Berryman again

I'm prone to post-race depression, but it hasn't struck as fiercely as usual this year thanks to the way my races have lined up like stepping stones across the summer months: June, Dirty Kanza and Stubborn Mule; July, my less than stellar Tour de Donut, followed by two weeks of vacation; August, Thunder Rolls; and finally, this weekend's Berryman Adventure Race.  There are a lot of good memories packed into this year already.

Berryman is the patient zero of my AR love story; it's where I first heard of adventure racing in 2010, following a casual friend's team (well, casual friend at the time; now he's one of my core adventure friends) and first hearing of Team Virtus via the wonders of online tracking.  It's where my brother and I did our first AR in 2011, stretching a 12-hour race into nearly 15, being disqualified for missing the time cutoff,  and spawning so many stories about "Jim and I" that my teammates now refer to us as "Gemini".  We returned the following year to finally become official finishers, re-learning some tough lessons along the way.

Travis photobombing "my brother Jim and I"

I've never raced a Berryman with Team Virtus, and I've never raced the 24 (or 36) hour version.  This year will be no exception.  Chuck and I are reprising our roles as "Age Before Beauty" (minus Keith, and we're both clear on the event date :D), and Bonkhard is only offering one option, a 16-hour race.  Practically a sprint. ;-)

I'm excited. The weather looks to be fantastic, I have an awesome teammate, and I've been training more regularly than my norm.  I'd like to tell you where you can look for updates, but cell signals are so iffy down there that probably the first update will be me facebooking the next day.  Whatever...it'll just make you look forward to my blog post that much more, right?