Loving the Free Life: True Grit 2011

Drew After the Race

So Drew had a race last weekend in St. George. It was his first endurance race for the season. I think he started training for it about 4 months ago. The day actually looked like it might not be that bad - a little cold in the morning - but not bad. However, that quickly changed. By the time Gigi and I got to the first checkpoint it started to rain. It rained the ENTIRE race. It was not one of the better races for being support. Drew did amazing. Every time he came through a checkpoint he looked great and transitioned well. By the time he came through the 3rd checkpoint the course was a mess. They even had to change the course in the middle of the race because a couple trails were too muddy to even ride. There was thick red mud/clay everywhere. We had to dump gallons of water over his bike to try and release some of the mud so he could continue pedaling. At this point Drew's friends Ty and Bob threw in the towel - they were done! As we headed down from the 3rd/4th checkpoints to the finish we picked up racers all the way down who had decided to quite as well. While we were waiting at the finish line we found out they called the race because people were starting to get hypothermic and it was getting too dangerous. I started to get a little nervous at this point because I wasn't sure where Drew was - but he had looked good when I saw him so I kept with our timeline we had discussed and stuck it out at the finish line hoping he wasn't in any of the truck load of riders coming in. Drew finished and took 5th place. There were only 11 men that finished after they called the race and two of them were disqualified. No women finished the race. There was a challenge category which was a distance of 25 miles and my friend Lyna Saffell took 2nd place. Even though it was miserable handing out bottles and taking pictures in the rain it still ended up to be a great day. :)