A dozen years in downtown Richmond
Courtney Page / 16.02.2010
Thanks to them, come June 20th you'll be back, wading through the James River on the uneven rocky river bottom under the C&O train trestle in downtown Richmond, trying awkwardly to get upstream from the 300 racers relieving themselves in the starting area.
It's not a pretty sport-although the starting line usually looks like a Vogue magazine cover of sinewy, muscled models with 0 percent body fat. This is my first piece of advice: Don't judge a book by its cover at the XTERRA East Championship. Good looks won't help you when flying headfirst over your handlebars into the biggest briar patch you've even seen.
Something like a Marine Corp-boot-camp obstacle course, much of the 1,000-meter swim involves avoiding rebar, tree limbs, sharp rocks, river reeds, wild elbows, and spastic legs. And the river's unpredictable due to the currents and the ever-changing water level. Course designers swear, "The swim has its own terrain. It goes up, and it goes down; it is definitely not a flat swim." In fact, it barely qualifies as a swim at all. Some years the river is so low you find yourself scraping along the bottom while other years the early summer floods have you crafting your epitaph while you struggle to avoid the fall line 100 yds to your left. Halfway through the swim you exit the water and stumble 500-feet on a banana-peel-lined muddy bank, only to jump back in the river and crawl again-this time upstream. At the end you run up a boat ramp cemented with sharp unidentified objects and proceed 450-yards across rocks back to the transition area. Twenty minutes have passed, and you've barely yet begun.
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