Swimrun NC 2021 race report.
Blah blah covid blah blah, we all know how 2020 went, and our registration was deferred to 2021, where the race would take place a couple weekends later in the year than normal. Which was unfortunate, because it ended up being the exact same day as Swimrun Austin! My hometown race! The race I'd like to do every year, because it's the only one that I can easily get to, being an hour from my house!
But we were already committed to NC, and honestly, NC is a much more appealing course to me. I mean, it completely does NOT play to our strengths: it's very run heavy, very swim light, intense uphill, technical downhill. It's a tough, tough course, which is why you have to apply and get accepted to even participate. But that's ideal swimrun for us. The more ridiculous, the better. Also it gives out money to the podium folks, which means it's a VERY competitive field, and we are not.
So as people flew into Austin for Swimrun Austin, I flew out of Austin for Swimrun NC.
It was sad to have the swimrun family split, and we missed the folks doing Austin, and definitely had FOMO for that race even as we enjoyed our own. But it was still so great to get to see people again and hang out at packet pickup.
And do our now-traditional out and back shakeout run to Sexy Rock!
We spent the entire day dithering over what wetsuit to wear. It dominated every conversation. I almost envied those who only have one wetsuit (aka Us In 2019), so didn't have to play this guessing game. I had brought two with me: The more minimal ARK Korp, which I wore in Lake James, which had cold air temps and cold water, and I was fine. And the super warm ARK Ornö X, which I wore at Orcas, which had cold air temps and cold water, and I was also fine.
The weather promised to start in the lower 40s, then warm up into the lower 60s, with sun. That'd probably be fine for the Korp for me. Except when we got to packet pickup, Marcus measured the water temp in the river, and it was 49 degrees. Ouch. But the lake, where we'd be doing most of our swimming, had been measured in the mid-60s the weekend before, and THAT should be fine for the Korp. There was much debate.
Ultimately the other people making this decision decided to wear the X, and I am nothing if not a follower, so I went with the X, as well. Plus sleeves, plus gloves.
Plus bat socks. Trista and I had decided on a pair of matching socks, but we had so much fun with our matching skull socks in 2019, I surprised everyone with matching bat socks, and they were a big hit with the crowd during the race.
We rented airbnb-style RVs at the RV park 10 minutes away from the race, which was super convenient, super fun (there were 4 of us in neighboring RVs!) and super sketchy. There's a whole Story involved in the RV Trista, Meredith, Hope, and I stayed in.
Alas, not a single bathroom chicken.
Thanks to Daylight Savings Time, we got a bonus hour to sleep, that Trista frittered away by not being able to sleep at all, and we cruised up to the race site with plenty of time to hit the portapotty, suit up, socialize, then gather up for a masked-while-all-gathered-together start line.
And then we were off!
In 2019, we learned that our usual "don't care about where we are in the start chute, don't care how fast we run the first run" strategy really didn't do us any favors, because as soon as the trail becomes single track, you're pretty stuck in your position for several miles before there are any good places to pass. So you're a slave to the conga line on the trail, and then probably stuck in a queue at the waterfalls, hoping the people ahead of you are aggressive climbers, and not timid and slow. It's understandable that one would be, but we're not, so we wanted to be ahead of that, if we could!
Which means we discussed an aggressive start. Not the 6 minute pace the people at the front would be doing, who were also trying to avoid what I described above, except like 5 minutes faster per mile, but at least trying to get to the trail head ahead of a few more people this time, instead of literally being the second to last team to the trail like in 2019.
By "we discussed an aggressive start", I mean we said if we cared, we should probably actually do a warmup, and then try to run hard down the gravel road.
And then we did neither of those things.
That's not strictly true. We kept a better pace than we did in 2019 at the start, and as a result, we DID end up in a much better position when we hit the trail this time. We really only experienced any backup at the first water crossing at Sexy Rock, and that wasn't bad at all.
In fact, before too long, we were at the front of a little conga line of people. Meaning WE were the problem, really, but we offered to let people scooch by us often, and nobody wanted to. Probably because we're really fun, and who wants to abandon that?
