THE BET at the Lyon's Outdoor Games

This year I decided to make the Lyon's Outdoor Games Extreme Race a bit more interesting. I made a bet with Oskar Blues Brewery that I would win the race by at least two seconds. If I won Oskar's would have to pay me 500 dollars and give me a year of free beer. If I lost I would have to pay whoever beat me 500 dollars.

When I showed up in Lyon's CO the event organizers told me that they hadn't seen the water levels this high in the past 10 years and that the race would be moved upstream of the regular race course.
The new race course wasn't as technically difficult as the previous race course so I felt that my odds of winning weren't as good. I've always felt that I have more of an advantage on technical courses. I knew that if I canceled the bet a lot of my critics would have talked a lot of trash, so I decided I had to move forward with the bet.

On race morning it was a very cold 48 degrees and the water was raging. The course had class 5 consequences. If you swam it was anyone's guess as to how long it would be before you got out of the water.

I figured if I wanted to win I had to do two things. First I had to keep my bow up every time I hit one of the many holes to carry my speed. I also needed to pull harder than everyone else. I knew that the race was going to take about 5:30 seconds. I figured the distance was going to reward those of us that spent a lot of time training. For that amount of time I knew I could keep my heart rate over 180 and still put together good lines.

I ended up winning the race by over 14 seconds.