone stairs that basically took us down into another world. Fortunately this other world had OSHA, and so said stairs had a handrail, because those stones were slick, and I made at least one attempt to wipe out going down them.


The next 40 minutes or so were just otherworldly. I guess it was a former quarry, and the whole thing was just giant stones and blocks, all covered in beautiful green moss.


To get in, we went through a tunnel, the Keyhole, and above that tunnel we found one Marcus Barton! Who had finished his race, drank a beer with his partner (who had to rush home after), then grabbed a freshly-batteried GoPro and come back out to meet us so he could film some footage of this area, and just enjoy our giddy, awed reaction to the whole thing.


Man, people just leave these things anywhere!


And then into and up the rocks! It was indescribable, which is exactly why Trista carried the GoPro this whole time. So many times in swimrun we want to share the things we experience, but words don't do them justice. Now we had proof!


I adore that we have these videos because Marcus came back to play!


We hopped across rocks with giant chasms between them. We climbed up ledges. We slid down slick ramps.


Dropping the GoPro, climbing some boulders, yelling back and forth to Karen and Meredith.


There was one ledge we'd been warned about: the RD was also a short, short-legged person, and she warned this was challenging. And I was unable to get up it on my own. I gave it a couple tries, and then managed to get up with a LOT of help from my friends (Marcus pushing me up while Trista pulled me up). If I'd been there by myself, I honestly don't if I could have gotten up there (though obviously I would have been a lot more motivated to find a way if it was my only option!). If Marcus hadn't been handy, Trista probably would have had to hop back down and give me a hand-stirrup assist. We would have made it work, but we were so glad Marcus happened to be there for us!


Spoiler: It did not happen for me. I made Marcus stop recording for further attempts.


We found a turtle. In the middle of a rock quarry. Not near water.


Turtle Speedgoats!


At this point, Karen and Meredith were somewhere behind us, unknown exactly where, but in yelling distance. We yelled a lot about the turtle, so that they didn't miss it.


Sometimes we'd get to a big wall of rocks and have no idea where to go. There was nowhere TO go. And then we'd look up, and there'd be a flag further up the wall. And the game was to try to figure out how the heck to get up there! Like climbing a slick, mossy jenga puzzle.


Darlene, do not read the following paragraph! Omg my poor mom 🤣


At one point we got to a neat series of rocks, and Trista decided to try to get her daily handstand photo here. She climbed up, and Marcus and I stayed one level down, on different sides, both filming with Go Pros. She gave it a few tries, but it was obviously incredibly intimidating to kick up into a handstand on a rocky ledge in the middle of a quarry, and we finally decided maybe this just wasn't to be. The good news is, no Tristas were injured due to our dumb ideas!


We finally climbed (literally) our way up to a visible, official trail again. Yay, that was amazing!


But Marcus was like, "We still haven't even gotten to the best part!"


This part was super confusing, because that trail had flags that marked both right and left. Marcus told us to go right, and we yelled down to Meredith and Karen to take a right when they got to the trail.


And then we went right, and it was just as good as promised. It looked like some sort of Mayan ruins. At one point, Marcus hung back as we got to a dead end, and he said he wanted to see if we could figure it out. We glanced around and found a pink flag on the far side of a flat rock we had to hop over. And then it was down down down the rocks into a pit, which looked for all the world like a set from Indiana Jones. We were giddy, it was so amazing. There were two caves down there, one completely covered in a grate, and one that we briefly thought may be the only way to get out? Was that where we were supposed to go?! Okay, maybe we should have paid better attention to the course preview. Marcus said this was the turnaround, and we just had to climb back up and out.


I hope nobody else was out there trying to, I dunno, enjoy the sounds of nature.


It doesn't get much more "swimrun is not just triathlon without a bike" than this entire run leg of Swimrun Knox. It was insane and so much fun.


Maaaybe my new favorite picture of us, especially knowing how many times we tried.


While we geeked out in the pit, Marcus went to make sure Karen and Meredith were doing okay. He rejoined us as we got back to where the trail split, and we still hadn't seen them on that out and back. Marcus said they must have taken a left instead of a right, and that when he got to the next volunteer, the volunteer said they'd been through about 5 minutes ago. We were sad they seemed to have missed our favorite part of the course.