I joke, but we really did have a fun little group. Team Ben and Anna (not their team name) ended up behind us, and then Team Mike and Mike (also not their team name) ended up behind them. Both of those teams are significantly faster than us on the run, but they both seemed happy to chill out and pace themselves off our slow asses for a couple miles at the start. Meanwhile I was feeling a lot of pressure to set a good pace so I wasn't slowing everyone down at the front!
It was a somewhat quieter than normal start for us, because Trista was carrying the GoPro, and she dropped back to take some footage, putting at least Ben and Anna, and maybe the Mikes(?), between us. I couldn't ever look behind me to see what was going on, but when I'd yell out to make sure she was still back there, she sounded several people away from me. And I didn't want to yell constantly, so aside from me repeatedly saying, "It's SO PRETTY here!", there were several moments of just nice, quiet, peaceful trail running. Rare for us. We like to enjoy nature by being really (respectfully) obnoxious.
All good things must come to an end, though, and this ended with my right shoe coming untied. I'm used to my Torrents slowly getting looser and looser, especially after swims, and eventually having to retie them so that I have some stability on downhills, but we hadn't swum! And this was COMPLETELY untied! WTF, Torrents? (Spoiler: This happened TWO MORE TIMES over the course of the race! Yes, yes, I will be looking into putting lacelocks in my Torrents. I hate doing that, though.)
I yelled to Trista that I was going to have to stop to tie my shoe, found a place I could sort of safely step off the trail, then watched like 7 teams run by us as I fumbled through tying my shoe while wearing gloves. Not easy. But I made sure it was a decent tie, so that I wouldn't have to do this again. (/facepalm)
Back on the trail, and now we were pretty alone out there for a bit, running through the super tall yellow and red trees, just remembering how beautiful it was out there.
Also sweating. It turns out.. it was Korp weather. We were Ornö X-wearers in a world of Korp weather. And it was warm. I mean, it was still in the 40s, probably, but it was too warm to be wearing a warm wetsuit and sleeves and gloves. Eventually I had to take off the gloves, because it was just too much, and I was overheating. Taking off gloves helped a bit, and I decided it was going to have to be enough, because the effort to take the sleeves off was going to be mighty indeed, and we were fast approaching the first waterfall section. So I just complained as the sweat dripped down my arms and into my bare hands. Creepy, creepy feeling.
We ended up running with Derek and Jenn through this section (Team TingleToes, since I'm misnaming all the teams), and it was fun to have someone to chat with again. We usually spend so much of our races just the two of us, and so far this race was like a big party!
And then the waterfalls. I wish I could do the waterfalls justice with a description, but it's impossible. You run up a shallow stream, over a fallen tree, under a low ledge, behind a beautiful waterfall. It's just otherworldly.
There was a volunteer taking pictures of teams behind the waterfall, and you bet your ass we stopped to get our picture taken. It's funny to watch video of the frontrunner teams coming through the waterfall section, all running through full bore. Then by the time it gets back to us, teams are waiting back behind the rocks to let the team in front of them get their photo taken, before moving up and stopping to pose, then moving out for the next team. We're Very Serious Athletes.
We had caught up to the back of a clump of teams through the waterfall section, and as we moved into the more technical climb up the cliff, we got intensely lucky. All the teams ahead of us went the wrong way.
They didn't go FAR the wrong way, just kept going straight when they should have taken a right. Jenn and Derek were at the back of that group, and called out to us that they were going the wrong way. We cut to the right, and suddenly instead of being at the back of a pack of people, we were at the very front! And it was PERFECT timing, because we were at the base of the hardest climb on that waterfall section, with a rope and a lot of sketchy hand- and foot-holds, that a lot of people have problems with, and go up very slowly.
Not us! We flleeewww up that climb, with nobody in front of us to slow us down! Serendipity.
I mean, all those other teams passed us back when we got back on a normal trail again, but still! Perfectly timed perfection.
And then suddenly straight from magical waterfalls to.. a parking lot! Full of cars and other humans who were not dressed like weird sea creatures!
Which meant, uh oh, we had to SWIM soon. The problem with the first run of a swimrun being 4.5 miles is that by the time you have to swim, you've forgotten how to swim. But we like to swim, so we were excited!
