Mary O'Brien mops sweat from her eyes during
a workout at Stone State Park on June 8. O'Brien is a member
of Team Synergy. (Photo by Tim
Hynds)
The team consists of a baby furniture and
accessories store owner, two Terra Nitrogen operating technicians
and a former first grade teacher.
Extreme jobs? Not really,
expect possibly for the fact two team members work on a regular
basis around hazardous materials at Terra's Port Neal
facility.
Extreme people? Not in the X-games meaning of the
word. They are all in their late 30s and early 40s, you won't find
them crafting a fine point on their Mohawks, they don't have any
visible tattoos and each has a handful of children.
Extreme athletes? Definitely, considering they
spend radical amounts of time every year training for an adventure
race that takes its participants through about 18 continuous hours
of sleep deprived,
how-the-heck-did-I-end-up-in-a-swamp-in-the-middle-of-the-night
adventure racing.
The third annual Extreme Heart Challenge,
this year sponsored by Scheels/Columbia, can be described as a
day-long obstacle course that has teams running, canoeing,
navigating ropes, biking, rollerblading and compass reading as they
maneuver Midwestern terrain, beginning sometime before midnight on
Friday, August 6 at Sioux City's Sertoma Park. This year's 47
registered teams are expected to finish the approximately 65-mile
course that will take them to checkpoints located in Plymouth and
Woodbury County, including downtown Sioux City, in 18
hours.
When Dr. Dave Sly, a family practice physician and
board member of the Siouxland American Heart Association, came up
with idea to start an adventure race in Siouxland a few years back,
his motives could have been called selfish. He was serious about
reducing the number of people with heart ailments who have to see
him regularly.
"I'd rather see people get fit than coming to
see me with heart disease," Sly said.
Participants in this
year's race, the first to be one of 38 qualifying races for the U.S.
Adventure Racing Association National Championship Race, are coming
from as far away as California and Louisiana, Sly said.
The
rules are few. There must be at least one member of the opposite sex
on each four-person team, members must be at least 18-years-old, and
teammates must stay within 100 yards of each other during the
race.
It's the type of thing military personnel are forced to
do and it's the type of thing that sounded like fun to Team
Synergy.
8 a.m., Tuesday, June 8, 2004, at Stone State
Park
Mary O'Brien, Eric Denney, Mike and Jo Dee Weltz --
the Sioux Citians who compose the adventure racing team dubbed Team
Synergy -- arrived at Stone Park for a training session. The goal
this time out was to practice mountain biking, one of the plethora
of events teams must tackle when participating in this year's
Extreme Heart Challenge.
Mike and Denney looked tired when
they pulled into the parking lot. Denney yawned a few times as he
readied his bike. They both were just getting off of a 12-hour shift
from Terra, a company that helps with the team's $500 registration
fee.
"You get in what training you can," the 43-year-old
Denney said. "You can sleep when your dead."
O'Brien didn't
look fatigued, but easily could have when she pulled up in a purple
Ford Mustang convertible with a mountain bike sticking out of the
back seat. That morning at 4:30 a.m. she woke up and ran 18
miles.
The morning sun strengthened as the members of Team
Synergy, with heavy packs on their backs, mounted their bikes and
looked at the dirt trail they were about to embark
upon.
"Maybe about 20 minutes to finish?" Mike said, posing a
goal to the team.
"Our best time is 22 minutes and we haven't
rode this trail yet this year," Jo Dee, Mike's wife of 16 years,
responds.
"Under 30?" Mike said, trying to find a time the
team feels comfortable shooting for.
Mike, who fills the team
leader role, knows the importance of the mountain bike portion of
the race. In 2002, the first year the Extreme Heart Challenge was
held and Mike's first try at adventure racing, the rear axle of his
bike broke.
Denney, who along with Mike are the only current
team members who competed that first year, calls the 2002 Extreme
Heart Challenge the "race from hell." Mike calls it "really rough."
Their memories of pulling and dragging the busted mountain bike
about 20 miles through Dixon County, Neb.'s deep gravel roads are
sharp.
Hours later, Mike, exhausted and dehydrated from the
extra energy expended battling the busted bike, sat slumped over in
a canoe in need of medical attention. The team was disqualified when
he had to be removed from the race by emergency personnel, but the
three other members continued on until they crossed the finish
line.
"The amount of heart that they had to complete that
race was phenomenal," Sly, who acts as race director, said. "They
finished the race under every adverse condition."
So the men
competed that year coming in at last place. Then they signed up for
the 2003 race, this time with two new members, Jo Dee and O'Brien,
much to the surprise of race organizers.
"Last year, to get
the e-mail saying, 'After vowing never to complete another adventure
race again we want to know when registration opens.' It blew me
away," Sly said with a laugh.
A challenge for the
body
"To even step to the starting line, physically they
have put their bodies through an incredible ordeal to get there.
They have achieved a level of fitness they have never achieved or
have been fortunate enough to achieve again," Sly said.
That
was the case with three of Team Synergy's members.
"About
five years ago I started figuring out how bad a shape I really was
in. I started doing some running, a few 5 K's and then this
adventure racing," the 37-year-old Mike said, a former football
player at Morningside College.
Denney was also athletic in
his teens and 20's until he started a construction company and long
hours and bad eating habits turned the 165 pounder into a
37-year-old, 202-pound man. Denney said he knew something had to
change.
