The Death Race is the king of all adventure racing. 10% or less of those who sign up every year actually make it to the finish line. The organizers goal is make this event ‘the toughest race on the planet’. Every year there is a different theme (this year was betrayal), the course is different, how long it takes, and what you have to do.
The confusion of the race is what makes it so unique to every other event I have participated. From the moment you arrive in VT no one really knows whats going on. You are emailed a gear list in advance – This year we were required to have an axe, needle + thread, bag of human hair, life jacket, pink swim hat, matches, 5 gallon bucket, and a pen and paper. Anything else you decided to bring was your own choice.
I attempted it last year and quit after 24hrs. This year I made it 27hrs. The winner this year completed it in 62hrs!!!!.
Below is my account of what happened over the course of those 27 hours.
I hope that this account can be somewhat helpful to those who are preparing for future races.
The video above pretty much covers what happened between 1pm and 6:30pm on Friday.
There was a lot of confusion at the beginning with the whole crawling through the pipe thing and the swim test but it turned out that they were just trying to keep everyone busy until 6pm.
By pure luck I ended up being put in a group with Thom, his friend Troy from college, and Andrew who works out with Thom occasionally.
We left the camp with 8 of us trying to hold the tire over our heads and we managed to get a decent lead over all the other groups. After about 20mins we figured out that it was easier to have 3 people holding the tire and then we just kept rotating every few mins. When the race organizers realized what we were doing they penalized us and sent us to the back for ‘cheating’. This didn’t really phase us and we just did what we were told.
We reach a clearing in the woods after approx 2 hours or so and everyone was made do 300 burpees. The actual number we ended up doing was probably somewhere in the 2′s as we rested as we needed to or when the organizers were not watching.
After that it was another 2 1/2 hours of navigating the tire through rivers, woods and countless other racers.
We reached another clearing in the woods approx 4 1/2 hours after our initial departure and were ordered to switch what we were carrying with another group. Some groups had 20+ people in them and we only had 8 – one of them hurt his ankle and the other was a small girl so neither of them were doing anything so we really only had 6 people.
We were given a slosh pipe which weighed about 200lbs if I had to guess but we couldn’t have been happier. Even though it still sucked we kept acknowledging the fact that it was much better than the tire.
Several people had quit already by this point and it was actually starting to annoy the organizers. Joe D, who had a bull horn shouted ‘We are about to go deep into the woods, if you have a bad ankle, or a sniffle then now is the time to back out. You really don’t know what you are getting yourselves into’.
That was comforting 
. At this stage my calves + achilles were already burning and my water supply was starting to run low. I had consumed 7 bottles of water and not pissed once so that’ll give you an idea of how dehydrating it was.
. At this stage my calves + achilles were already burning and my water supply was starting to run low. I had consumed 7 bottles of water and not pissed once so that’ll give you an idea of how dehydrating it was.
This was our last ‘break’ of the night. It was 10:30pm and we did not stop moving until 6am.
Making it through the night was one of the toughest things physically I think I’ve ever done. At around 3 or 4am I started to feel like I was drunk. My legs got heavier with every step and I kept tripping. During this time I kept repeating to myself ‘I can do this, I can do this’. Everyone started seeing things that were not there. I remember seeing several people to my side opening their bags and when I turned there was no one there. I also kept seeing houses in the trees but it was just my mind paying tricks on me. Thom said at one point ‘I see some vehicles up ahead, we must be almost out’. At that point we were at least an hour from any sign of civilization!
I knew that at this point that quitting was not an option. I had to carry my weight for the team and even if I did want to quit there was no where for me to go. Moving forward was the only option.
We made occasional small talk but for the most part everyone was in their own heads, each probably dealing with their own struggles and self doubt.
From the few number of adventure racers and ultra runners I have befriended (the number seems to keep growing) they all seem to say that making it through the night is the hardest and when the sun comes up everything gets easier.