In 2019, we did the whole first run cabbed down (not wearing the top of the our wetsuit, with it unzipped and puddled around our waist), because it was so warm, and we used this parking lot to suit back up, because we'd been told that the lake was just on the other side of the parking lot. And we were NOT good at that, and it involved a lot of walking and struggling and cursing, so fortunately this time, despite being sweaty disasters, we were already fully suited, and could just cruise straight through the parking lot.
We had a little confusion once we got to the lake, because despite the fact that we KNEW that this part of the race had been reversed from 2019, muscle memory really wanted us to head to the left and straight into the lake to start our swim. Instead we cut right to do a little run along the shore, down the hill we previously had to run up, then up the steep hill we previously slid down, sometimes on our butts, in a landslide of gross mud. This time, without a bunch of wet swimmers churning it up, it was just a steep, slightly moist, calf-destroying ascent.
And then finally a swim! Just as a little race overview, this is how this section of the race goes:
0.2 mile run (that we'd just done), 25 meter swim, 0.2 mile run, 500m swim
Then repeat that whole thing again.
You can practically jump across the first swim (okay, fine, I can't jump 25m), so while we put on goggles and paddles, we didn't bother to take our buoys off our backs. We just charged into the mid-60s lake water and HOLY FUCK THIS WATER IS NOT IN THE MID-60s.
We made it to the other side, emerged, and said "THAT WAS REALLY FUCKING COLD."
So that was an unexpected and unpleasant surprise! When you're expecting mid-60s and it's face-numbingly cold, it's a bit of a (literal) shock to the system! As we ran the 0.2 along the shoreline to get to the next swim entrance, I suggested that perhaps this next swim would somehow be significantly warmer! Somehow. Even though it was in the same lake.
It was not, turns out.
It was really cold. We usually have one or two times that we stop in a swim and make a comment to each other or something, but I think this time we knew we just needed to get through this swim as fast as humanly possible, before we got irreversibly chilled. As the person drafting, I theoretically don't ever need to sight. I DO, because I've tried, and I can't not. Control issues. But I was EXTRA sighting this time, just as a chance to get my face out of that water. We later found out the water temp was 52. That explains a lot.
It was a mess out there. I'm not sure we saw any teams swimming right next to each other, or drafting like we were. We'd see one teammate doing backstroke, watching behind them for their teammate who was way far back. Or we'd see one teammate with no sign at all of the other teammate. It was like an ad for Using a Tether. Use a tether, people!
It was cold, but it was not immediately-deadly cold. The really bad part was knowing that we were about to have to do this again. This was "okay, we lived through that, and we are better people for it, now let's never do it again" cold, not "let's go run a couple feet and then get right back in, yaaay!" cold. So it was a tough swim mentally, knowing that, on top of being a tough swim physically.
But we got through round 1, and headed back to land for round 2!
Oh, and we finally learned what the announcer knew about us. He was collecting data from teams at packet pickup, so that he could drop fun facts about people on race day as they went by. He started to ask us, then was like "Oh, I already have something for you!" Trista and I had both agreed neither of us sent him any info, but he swore he had something, and Trista was suspicious that I was lying. Turns out he announced that Amy likes puppies and Trista likes hot donuts! Which.. I mean.. accurate! But we realized it must have been Marcus feeding him info, and that was pretty freakin' hysterical. Thanks for lifting our moods right when we needed it, Marcus!
We stopped at the aid station at the start of the second loop, and they had HOT BROTH. Exactly what we needed. Except it was roughly the temperature of the sun, which is maybe a little TOO hot. So we sipped at that for a few seconds to try to warm up, and up ran Team Ben and Anna! Evidently we had passed them on the swim, and I'm now regretting saying that the other teams out there were a mess. Probably not you guys! I didn't even see you! We compared notes on how stupidly cold it was, then set out to start the second loop.
Which was mostly just as miserable as the first. Somehow the second 500m swim felt a little warmer? But it was probably just knowing what to expect this time. It was still painfully cold. But we got through it. And we saw Meredith and Hope as we started the long swim! It was really good to get to check in with them.