"We knew this was something we could do to compete
and to do something athletic again. Then we started looking at the
race and I said, 'Mike, is this going to be anything like that Eco
Challenge?' Because I had seen that on T.V. and was thinking if we
had to do all of that stuff I might bail out," Denney said as he sat
on the front porch of his westside home shaking his head with a
smile.
Jo Dee, a former teacher at Washington and Grant
Elementary Schools, had watched her mate compete in 2002 and said
her initial thoughts that her husband was crazy turned into maybe
this is something she wanted to do.
"I kinda sat back and
made fun of them, like, 'I can't believe they are working so hard,'
the 38-year-old Jo Dee said. "Then I changed. You know how a kid
looks out a window at a playground wanting to play? I was like that
and kinda wanted to be part of it. It was after that one I started
to train so I could compete."
Her training also helped her
lose the 60 pounds she had gained when a thyroid problem
unexpectedly developed.
O'Brien, an accomplished runner who
has competed in about 42 marathons, was the last to join after
seeing a flyer that was posted at a gym looking for someone to round
out the extreme team.
"I feel lucky to have fell in with this
team," the 41-year-old O'Brien said. "They know what they are
doing."
Team Synergy said they keep their cardio training up
year round. Jo Dee teaches kickboxing, O'Brien runs, Mike and Denney
participate in a wellness program at work, they all lift weights.
But it is in April, with the big race looming, that the team starts
coming together at least once a week to train.
4 p.m.,
Sunday, July 18, at Riverside Park
"I feel like Robo
Cop," Jo Dee said as she stiffly stomped across a gravel and dirt
parking lot near the Missouri River Boat Club wearing a pair of
in-line skates.
Team Synergy had gathered to practice
rollerblading on the riverfront recreation trail, a new edition to
the race this year and one that has them worried. Mike and Jo Dee
had skated before, but O'Brien and Denney on skates resembled the
first steps of a newborn foal.
"Really green is how I'd
describe my rollerblading ability," Denney said as he prepared to
hit the cement recreation trail.
The team also practiced on
the water, putting two-person teams into a canoe for timed runs on
the Big Sioux River. They also took time to check their backpacks to
make sure they each have the about 20 items they will have to carry
throughout the entire race. Mike dug in his bag and pulled out a
pocket knife with a handle of wood and steel.
"It's heavy,"
he said as he tossing it to the side trying to account for every
ounce he'll have to carry.
Denney pulled out some 1.5 ounce
packets of Hammer Gel, a thick liquid used by athletes for energy
and nutrition on the go and the main meal the team will eat during
the race. He said the banana flavor is good, but not when it gets
warm.
When the team hits the trail it is apparent the
rollerblading portion of the race will not be their strong suit.
When asked what they think the skate portion of the race will
entail, they don't know but hope it is short.
Team Synergy
only knows what they need to bring and where and when they need to
bring it, but other than a vague idea of the events, Extreme Heart
Challenge teams can only guess at what the day will
hold.
An ordeal for the mind
Possibly the most
interesting portion of the race is that the teams that will begin
racing under cover of night are kept in the dark up until a few
hours before the event begins.
"Its a big puzzle," Sly said.
"People really go to great lengths trying to outguess the race
director and course designers and figure out how it is going to
work."
The best weapon Team Synergy has to guess this year's
course, it changes every year, is to check the event Web site for
any morsels Sly may have dropped during updates. Team Synergy thinks
they have an idea where some of the events will be held, but at best
they are guesses and they like to keep their guesses
secret.
"We were out this morning doing some hiking at a spot
we think the race will be," Denney said in early June. Where? "Just
some terrain area," He said with a mischievous chuckle.
"We
always try and think what the course designers are thinking," He
said of the course designed by Team Flight, an accomplished racing
team from Dubuque, Iowa. "They don't give you much as far as hints,
so it is a matter of thinking what's logical, what's illogical and
try to go from there."
The ordeal for the mind doesn't start
and stop at speculating this year's course. Jo Dee displayed a thick
white binder holding books she used to study map reading and
orienteering. The team has even gone out during the winter to gain a
better understanding of how to use a topography map. Denney and Sly
each said the mark of a strong team is a strength in
navigating.
"The course is usually won in the navigation
section," Sly said. "There is also a fair amount of luck
involved."
Then there's the sleep deprivation. Taking into
account excitement and pre-race preparations, Mike said an Extreme
Heart Challenge participant can easily be awake for almost two
days.
"Completing the race is almost like childbirth because
you say, 'I will never do this again,'" Jo Dee said. "Then about a
day later you say, 'I could do that again.' Now it's like, 'I can't
wait to do this again.'"
A testament of the
heart
Within a month of the 2002 race Mike and Denney
returned to the course that claimed Mike's bike as well as his
health. The memories of the team's disqualification were fresh in
their heads. Mike remembered lugging the broken bike as best he
could, refusing to give up.
"I think I didn't want to quit
after seeing the faces of my teammates at like 5:30 in the morning
after we had trained so hard to do this and now I have a broken
bike," Mike said. "If we didn't make it, we didn't make it, but I
didn't want to bow out with some gas in my tank."
So he ran
and ran until the heat and limited amounts of water forced him out
of the competition when fell victim to dehydration. Denney said the
team was about three hours from the finish line when Mike stopped
paddling and slumped over in the canoe.
On this September
2002 morning Mike and Denney met around 5 a.m. and set out once
again to complete the Extreme Heart Challenge course.
"We
basically went back through the course because I wanted to prove to
myself I could do it," Mike said.