The rest of that leg was relatively tame in comparison. There was little bushwhacking section that Marcus said was a loop that came right back to this trail, so if we wanted to skip it, we could. But even though the race wasn't doing awards or places or a podium, we wanted to do the whole course as close as we could, if we could. (Obviously we weren't doing a tremendous job of doing it right so far, but at least we were overdoing it, if anything.)


So we did that loop, then finally back to take the left turn and head downdowndown (steep down!). Marcus took off at that point, trusting that the course was obvious enough at this point that we could figure it out. (Bold assumption, but turned out to be true.)  And then somehow emerged from the woods to cross the railroad tracks and end up BACK at the aid station! We'd headed out the exact opposite direction, and I'd had no idea we were looping all the way around and back where we'd been for run#2 earlier! (Is this when/where the volunteer meant when he said "Later"? I still have no idea, honestly!)


As we got near the aid station, we saw Marcus at the turn, and he had something in his hands. Turned out to be two cans of Coke. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. He held them out and said he was sorry they were a little warm. They were not. He is a liar. They were ice cold. And so good. We walked and drank and it was amazing. Then we handed off the remains, because it's probably not advisable to chug an entire can of Coke before getting in the water to swim 800m.


And we just did the same left turn we'd done earlier, which was now the CORRECT answer! Now we WERE headed for a swim! Yaaay!


As we hooked a right to take the trail down to the river, we saw our volunteer friend from earlier who had said he'd run with us. He was headed the opposite direction now, but I made a joke about how he'd said he'd run with us, and he turned around and started running with us! In cargo shorts, and socks and sandals! And, I mean, I'm not gonna claim that we were dominating a Boston-qualifying pace, but *I* probably couldn't have run with us if I was wearing cargo shorts with socks and sandals! Trista asked his name ("What's your name, socks'n'sandals?") and he told us he was Jesse. Thank you, Jesse. All the volunteers out there rocked, but you really went above and beyond.


Team Adorkable, with wingmen Marcus and Jesse, made their final approach to the dock for their final swim of the day, one last 800m river swim.


Serious athlete vibes.


We all hopped in together (Trista, me, and Marcus), and then we followed our personal kayak escort down the river! (Marcus was just filming our entrance, he didn't swim with us. Though I never checked to verify that at the time, and I was wondering the whole time if we were gonna get out and find him there just behind us.) 


A volunteer took a picture of Marcus taking a video. Walking on water!


I adore this video Marcus took for so many reasons, and it really showcases our fishstickiness.


We hadn't really gotten instructions on where to swim to, but since we had a kayak escort, it didn't really matter. I wasn't seeing any buoys to aim for, but then another kayak appeared from a cove, and our kayaker said she was handing us off to this volunteer to bring us home.


And it's a good thing we had an escort, because we made a sharp left turn into a cove I never, ever would have seen if we hadn't been following someone. And then another sharp left, and we were headed for the shore!


Our kayaker guided us in, and there was Marcus waiting for us again. We had to climb up onto the bank, and I managed to get completely covered in mud doing so, just in time for our last run with no opportunity to clean up before the finish line! Bleeeeh.


My buoy after the race. I don't even know how that happened!


It was pointed out that this swim exit was also our first swim entrance! I had no idea, obviously, having had no concept of where we ever were.


Look how quickly and efficiently we transition from swim to run! Ha.


And then the same run as the first run, back to the finish line! Marcus hung with us until we got close, then peeled off at the finish chute.


 I thiiiink this is the last run, based on how muddy my paddle is.


As we got to the finish line, RD Muna held up a bottle of water and yelled "I have one bottle of water left!", and we jostled to cross the finish line first to get it.


Marcus peeled off so he could beat us to the finish line and get video. He's okay, that Marcus.


Overall it was just a fun, amazing day. Lots of things went wrong, course-wise, but it was a challenging, beautiful course, the volunteers and staff were amazing,  and we clearly spent a silly amount of time making videos and staring around in wonder. We got to practice a lot of things we might use in future races, we got to get a solid day of training in together, and I got to spend a weekend hanging out with some of my very best friends, and it was just.. fun. So glad that it came together and we managed to make it work.


Finish line hugs. 💕

And then lunch, a 4 hour drive back to Atlanta, and 41 hours after I got on a plane in Austin, I got on a plane back to Austin. Surgical strike race weekend. 


Headed home, 11pm flight.


Fingers crossed our next race will be Rockman in Norway in late August.


Swimrun vibes.

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