This year’s Yough Xtreme was the first race officially sponsored by SOG and you could definitely tell a difference.  There was a record turnout and more competitive teams than ever.

Pre-race meeting in style with TeamSOG trailer

TeamSOG had a new look.  We were crossing a new teammate over.  Susan Hollingsworth just back from training for and making the national team in NC was trying herself at Adventure Racing.  While in NC she was able to get some MTB training in which was a new sport for her.  And she even competed and WON an off-road triathlon.  Not bad for someone who doesn’t own a MTB.

Yough Extreme TeamSOG: Susan, Brian and Jennie

Brian and Jennie had the pleasure of racing this weekend with this great athlete and we knew she was going to be competitive.  As she still did not own a MTB she had to borrow one from our climber Maggie Hamill.

***Talk about team work and versatility among such a diverse team!!!***

The team rolled into town on Friday and got ready for what looked to be a pretty recognizable course through Ohiopyle State Park.  There was one new trail that would be used and the team agreed to try it out but other than that the race included classic challenges such as climbing firetower road, paddling the middle Yough, and running the rail trail.  Unfortunately due to some wet weather the rappel had to be cancelled.  The race started in the 50’s dropped to the 40’s when it started raining, rose back to the 60’s around midday, and then turned to 40’s and windy again on the mountain before everyone raced to the finish.

TeamSOG started strong staying in the front of the pack for the prologue and the run.  The technical MTB trails slowed Susan down a little bit but we still had the teams in sight.  When we approached the new trail we saw that it was mostly road.  This was great and would expect not to be a problem.  When we got towards the bottom near the rail trail we had to take a much less used road with a major rut down the middle.  Susan who was already a little shaky on the downhills took a tough fall and bruised her knee and had a major cut on her elbow that would later need to be stitched.

The fall knocked the wind out of her at first but Jennie, our resident nurse, got right on top of taking care of her and made sure she was ok.  After cleaning and bandaging the wound Susan was ready to go.  I was SUPER impressed with how eager she was to get going again.  It was truly inspring!  She was doing something she was already not completely comfortable with and just had a rough fall and was ready to go.  I remember finally reaching the rail trail and expecting to give her a break I bent over to fix my shoes.  When I looked up she was already 100 yards down the trail!

The team continued on.  We had a great paddle and run on the rail trail and were able to make up some of the time we had lost.  We then got on our bikes and Susan powered hard up firetower road doing an amazing job.  We came rolled into the O-course behind 5 teams that we saw leaving as we arrived.  Right before we arrived we had some more bad luck.  Susan had taken another fall though seemingly not as bad it twisted her knee pretty bad.  When we started looking at the orienteering points we realized that because of Susan’s knee it would be best to try and get all the points on foot.  We decided to get 3 of the 4.  These three happened to be the lowest point values leaving the highest scoring CP out on the course.  Unfortunately, even though we ran to all 3 of those points we lost ground to the teams that were able to bike to the key CP.

Susan’s knee continued to tighten up and as we were heading down you could really see here fighting through the pain.  It was a long day for a first time adventure racer.  She had done an amazing job.  The team finished 8th but could have easily been in the top 3 had it not been for our setbacks.  The team raced amazingly when we could and really was able to put the hammer down!  I was super excited about our finish and although the result wasn’t as good as we hoped I know that the team was very competitive and that Susan is a great talent that will hopefully get a chance to try her hand at AR’s again soon!