Dot watching… its tough work!
Hey Athletes!
It has been quite the week watching dots travel across Mongolia. Have you been keeping tabs on the Mongol Derby? I must admit I haven’t been sleeping well and my stress levels are high. Tuesday I spent most of the day in bed feeling like garbage in what I am going to dub SDS (Sympathetic Derby Syndrome) after several days with less than 5 hours of sleep and some intense back to back zoom calls with current and upcoming derby riders.
My spouse, now a hardened dot watcher, lights an imaginary cigarette with a steely stare. “You don’t even know Sarah. You deserve this misery.” Boy, have I put my family through a lot… enough that they barely bat an eye when I announce my next crazy adventure like I just declared “I think I will order the shrimp today”. Actually if I ever ordered shrimp, it would probably set of fireworks of red flags to those who know me, far more than any of these adventures that could quite literally kill me.
For those readers who have never done one of these races, let me tell you a thing or two about dot watching: it only shows you about 0.1% of the story. There is a HUGE disconnect between the race itself and what we see back here. Add in the twitter and facebook posts and you maybe get up to 0.5% of the story.
I want to share with you a story that I always try to keep in my mind to keep myself from panicking when I see dots doing weird things.
It was 2016 and I was riding in the inaugural Race the Wild Coast. At the pre-race training we were given two trackers - one for the horse and one for the rider in case we got separated because rescue is so difficult on that terrain. One of mine was missing a cover to the data port on the back side of it. I pointed this out to the organizers (knowing that we had to swim rivers and this wouldn't be watertight) and they said it would be fine, just throw it in a plastic bag. Ok. Done.
The race starts and on day 2 we had our first major river swim. I am not a good swimmer, so of course I was rather nervous, but I used the techniques in training and all went off without a hitch. I was actually leading the race much to the surprise of everyone involved.
However, the surprise wasn’t just because I had a bad track record of flunking out of ultra rides…
As I had somewhat predicted, my tracker got waterlogged and malfunctioned. Did you know that the default in this scenario is that it sends out SOS signals? I know that! (Now)
When I reached the next vet check, one of the organizers ran over to me and told me my SOS signal was going off. Knowing they were filming us for a reality TV show, I assumed this was a ploy to get some drama and improve their ratings, so I rolled my eyes and dismissed it.
“No, we actually sent a helicopter to rescue you, but it turns out you were fine… winning actually!”
I pulled the tracker out from my bag, and sure enough, that little red light was flashing! Oops! Lol! Apparently I am the only one looking for drama.
After I got over myself and decided to ride on without the second tracker, I asked about what would get posted about the situation on the social media channels and how it would look on the map. After all, people at home might be freaking out just a wee bit. I was assured that something would be mentioned in the updates so my family and friends at home knew I wasn’t sleeping with the fishes.
That night, we also didn’t have cell reception. Usually I would call in and give Ashley updates to post about. So I just had to sit and assume all was good.
Well, I guess nothing ever got posted and my family got to spend some time living the fear that I had drowned in the river. Eventually they saw a post the following day about me continuing to lead into the vet checks and decided I was in fact alive and even thriving, but that had to be a pretty tense day for them!
That’s not a slight to the organizers of course, things get crazy during these races and if everyone is ok, good news is ok to let slide. If things weren’t ok, emergency contacts would be called.
So that’s what I go back to every time things aren’t quite adding up on the map. There are SO many things that could happen out there. This was especially important for me this derby session as I live only through the tidbits I can find on the map and official pages and the dots that I was invested in were showing irregular behaviour.
Bottom line is that we can’t put ourselves into panic mode when we don’t hear updates about our loved ones… its not always bad news. Trust the riders, trust the organizers, and let them all focus on their race… if we are lucky they will share their full stories with us down the road. The only person that feels your stress is you, so treat yourself to a deep breath and a distraction. Nobody needs that extra cortisol if it isn’t imperative to your survival.
There are only a few days left of this session of the derby. I will probably sleep for 2 days straight so I am fresh for round 2.
How about you?
Cheers!
-Sarah