What a day! We knew there were aggressive cut off times and that we would be close. And we were. We missed the last cut off by 6 minutes. After arriving at Two Harbors missing the cut off we were simply happy not disappointed. We officially DNF but to us, we did it. The remaining distance was a 2 mile run and a 1 mile swim. It was HARD and FUN at the same time. Genuinely fun because Catalina Island is beautiful and it was fun to do this crazy event. Fun because alternating running and swimming meant we had to constantly take in a new challenge each leg. Hard because each leg had some degree of difficulty. The start was a straight vertical uphill run while dodging cactus. Every single downhill was straight down on ruddy, baked mud or scree. The 3rd run was a 1.5 mile straight up hill run with 2,000 ft elevation gain. It was the ‘ red zone hill’. David McMurdie helped me up the hill with his hand on my back or by lifting me by my belt to lighten my steps. He worked hard helping me. My left quad throbbed at the top. With a 5 miles descent down double diamond difficulty sloped hills, we stopped to tie up my quad. The bike tire tube holding my pull buoy to my leg became my brace. Game changer. I went from being unsure how to keep going to being able to run again. We descended down to the western tip of the island to big dynamic waves and pounding shore break. We nailed the washing machine swim and crawled out laughing. Dave’s scuba and free diving experiences exiting gnarly water matched my mermaid experience. The Otillo team high fived us and congratulated us on our skillful swim. A spirit raiser for sure. We had minutes to spare to get to cut off #2. We had to RUN and run hard. We ran this leg tethered and I surrendered to just run and not think about anything. Dave got us to the CO #2 with a few minutes to spare. The rest of the event included long swims which allowed us to recover a bit. I led us through the gorgeous Catalina shoreline. It was very obvious why the shoreline is so popular for scuba divers. This part of the event was a race against the clock. We still needed to take a few minutes to ensure that we were fueled up. We stopped at the next energy station to be greeted with a huge bottle of honey! A couple of chocolate chip cookies with honey on top was divine 🙂 They fueled the longest swim. We crawled out of this swim to scamper up slippery, muddy trail to run 2 miles to the next swim which would take us to the final cut off. The photo is of Dave and I at the end of this swim running to the timing strip. The Otillo team greeted us and let us know we missed the cut off by 6 minutes.
Amazing day. The entire Otillo team and volunteers were fantastic. The field of incredible athletes who finished were from 17 countries. We were honored to be part of this event. I’m so grateful for Dave and the experience. We took care of each other and had fun too. I’d do it all over again.