As the early morning hours started to come I was hoping that this would be true and it was. As soon as the sun started to rise and I could hear the birds I was charged with energy. After we got out of the woods I was greeted by Joe again who shook my hand and simply said ’8 miles ahead’
I suggested that we take a quick break to grab some food and refuel. We were all starting to run low on supplies now and we hoped that we would be headed back to base camp sooner rather than later. Little did we know what was in store.
We got moving again and eventually arrived at some house next to a reservoir. We were instructed to put on our life jackets + pink swim hats and to swim out to a marker that was about 200m out + back. I was pleasantly surprised that the water was in the low 60′s and felt amazing after the hours of hiking we had just done.Pretty much 12 hours straight to get to this point. Everyone was in good spirits now and we joked about how all our cold showers leading up to the race had been in vain because the water turned out to be warm.
Next we had to pave someones driveway – This was ridiculous. We all filled up buckets of gravel and moved them to and fro up this 400m driveway. I have to hand it to the race organizers that they are very good at making people do meaningless tasks in order to annoy them.
As we were finishing the organizers kept shouting ‘Hurry up guys, your support crew are worried about you, we need to get you all back to base camp’
This gave us a glimmer of hope. Most of us had run out of food by now and we were starting to get worried.
Off we went on another 2 hour or so hike back into the mountains to the next check point where we were made do another 100 burpees.
I overhead the organizers talking to each other again saying that we would get to the next checkpoint in ‘an hour if we hustled’
It took 4 hours.
My feet were really starting to bother me at this point. I had made the mistake of wearing brand new shoes for the race. I assumed that my feet were swollen as they seemed to be getting tighter and tighter. My pace started to get slower and slower and my spirt started to drain.
Last year the race was all mental for me and thats what broke me. This time I felt that I had not prepared my body for the demands of this type of endurance event.
We were lead to within a 1/4 mile of our camp then sent back up the mountain. When we arrived about half way up we were informed that we had not made the time cuff off and that we were officially disqualified from the race. They said that we could continue if we wanted but even if we completed all of the remaining tasks that we would not be listed as official finishers.
We all decided to continue. Some people left and went back to base camp as soon as they heard this and we later found out that it was all bullshit.
They were just lying to us. As long as you were still on your feet you were still considered to be in the race.
The next task was a 250 question exam. The questions were multiple choice and were ridiculous. They also made it really difficult to answer the questions because on the answer sheet none of the questions were in order so you had to search for the number for each one.
The purpose of the test was mainly to make us sit still for 2 hours so that we would start to relax, fall asleep etc.
I heard afterwards that they just burned the tests after we left so it was completely pointless.
All the while the race organizers were walking around encouraging people to quit and offering those who did sandwiches.
When everyone handed in their tests they ordered us all to stand and start running back down the mountain. When I stood up I could barely walk and quickly lost the group. I was trying to run but what I was doing more resembled an old man shuffle.
It was approaching 6pm and I knew that by the way I was feeling and after how difficult the previous night had been that my race was over. Even though I knew this was the case I still pursued the main group with the hope that they were headed back to camp but they had been sent back up the mountain again.
As I hobbled towards the camp I noticed Troy up ahead who was also dealing with foot trouble and had also decided to throw in the towel.
My walkie talkie reception finally came back and I was able to contact Sara and tell her where to meet me.
When we emerged on the road and I saw her in the distance I was filled with a sense of relief that it was over but also flooded with a feeling of failure.
Andrew had quit a couple of hours before us and Thom ended up quitting about 20mins after us.
My goal going into the race was to finish and I didn’t so it is definitely a personal failure but at the same time it was extremely naive of me to enter something like this and have a year to prepare and do no specific training for it. For an event like this CrossFit by itself is simply not enough.
People say that you learn more from your failures than you do from your accomplishments and I have to agree. When faced with hard times and adversity you are forced to look deep inside yourself and you find out things that are hard to deal with.
As a result of all that I feel that it makes yo a stronger person and I will grow from it.
I will not be participating in next years race as I need to focus my attention towards CrossFit.
Just because I am who I am I will likely return in the future and when I do I will be better prepared.
