The day before I left Denver for the Death Race I received my third and final pre-race email. In Greek. The email was about a half page of Greek. I think they expected me to use the mandatory Greek text book – I opted for Google Translate. This was the result:
“Less is more
Light is better than Black
Make sure you time
Appropriate to make what you
Registration - 6-8 amee farm Friday evening. Tour Trail - 8 m m Pre race ( top MTN) - midnight or when it will end. Race starts - 4 PM Saturday . amee holding
We decided not to ban things from this years event. Do what you think you need. You may want a projector , AX, layer, gloves, broadcasting, computer , etc. . depends on what you have set. 1 . Less is more 2 . Light is better than darkness. 3 . Make sure you promptly. 4. make appropriate with your words . 5. The mind is terrible waste. Good luck to you. We look forward to seeing you. We have a great event planned . Less is more.”
I took this cryptic and poorly translated message and added a few last-minute items to my packing – work gloves, base layers, a hatchet, and a waterproof case for my blackberry. Frazier, my younger brother, decided to take all my athletic shorts out of my duffle before I left, which led to some very hilarious and uncomfortable consequences.
I arrived in Pittsfield with my support crew and new girlfriend, Emily, at 5:00 PM on Friday, expecting a quick pre-race meeting, a trail tour, and a good night of sleep. Upon discovering my shortage of shorts, the wonderful Emily Nunez loaned me a pair of hot pink women’s running booty shorts. The tight spandex liners promptly generated a swamp in my ass – so comfortable.
The organizers ordered us to assemble all our gear and get on a shuttle to the top of a mountain. The pre-race meeting started in the middle of the woods. Andy Weinberg, one of the organizers, informed us of the recent bear, moose, and violent grouse problems in the woods. Andy shouted a number of facts at us (which I wrote down as quickly as possible while other people stared, stunned), and told us to pick up some massive wooden bridges, our 32 pounds of pennies, and our 8-pound Greek text, and begin hiking over the mountain. The 100 racers worked in teams to hike the bridges 5 miles down the mountain, install them on the new public hiking trail, then hike back 5 miles to the original start.
At 2:00 AM we made it back to the starting place and were told to get a large bucket, fill it with gravel, and in another bucket, dump our 40 – 50 lbs of gear. I’d estimate over 100 lbs total. We started trudging off into the woods again, and were told to scoop a handful of gravel onto the trail at random intervals until eventually we unloaded the whole bucket. By the time we arrived at Amee Farm, it was 4:00 AM and the race officially started (not the 4:00 PM start we were promised). At this point I had not slept since Thursday night as I began hustling back up the 5-mile mountain on Saturday morning. I arrived at the summit only to find a ¼ mile barbed wire crawl leading to a checkpoint where I was told to go back to the farm for “paperwork” enabling me to get my gear. I went back down through the barbed wire, this time slicing myself badly several times, got to the farm, translated some Greek, negotiated with a woman speaking only in Mandarin, was told that I needed to buy an axe at the top of the mountain and bring my gear back down, got my paperwork, and headed back up.
Mile 20 or 25 / Hour 12 or so: I get back to the summit, work through the barbed wire again, but am told that I need to go back down the mountain to pay for my Axe because the cash register is broken. A few people dropped out at this point. I saw that someone had actually brought a nice splitting axe, so I decided to make my first of several risky decisions. I took the axe. I wrote a note saying “Dear Death Racer, I took your axe down for you, please come find me. I am wearing pink shorts, #72. I have an idea for how we can work together. Cheers, Cully Cavness”
I worked back though the barbed wire and the mountain to Amee Farm where I was ordered to chop 30 logs. I loved this part, and I made up hours with some speedy chopping. A big crowd gathered to watch as the skinny kid beat all the big marines and army guys at the chopping event. After the axe work, I had to count all my pennies into piles and go diving in a cold, muddy pond for a bag of $5.
The pennies became very important half way through the race. The organizers placed stores, charities, suppliers, and food stands throughout the course. I had the option to exchange my money for supplies or even buy my way out of challenges. After the penny diving came a GRUELING 5 mile hike up a different mountain. I had to carry my posthole digger, six logs, my 10 lbs of onions, my pennies, my book, and all the other supplies through unbroken forest. Imagine wading through pine trees and ducking under logs for five miles on the steepest terrain walkable. The hike took almost three hours. At the top I found Rodger’s Onion Shop.
