Fusion 2010

The tagline on Fusion's Facebook pages says, "When you cross the finish line, you'll know more about yourself!" This could not be put in any better words. This year, Fusion found us a year wiser, but they usurped us in what to expect, because this year was exponentially harder than last year.

Again, there were a number of us from the school who participated and we again were split into two teams. My former teammates, Charlie and Nick were in a team with a couple of our friends from Ultimate Frisbee, while I teamed up with Aaron, Katie and another friend of ours from Ultimate, Steve. Last year the two teams were unofficially dubbed "team fast" and "team fun". I was on "team fast", but due to my ankle injury earlier in the year, I told them that I could not participate in a competitive fashion because I thought that I might just be too gun shy to take the trails like I did last year, in fear of re-injuring myself after 6 some odd months of physical therapy. Fortunately for me, "team fun" welcomed me with open arms.

The race began at our favorite beach, Maracas, at 3:30 AM. The first leg of this three leg race required all four members to participate. We started at one end of the beach, had to race to the other end of the beach, gather a plastic bottle and cup and then run back to our team. At which point, another member took the cup back to the other end of the beach, filled it with red water and brought it back to fill up the bottle. It took us 3 cupfuls to fill up our bottle. After checking with an official, we were off into the bush with headlamps on, looking for red flags with reflective tape on them to guide us through the rain forest. I have run these forests before on hashes, but never in complete darkness.

The statistics for this leg were that we would be running about 6.5 miles and ascending 5,165 feet. The ground was wet and muddy and the humidity was thick. We all felt really good and strong for most of this leg. Fortunately, because it was before dawn, the real heat hadn't set in yet. Don't get me wrong, we were all soaked through and through with sweat, but as we knew, the worst was yet to come. For a good portion of this leg, we moved at a decent pace. We passed a few teams and a few other teams passed us.

At the approximate halfway mark, there was a short multiple choice test about Trinidad and the race. Each answer had different time penalties if skipped or marked incorrect, but we felt that we did very well with this. We never did check to see if we missed any at the final results, but I'm going to go on the belief that we were correct across the board. We continued on, climbing, running, scrambling...

At one point, there was a team gaining on us and feeling strong, we tried to hold them off. The sun had risen by this point and we were trucking along the trail. As we continued along, one guy in the back of the red teams pack yelled out, "Hey! Wait!!" Being at the back of our pack, I happened to stop and turn around along with the rest of his team. He pointed up to the right of a point we had just passed, and there was a large Gillette Fusion flag up on a hill by a house. I called out to my team, and we all turned around and followed them up the hill.

We were extremely fortunate that this team was on our tail. When in the heat of the race, you often focus solely on the team ahead of you (as Red was doing to us) and you could very easily miss a turn in the trail. We were very happy to get passed by these guys at this point as they potentially saved us a lot of time. We had friends on two other teams, and both fell into a similar trap of following the teams ahead of them. Once they realized that they were on the incorrect path, they had to turn around, get back to the main trail, and proceed - now being behind teams that were much slower than them. They both said that their detour cost them 25-30 minutes. I can only imagine how frustrating that must have been because not only did you extend your time, but passing on these trails is very difficult and can only be done every so often if you want to do it safely.

After following the red team, we came to our second mental challenge of the race, which was to decode a message. Not very difficult, but kind of time consuming. We handed in our sheet and continued on. At this point, we were starting to get a little tired and of course, this is when we had to climb an extremely steep and muddy hill and then back down that extremely steep and muddy hill. We had to take it slowly and we made it without incident, but we were certainly starting to feel the aches and pains of this first leg. Katie had twisted her ankle (after the first challenge, but can't remember if it were before or after the second challenge). All our knees were hurting a bit and hills never help sore knees. We finally saw the ocean through the brush, and knew that we were almost to the finish of this leg. Soon after, we cleared the brush and ran down a road for about 5-10 minutes to the finish line. After all of that, we were the 17th team (out of 59 teams) to cross the finish line.

It was now about 7:15 AM and the sun was up and you could start to feel the heat for the day coming on. We anticipated that the second leg of the race would be back up and over that same mountain range into Port of Spain. However, we found out that the next leg was to begin at 11:00, at the top of Lady Chancellor Road, which is a somewhat steep road that you will always see people walking/running/biking and that looks out over Port of Spain. Fortunately for us, John, one of the guys on Nick and Charlie's team, lived nearby there, so we all went over to his apartment and sat by the pool, rinsed off in showers and relaxed in the shade.

Before the race, my knee had been bothering me and as mentioned, I was worried about my ankle. My ankle was good, but my knee was a little sore. Katie and I had discussed that one of us would drive if this were a 3 person leg, which it ended up being. But now with her new ankle twist, I told her that I would go on this second leg with Aaron and Steve.

This second leg of the race was told to us as being 13 km (a little over 8 miles). I was feeling good as were were looking out over Port of Spain and because I had just run a 10k race in Tobago the weekend before. That ended up being a lot of false optimism.

The horn blew and we were off. We started down this steep road that branches off of Lady Chancellor Road and headed down into the valley below. Once we were in the valley, we hit a very, very brief flat spot and turned left. It was a hill, but I noticed that everyone stopped to walk. Usually on any given hill, there are some people trying to run or go up it fast. We followed their lead and started walking...and walking...and walking...

This was a hill like I have never climbed before. Granted it was all paved, but that did not account for the incline, heat and humidity. It felt like the longest hike I had ever been on. I was dogging it real bad. Finally, we reached the top. It was a beautiful view, until I realized what I was looking at. Here is a shot I took the day after the race.

