By Ashley Christine

The Longest Day 24 Hour Adventure Race

Team #2 Trek or Treat (2 Person Coed Division)

I'll start by saying THANK YOU to Matt Wilson (who I had never met prior to Friday, the night before the race) for agreeing to take a risk and race with me knowing I had never completed a full 24 hour race prior to this.

Going into the race we agreed to a few main goals:

1. No one gets injured

2. HAVE FUN

3. Finish the race - Finish meaning: Push me to experience a full 24 hours and as many miles as appropriate, without breaking the first 2 rules.

I wanted the full race experience. The 3 am mental crash/fatigue. The sunrise. The hard uphill pushes. Bushwacking. Night navigating. Pivoting when things don't go as planned (spoiler... It will happen a lot). I wanted to experience as much as possible to help me see if I had what it takes and if I want to do more of these in the future.

Mission accomplished!

We covered somewhere between 70 - 80 miles over 23 hours 18 minutes via whitewater rafting (~19 miles), trekking (~17 miles) and gravel (~32 miles) & "mountain biking" (~8 miles w/some road and a lot of hike a bike) - most of which it was raining.

(Garmin says total was 78 miles, but I think Garmin was generous by 3-5 miles).

I think the photos say it all - much of the time I was smiling. I normally hate the rain, but somehow I hardly even knew the rain was there. I was on a mission.

But it wasn't ALL smiles... For about 5 minutes around 9am on Sunday (22 hours into the race and not quite at the finish) I cried.

I was pushing my bike up a overgrown rocky, fern covered trail and said to Matt "I know this is how these races go... But I'm not having fun right now" and the tears came rolling. He asked me what I wanted to do and I said - "whatever brings us closer to the finish line fastest." We quickly settled on that plan and immediately turned a corner onto a trail where I was given maybe 2 minutes of a real, rideable MTB trail. With tears streaming down my face, I laughed and said "now I'm having fun" (I was so happy to finally be on a rideable trail) - and continued to sob as I rode... Knowing the happiness was only going to be brief. (The end of the trail was another unrideable ski trail and uphill push ).

Lots more to reflect on over the coming days and weeks. Looking forward to hopefully finding another race in the coming months.

Big thanks to New York Adventure Racing Association for directing and organizing the race. Adventure Racing Insider for media coverage and so many awesome photos. Beaver Brook Outfitters (specifically Mikey) for guiding us down the whitewater.

And a big thank you to all the other teams and volunteers who welcomed me into the sport in one way or another over the last few days.

And one last time - thank you, Matt, for making sure I didn't get lost or hurt in the woods and helped me accomplish every single one of my goals for this race. It takes a lot of guts to hang out with a stranger, on no sleep, for 24+ hours especially in constant rain.

The smiles speak for themselves.