Once we'd completed our second loop, it was time to hit the trail again, this time to head up toward Moore's Wall.
Coming out of that freezing water, all we wanted to do was walk. We were a mess. Our faces and lips were so cold, our words were slurred. We were weaving a little bit. But we knew if we walked, it would just take us that much longer to warm up, so we settled into a sustainable shuffle.
I very much regretted having left my gloves off for those swims, but I never even considered putting them on after I realized how cold the water was. Just didn't even think about it. But after the second 500m swim, I had trouble removing my paddles from my hands because my hands were so red and swollen.
The good(?) news is, what followed was the perfect way to warm up.
We remembered from 2019 that it climbs for a while, then levels off at the campground, then the 600+ terrible stairs started. We kept waiting for it to level off and the real climb to Moore's Wall to begin. We saw Sonja, who had brought her healing pelvis out to volunteer since she wasn't quite ready to race! We saw Caleb, which was super confusing, because we expected him to be up at the front of the race, but here he was not even kitted up on the side of the trail. We slowly, slowly, slowly thawed.
And I was getting really impatient, because I was ready for the stairs to Moore's Wall to begin, so that we could get it over with! When we finally got confirmation that, in fact, we were already on the climb, we were at stair 500 of 600+ (there are markers, we evidently just missed the first 499). So that was a nice surprise! Almost at the top!
The stairs were as terrible as I remembered. Each step is very tall. They're an awkward height for a regular person. For a person with corgi legs, each step requires a whole lot of effort. And complaining. Whenever there was a way to go around the edges of the stairs and just walk up the trail, we did that, even if it meant adding on a little distance.
In 2019, Trista hated this part. I kept pulling ahead, because my natural trudging pace up these stairs was faster than hers, and she made it very clear how much she did not enjoy this climb.
I don't think she necessarily ENJOYED the climb this year, but we've been doing a LOT of hill work this year to prepare for (sob) Rockman, and then Orcas, and it has clearly paid off, because instead of me dragging her up the climb this year, she led the whole way. (Thank you, Coach Nicolas!) We kept a steady, solid pace the whole way up, and by the time we got to the top, I was fully thawed, and Trista was as thawed as she ever is in cold races, which meant she still couldn't feel her feet and hands, but she otherwise felt pretty okay.
And then we were at the top! Victory! (Uh, except we were only halfway through the race!)
As we climbed the last bit to the overlook, several teams and friends were heading back down, and we got to give kudos and high fives and well wishes. We grabbed our mandatory bracelet that proves we made it all the way to the top, and then it was PHOTO TIME!
The photo isn't mandatory, but everyone, even the front runners, stop for it, because.. look at that view! Note: having done this race twice, I have now spent about 5 total seconds ACTUALLY looking at that view. Mostly I've seen it in these pictures, because you're so busy getting the picture taken and then getting back into the race! Some day we'll have to go back and just hike up there for fun, to actually look at the view.
Because Trista makes even poorer life decisions when she's hypothermic, she decided to try to do a handstand at the top of Moore's Wall. I am in no position to criticize other peoples' poor life decisions, so of course I did what I could to help her. She tried uphill. She tried downhill. Then she realized this was probably a really bad idea, and we scrapped the whole thing and got back in the race. Much to the delight of the team directly behind us, who were waiting to get their picture taken so THEY could get back in the race.
But at least she can now say she's done MOST of a handstand on the top of Moore's Wall!
We got a drink of water as we headed back to the trail (THANK YOU to the volunteers who lug gallons of water up to the top for us, it's hard enough to get your person up there, I can't imagine carrying water up!), and then began the descent!
We like to say that this race doesn't play to our strengths, because it's relatively swim-light, Trista hates uphills, and I'm not a good technical descender. But we've both come a long way in 2 years, because as much as we've been doing UPhill work, we've also been doing downhill work.
This descent is very technical, with a lot of different ways that you can twist an ankle or take a fall, and caution is definitely the better part of valor. But caution isn't very fun, so instead we tore down that hill as fast as we could! Well, as fast as *I* could. Trista did still have to hang back for me a couple times, but not nearly as much as last time!