I was looking down this hill, thinking the worst was over, but then I noticed something in the horizon. That road, just to the left of that big white house, had a whole mess of people walking up it. I was devastated. Not devastated like a losing a loved one, but I felt all motivation and inspiration leak from my being. But I struggled on. At least I had a momentary reprieve going downhill.

We continued on, passed the white house, but the hill didn't stop. I didn't know what was going on. How could we continue to be going up? This was all that I saw in front of me.

It may not look like much, but it was steep. It felt like we were going straight up. And as you can see, it looks like it goes up for ever. Now, after the fact, we realized what we were climbing. If you go back to the picture with the road and white house, we're actually climbing that hill that goes up to the left. Allllll the way up. And then up some more. I did some research after the race and where the house picture was taken was probably about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile up this 2 mile road/hill. We went from probably just over sea level to 1500 feet in that 2 miles and were only at 525 feet where the house picture was taken. The incline was about 15º at one point up to about 25º at its maximum incline. To put this in perspective for those who watch NASCAR races, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has it's corners banked at 9º and the Daytona International Speedway has corners banked at 31º.

On top of that, the tar on the road wasn't even. It was melted and almost like waves of tar dripping down the road. This could either be from the continued heat that is the Trinidad climate or it's because the incline was so steep that it couldn't set in an even fashion. Also, to give you a picture of the gradient of the road, as we were climbing up, a 4x4 truck drove past and its tires skipped as it was trying to climb the hill. When I drove up this road the next day, my little Yaris was whining and crying and giving it all she could. Her tires were also skipping as I tried to drive to the top.

Needless to say, it was intense. What little life I had left in me was sucked out. My heart was racing, I couldn't catch my breath, the 90ºF heat at noon time was beating down on us and I just felt like I couldn't go on. For most of this hike past the house in the picture, I kept thinking to myself, "Is there a way that I can quit without penalizing my team? Is there a way that I can call an official to take me back to the start without our team being disqualified?" All answers led to "no" and I forced myself to carry on.

We got to the top of the road and realized that we had to continue to go up, but now though a wet, muddy trail. We continued up and up. Aaron in the lead and me and Steve in tow. Steve was feeling very much the way I felt though most of this leg. Aaron on the other hand, has become an exercise machine and seemed barely winded. I know it was tough for him, but he did not feel it anywhere near the way that Steve and I did. Aaron even carried Steve's hydration pack for a short while as Steve was recouping on the trail.

We managed to get to the top of the hill at last and started a short decline, which quickly came to a halt. We found ourselves at our first mental challenge for this leg. I didn't know how we were going to to, but we sat down on the road and dug in. This particular challenge was doing "deltoids", which are puzzles like: 52CIAD and you had to decode it to 52 Cards In A Deck. The best part of this challenge is that every one we got correct took 4 minutes off our time as opposed to penalties for getting them wrong. We sat there for about 15 minutes or so working on this challenge and got around 20 of them. We felt like we got the ones we could, have now made up the time we lost for the slow trudge up the hill, and moved on.

The rest was actually exactly what we needed. We were now going downhill and hitting some flats. We were actually running at a number of points as well. We passed a few teams, had to cross some river beds and ravines using ropes that were set up for us, and just continued to move as fast as our bodies would allow - which may not be as fast as normal. But all things considered, we were doing quite well.

We hit the final stretch, which I recognized from hiking Lady Chancellor Hill before and we turned on the speed as best we could to finish strong. At this point, my right foot cramped up and it felt like my toes were curling under my foot. Not a good feeling, but again, I muscled through and we finished strong. We now had another 90 minutes or so to kill until the last leg began. So we all went back to John's apartment again.

After more resting, showing and eating, we headed back to the savannah for the final 5k. The same run around the savannah to the port authority that we ran last year. We found out we were in 18th place and we also found out that Nick and Charlie's team were in 1st place. We knew that they were hovering around 4th again after the first leg and finishing kind of strong on the second leg, but we didn't expect this. Apparently, at that mental challenge on the second leg, they answered more than the other leading teams and it shot them to first!

Like last year, our whole team decided to run the final leg under the feelings that we started as a team and we're going to end as a team. Steve was still struggling and Aaron was still strong. Katie was doing well keeping up with Aaron as she was able to rest for the second leg (and her ankle was feeling a little better) and I was somewhere in the middle. I felt like I could have kept up with Aaron and Katie, but I held back with Steve to encourage him on. He was feeling bad for going slow, but I was there to reassure him that we ALL decided to do the race as a challenge to ourselves, and not to compete and win. Considering that the longest race he has ever done was a sprint triathlon (approximately 1.5 hours long), this was something that he (and any of us) really expected.

We carried on. We met up with Aaron and Katie towards the end of the race and we all crossed the finish line together, just as we wanted. Our overall place was 18th and we finished in 6:27:06 over the course of this 15-16 hour race. And as it turned out, Nick and Charlie's team took 2nd place. The other two teams behind them came out strong and John was tanking really hard on the final 5k. He gave everything he could and they were actually worried that he wasn't going to make it all the way to the finish line. The made second place by 44 seconds. Another close one, just like our finish last year.

Looking back on the race, I think I can say that this was the most difficult race that I have every participated in. Harder than my first marathon. Harder than my second marathon that was cancelled and turned into a "fun run" due to extreme heat (which looking back was equivalent to the heat that I did this race in). And much, much harder than last year's Fusion race. But the thing that I will take away, the same thing that I took away from each of those previous races that seemed to get progressively harder and harder; if I can put my mind to something, I will get through it. It may not be pretty. It may not be the fastest and it may not be as strong a finish as I would like. But I will make it through.

Fusion has definitely taught me a lot of things and I do know more about myself. I am grateful to be able to have participated in these races the last two years and it will be one of the biggest things that I will miss when I leave Trinidad.