The (mis)adventures of Team Booger Butts
Or how an act of grace swallowed frustration in the 2023 Castlewood 8-hour Adventure Race. Also: SIGN UP NOW FOR MABA 2024
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The (mis)adventures of Team Booger Butts
Our team name is Booger Butts.
If that doesn’t inspire confidence in our four-man adventure race team, I don’t know what will.
An ear, nose and throat specialist (Scott Hardeman) provides the booger. A gastroenterologist (Fred Williams) provides the butts (though technically he sat out this year, we kept the name in homage to him.)
Rounding out our team (but providing no bodily waste): Artie Kerckhoff, a commercial real estate broker, and Boone Jackson, a financial planner.
We entered Saturday’s Castlewood 8-hour Adventure Race with no expectations that we’d compete for the win or even finish in a position worth bragging about. And we did not do either one of those things — though the finish of our race was incredible, which is the entire point of this newsletter, and I’ll get to that soon enough.
Instead, our goal was to a) have fun and b) not hurt ourselves and c) collect every checkpoint and get back to the finish line by the deadline, after which there is a one checkpoint penalty for every minute you are late.
This year that meant finding 106 checkpoints spread across 40 miles of biking, canoeing and hiking/running across suburban St. Louis parks, waterways and city streets.
Hardeman has an incredible ability to read a map, chart a course and make decisions on the fly, and for most of the day, we hovered right around the pace we needed to meet our goal. Then came the water challenge, always our nemesis.
We hit the water and paddled.
And paddled.
And paddled.
It soon became clear that I steer a canoe as if … as if … words fail me except to say man I suck at steering a canoe. That picture below looks cool right? Let me point out we are perpendicular to the river but NOT because we want to be.
Even with me slowing us down, we never fell far off pace, if at all. We figured if we collected all 20 checkpoints at the last orienteering section and climbed on our bikes at 3:20 p.m., we’d have a chance to beat the 4 p.m. deadline. I checked my watch when I climbed on my bike – it was exactly 3:20.
We had no time to spare, so we pedaled.
And pedaled.
And pedaled.
At least I could steer the thing.
With about 20 minutes left, it looked like we had a chance. I was gassed, so I started to tell myself, “Don’t be the reason we’re one minute late.”
I had just finished saying that out loud to myself when we approached an intersection … with a railroad barrier … which started to lower … WAIT WHAT NO NO WAY ARE YOU KIDDING ME NO WAY THIS IS HAPPENING … and blocked our way just as we arrived.
Soon a handful of other racers gathered there with us as the train roared by. I might have said bad words. They might have said bad words. We laughed, we cursed our luck, and we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
One minute became two became five became nine, and all the while, our goal of getting credit for all 106 checkpoints vanished.
Part of the reason I do these adventures is because they fill my notebook with story ideas, with lessons, with conundrums to write about. As we waited (and waited and waited) for that damn train to finish, I thought this little interlude was a gold mine for future stories.
I could write about the frustration of coming close. Seriously, if we had arrived 30 seconds earlier, we would have made it. The storyteller in me loves missing by 30 seconds. The competitor in me would rather miss by five minutes (if he has to miss).
I could write about margin. If we had been faster throughout, it wouldn’t have mattered. There were 100 ways we could have picked up 30 seconds (ahem, including having a competent canoeist) throughout the 440 minutes we had raced to that point.
Or I could write about how sometimes life kicks you in the pants, and you have to laugh it off or you’ll go nuts.
All of those are valuable lessons. But I learned another one that turned out to be far more powerful.
When the train finally finished, we dashed toward the finish line, or at least dashed as much as men in their late 40s and early 50s who have propelled their bodies for 40 miles can. We no longer had a chance to get back on time, but at least we could make our penalty as low as possible.
We crossed the finish line 3 minutes and 36 seconds late. We would have made it with time to spare without the train. After I caught my breath, I told the race director about our misfortune. Then our team posed for pictures, clapped hands with other finishers, cheered on late arrivals, groused about our luck, laughed about our luck, cried about our luck, etc.
I wandered back to the race director. Have you ever had the experience in which after you do something, you know why you did it, but you didn’t set out to do it for that reason? That happened now. I did not set out to channel my mom, but afterward, I knew I did.
“You know,” I said to Jeff Sona, who served as race director with his wife, Carrie, in a tone of voice that was 100 percent my mom’s and made it clear I was just kidding, “a kind, caring, loving race director would give us a break because of that train.”
“We’re thinking about it,” he said. When I first told him about the train, he thought I was bullshitting, which I kind of was. I mean, I was telling the truth, but I was also simply lamenting. Then several other teams told him the same thing.
Soon Carrie and Jeff made an announcement that I’ve been thinking about for three days: They decided not to charge penalties for the teams who were delayed by the train.
They redeemed our failure, for no reason. They wiped away our frustration, just because they could. The definition of grace is giving someone a gift they didn’t earn, and their decision was exactly that.
That was worth all nine minutes and 1,000 more besides.
BURPEES FOR DOLLARS
Last January 3rd, an Anonymous Donor offered $1 per burpee for every burpee done at one F3 workout with a cap of $10,000, with the proceeds going to Shriners Hospitals for Children. We pretty easily emptied his wallet of that amount.
He’s back again this year, with a twist: We have to match his $10,000 and reach 20,000 burpees, again on January 3, again at one location in St. Charles, Missouri. I don’t think the 20,000 burpees will be a problem. And I’d like to blow that $10,000 goal out of the water. But we need your help for that. If you’d like to make a per burpee donation either for yourself or someone else, click here.