We ended up passing back several of the teams who had been ahead of us at the top of Moore's Wall, and not gonna lie, that's a fun feeling. I can see how this "passing other people" thing might be appealing. Just kidding, our primary motivation is always going to be having the most fun out there, not being competitive.
Shoutout to the guy who was just out for a morning hike, heard us barreling toward him on the downhill, politely stepped off to let us by, and greeted us with a friendly greeting from behind the tree he was next to, who caused Trista to jump about 70 feet up in the air and go "AAHHHHH!!!" That was truly one of the best moments from the race. Solid startle reflexes, teamie.
Once we were back on flat land again, most of those teams passed us back, but it was nice while it lasted.
And then, oof, we were back at the lake again. To do that whole shortswim,longswim,shortswim,longswim series again. We hoped that a couple extra hours of sunlight might have warmed it up to a balmy 75 degree water temp, but we were fairly sure that wasn't going to be the case.
I DID manage to spend the last few minutes before we got back to the water somehow cramming my wet neoprene gloves back onto my swollen hands. It was not easy, but I will say it was ABSOLUTELY worth it. My hands felt so much better having something, anything, between them and that cold water.
This round of swims was fine. We knew what to expect. We know how to suffer. Wendy and Richard were volunteering at the long swim entrance, and it was really great to have some friendly faces out there. We managed to go the wrong way on one of the short runs, despite having done this REPEATEDLY at this point, and ended up at a road we didn't even know was right there. That really drove home how discombobulating that cold water can be, and reminded us we really needed to watch out for each other, and make sure we were doing okay, cognitively, during and after all these swims.
Other than feeling EXTREMELY sluggish on the long swims, which is a little scary when you KNOW that you should stay upbeat to keep your body as warm as possible, we got through this part without incident, and it was time for the next waterfall!
I actually remember in 2019 being extremely negative about this part of the race, because I thought after the last lake swim, we headed back toward the finish line/river swim, and instead we turned AWAY from the finish line, and it was a downhill that we'd have to come back up, and then it was really technical/sketchy, and then there were STAIRS, which is just cruel, and then the aforementioned uphill back to the road again.
All of that was still true! But somehow knowing it was going to happen made it a lot more tolerable. I will say that it was more technical than I remember it being. I remember having to slide/swing/drop down into the gorge, but I don't remember there being such a sketchy rope-assisted climb to get back out. It was fun! It was made more difficult by the fact that we were in NO way thawed from the last swim, and we were super clumsy and frozen, but rock scrambles are just good fun.
Those stairs were still cruel and terrible, though.
And THEN we were headed back to the finish line/last swim!
One thing that definitely didn't change from 2019 was that this last 5 mile run somehow seemed about 10 miles long.
The last run is almost exclusively the course from the first run, but somehow it seems both longer and more technical on the way back. Despite the fact that it's net downhill on the way back! I think it's just that you're tired and clumsy, so the leaf-covered rocks and roots all seem much sneakier and more treacherous.
As we started the last run, two female teams that we'd passed during the second round of lake swims passed us back again. For several miles, they were ahead of us, but still mostly in sight. We decided to make it a goal to hang relatively near them if we could, and then see if we could pass them in the final swim. They were clearly better runners, and we could have summoned the energy to pass them on the run, but we didn't have enough energy to MAINTAIN a lead if they tried at all to pass us back. So we just bided our time and tried to stay strong and upright through this last run.
Between that and playing our favorite end-race game, Where's Marcus?, we managed to muddle our way through all 10 miles of our last 5 mile run. (Marcus finishes hours ahead of us, drinks a beer, has a snack, takes a shower, changes clothes, writes the Great American Novel, probably does his taxes, and then makes his way backward on the course to take pictures and videos of the people still coming in, and eventually finds us and harasses us for a bit. One of my favorite parts of every race!)
When Marcus found us, he said "There's two female teams just ahead of you!" and we were like "WE KNOW! We're on it!"
When we got to the swim entrance, we tried to transition as efficiently as possible. Grabbed the last bracelet (oops, we'd gotten one somewhere else, too; maybe second waterfall?) from the volunteer, waded into the water, prepped goggles, buoy, and paddles, and took off.
