Fun at the Teva Games

Team YogaSlackers

Down River Sprint Jason Magness 22:37.2 (In his PackRaft)
Mountain Bike Scott Turpin 2:08:50.0(First ever Race, 1st time on a bike in 8 months)
Mountain Run Chelsey Gribbon 1:21:44.0 (Avg Grade 10%)
Road Bike Hill Climb Sam Salwei 44:20.9 ( on his Mtn Bike)

We'd been brought to the Teva games by prAna to teach slackline yoga, acroyoga, and generally have a presence.  We'd just finished a 30 hr adventure race style trip with Stephen Regenold of the New York Times just hours before the games started.  On a whim of sorts, we asked if we could get a comped entry into the GNC Mountain Challenge.  

When the answer was "yes", we were all a bit mortified.  Like when you ask for something jokingly or sarcastically and then end up with it.  (Like when I asked for an elephant for christmas and then spent the next year cleaning up 25 pound terds)

So one of us was commited to racing each event.  As a further fun, we decided to all enter our weakest event.  Daniel Staudigel was sick, so we roped our friend and fellow yogaslacker extrordinaire, Scott Turpin, to race with us.   He'dnever raced before, and hadn't been on his bike in8 months - so he was the natural candidate for the Mountain bike.  We slated Sam for the 9.8 mile road bike hill climb, which would put him up against the likes of Lance Armstrong in an intense time trial format.  To make things more fun, he'd ride his mountain bike.  Chelsey signed up for the 10k trail run, largely regarded as the hardest 10k on the circuit - going strait up the Vail ski hill 3 times....

I was left with the DownRiver sprint - racing 4 miles down a class II/III river.  Most competitors had to drop off their boats the night before to get transported to the race start, I showed up with my packraft in my backpack, blew it up, put on my inflatable PFD and sidled up to the start line. 

Needless to say, none of us won our respective fields.  But we had a great time, and couldn't help getting super competetive, despite the limitations.  

In addition to our racing, we spent 8 hours a day slacklining and performing Acrobatics.  

Do we get to rest now?

Ummm.....no, that was all yesterday, and today we leave on our YES tour - biking with all our gear to Leadville (all uphill) and then climbing to the highest point in the state (Mt. ELbert - 14,400).  Just another day as a slacker.