As I lay there, face down on the bottom of the passage, I reveled in the quietude of my breath under trillions of gallons of seawater. I was alone and I was content. I knew they would be searching for me and with any luck, they’d find me before my teeth started to chatter.
The pace of our training is the first challenge. I start slowly and clumsily; putting my thumbs in the wrong places and struggling to manhandle ropes into messy half-remembered knots. When your life depends on that knot, you’ve got to know it instinctively. The ocean doesn’t give you a second chance because you’re a beginner.
This is our first adventure race, and we are doing it together, for fun, and with no competitive intentions. We’re the only all-female team in the two-person open division. Our goals: Have fun and don’t finish DFL (dead effing last). But she is smoking me, and we are actually doing pretty well.
Every 50 miles, we slow the boat to 2-4 knots and trawl the surface for plastic. I am thrilled to participate in this event with 5 Gyres and can’t wait to see what we pull up. But we didn’t get much. Honestly, I was disappointed, at least until I realized that less plastic was a good thing.
Henderson Island—a makatea, which means raised coral island—is in the middle of the South Pacific. Although we were restricted from exploring the island’s interior, the excitement stopping here, checking out the beach for both birds and plastic, and surfing a reef in the middle of nowhere filled me with nervous excitement.
Standup paddleboard yoga is the newest trend in fitness and spiritual health. It’s how water sports say “namaste” and, according to Gillian Gibree of San Diego’s Paddle Into Fitness, it’s where yoga meets nature in its finest form.
I did it. I roped a friend into teaming up with me for an adventure race. It’s coming up on September 17th, but we just signed up yesterday and have got to get it together ASAP. Help!
For the past couple weeks, I have had to unwillingly “chill out”. This is not something I do well. I recently had to drop out of a six day adventure race due to stomach issues. It was one of the hardest moments ever, but my body was screaming, “STOP!”
“Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.” —Mikhail Lermontov
Every summer, I add another check mark next to a new experience. One year, it was standup paddleboarding; another year I surfed. One summer I bought ice skates and re-enacted the 1992 Olympics ala Kristi Yamaguchi. This summer, I proudly enrolled in a sculling class.
We’re in Winnipeg, Manitoba, getting ready to paddle Lake Winnipeg and head into the Canadian wilderness. We are almost done with the Red River since we paddled the last 100 miles in a 20-hour stretch—even paddling overnight—to avoid wind and get here quickly. We’ve still been meeting people who live on the river, and, since it’s a record flood year, most can’t believe that we are able to paddle.
Marine biologist Nancy Caruso Nancy Caruso would travel across the country. She is journeying from Pittsburgh to Oregon—by boat—to inspire Americans to “eat right and move more.”
So comfortable, lightweight and breathable, I forgot I was wearing the Watermocs and only took them off for dinner in town because they’re so good looking that people would have stared.
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