We'd decided not to tether for this swim. We knew it was going to be very shallow, and we needed to be able to do whatever we needed to do as individuals to keep from getting stuck on rocks or snagged on anything. I had claimed the tether for the last run, since Trista carried it for the first run (which we also did untethered, because the waterfalls meant we would have to untether anyway, so we didn't bother), and I had it very terribly and haphazardly wrapped around my body in various directions. Which turned out to be TERRIBLE when I put my buoy in place, and it was practically choking me. But no time for fixing, it's only a couple hundred meters of suffering!
I was a little afraid that being untethered, Trista would just completely leave me behind, but she did a good job of looking back and checking on me periodically, and we mostly stayed together.
It was an awkward-as-hell swim. It was super shallow, but with a very strong current. Even if you wanted to stop, you couldn't. The current just kept pulling you with it. Also this was the water we KNEW was 49 degrees, max, and I never even noticed the water temp. We were so focused on getting through this last swim, I didn't even feel it.
I was expecting us to have to haul ass and barely make it past the other teams as we finished the swim, but it ended up that we passed them fairly shortly into the swim, as they were trying to navigate the shallow waters. I figured we'd keep pushing to get some space between us, in case they picked it up to fight back, but right after we passed them, Trista pops her head up and was like "Is this okay for you? Do you want to swim side by side?" all casual-like, and I'm like "NO! GO!" That, in combination with Marcus yelling at us from the shore to KEEP SWIMMING was enough to make Trista irked enough at us to keep swimming. Afterward she was like "I STOPPED FOR 2 SECONDS."
Ultimately the swim was more bodysurfing than swimming. There were very few places deep enough to take a full stroke, so I was doing a sort-of-skull move, skimming my paddles across the top of the water. Also trying not to scratch the hell out of my brand new beautiful yellow ARK paddles! Except I needed them to help me not scratch the hell out of my expensive ARK wetsuit and not-so-expensive-and-definitely-not-new face. We did get beached a couple places, but never stood up or walked, especially after Trista briefly tried and the current just kept carrying her forward back onto her belly.
Some people were walking most of the swim, or at least walking the last bit close to the shore, where it was extra shallow. We opted to swim the whole way, and honestly, looking at the pictures and videos, I think swimming was the right way to go. Walking was very awkward and slippery, and swimming with a current assist was faster than trying to get my corgi legs through that water.
And then there were people on the shore! Trista thought it was the dock before the swim exit, but it was the swim exit, so we had to start fighting the current to get us over to the shore. It went better than last time, and we managed to swim until it was shallow and then get our feet under us without falling over.
Success! A very welcome and appreciated hand helped us up onto land, and then just one more run to the finish line!
Just kidding, not a run, definitely a trudge. Those last stairs up to the finish line are not appreciated, but at least they're short, both in height and in number.
Then the beautiful, wonderful finish line.
We had a plan for a great finishline antic, but we hadn't had a chance to practice it, and it had the potential to be somewhat painful if things went wrong, so we're saving (antic redacted) for a future race, and we decided to do Trista a favor and combine our finishline antic with her daily handstand video.
And then DONE.
Finish time 2021: 5:11:17
Finish time 2019: 5:33:39
Improvement! And we ended up 5th female team this time, which would have been 7th female team if we hadn't pushed at the end! Our overall place was greatly improved this year, partly because we've been training hard and are stronger athletes, but also because there were many people who didn't make it this year, be it because of conflicts, injuries, covid, etc. And on top of that, there were a lot of DNFs due to the cold. But hey, attrition is a perfectly valid way to move up in the rankings!
And that's a wrap for Team Adorkable's 2021 swimrun season. It's been a long season, and we're happy to have a little off-season recovery now. We actually would have raced Catalina on 11/21, if it hadn't been rescheduled for March 2022. We're very glad it was rescheduled. We want to be excited about that race, and right now we're just excited for off season.
We had some really great races this year, and we're still completely in love with swimrun, and very excited to see what 2022 brings. Hoping it's FINALLY the year Team Adorkable goes international!
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