Rodger wore a huge scraggily grey beard and a crown and loved onions. He lived on top of a mountain, surrounded by trees and stacked firewood. He told me to chop my onions, sort them into 1-lb bags, and eat a pound. Then he wanted me to stack ten wheel barrels of firewood for him. I noticed a bucket with a sign reading, “Donate to the environment, $25 minimum, pennies only.” I said, “so you live way out here in the middle of nature, huh?” Rodger said, “Oh yes, it’s the only way to live.” I asked “So do you appreciate people who help the environment?” He replied, “oh, quite a good question, I certainly do.” At this point, I just wanted to lighten my load, so I dumped all my pennies into his bucket. Rodger lit up and took me aside. He said, “I have a very important message for you, which will help you immensely later in the race.”
Let’s hear it. He whispered, “Remember a very important sentence. This race is ¼ completed. Later in the race you will need.” Strange. I hoped that the bit about “1/4 completed” was a lie because I’d been out there for 25 hours.
At around 9:00 PM I set off back down the mountain, feeling pretty good until Joe caught me. Joe owns Amee Farm and started Peak Racing and the Death Race. He’s definitely the most intense person I’ve ever known. He told me to follow him, then started jogging. We ran (gear in tow) back to a hut where a bunch of fratty guys seemed to be partying. He said “boys, watch Cully and make sure he eats a pound of onions. Cully, you can’t leave until they let you.”
So my task was to get the frat boys to let me leave. Their task was to keep me prisoner until my bag of onions was empty. I immediately knew that alcohol was going to save me. I got the frat star race volunteers to shotgun beers until they were too drunk to notice that most of my onions were going into the fire, not my mouth. Still, I cooked and ate a huge quantity of onions. I decided to put the onions in a can of beer to steam out the flavor over a fire. I finished after about forty-five minutes and eventually took off down the hill back to the farm.
At Amee, I used my hint from Rodger to avoid going back up the hill for a language and translation lesson. Instead I skipped straight to inflating a big inner tube with a small hand pump. I had to take that tube and all my gear for a 1.5 mile run down to a covered bridge where I was told to squat in the tube in an icy pond and translate Greek. After that, I had to do some math, fill a bag with 27 pounds of sand using a spoon, and weigh it. I miss-judged the weight by too much on my first try and had to eat an onion as punishment. I nailed my second try and was told to take my sandbag back up the first 5-mile mountain to receive a skull. I did.
With skull in hand and Haik and Spencer by my side, I went back to the pond. “Get in your tube and float back to the farm, you’re done,” said the race organizer. Unfortunately, the river was only 5” deep, so I ended up having to walk 1.5 miles through freezing water until I got back the farm. My last challenge was 100 pushups.
I finished in 4th place with a time of 32 hours. The winner was just written up in GQ magazine as “Fittest Man in the World.” He is in the Guinness Book of World Records as such. I beat last year’s winner and became the youngest person to survive the Death Race. Only 19 of the 100 entrants finished.
The event wiped me out for about two weeks. I felt concussed – I couldn’t think quickly, I had trouble tracking conversations, I was always tired, and I couldn’t stop eating. My body hurt for days after the race. Now, three weeks later, I am almost back to 100% and enjoying some small runs and short sessions in the gym. My thinking is back on track, which is good news, because I’m about to begin a very thinking intensive project.
I leave the United States for a full year on July 20th. I’ll be starting my Watson Fellowship to study energy businesses and technologies around the world. That trip will be chronicled through my original blog: www.clc3tales.blogspot.com. I hope you will visit it to read about my next adventure.
This will be my last post. Thanks to everyone who read it. Thanks especially to Long Trail for making this possible and for all my amazing friends and family who donated to the Lance Armstrong Foundation through this project. I think that the thousands of dollars we sent their way could make a difference in LAF's important mission to fight cancer and help cancer patients overcome their struggles, survive, and recover.
