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When she came up for air on the other side, her chest was pounding. Breathe she told herself. Deep breaths. Breathe and keep moving. What kind of sadist creates an obstacle like that? What kind of fool pays good money to do it was a better question, but she already knew the answer. At least her hangover was gone.
It turned out to be a small favor because the next obstacle involved balancing along a thin piece of wood spanning another pool of freezing water. Really? The race had barely started! Trixie was damned if she was going to let this race get the better of her. The board wobbled under her feet but she made it to the other side without falling.
“Take that you hypersensitive bastard!” she yelled, not sure who or what she was addressing. It actually felt pretty good to vocalize some of her frustration.
The next challenge involved scaling a wooden hoarding near the starting line. The same one against which she had pushed Cy the night before. He had been so selfless right from the start. He told her she didn’t have to go down on him, but she wanted to, liked doing it even. Was her biggest release really that much of an imposition? She put it from her mind. This was not the kind of race where you could afford to get distracted. Trixie charged the wall at speed and hit the ground running on the other side.
The obstacles only got more difficult each time she thought the worst was over. Despite that fact, there was a tangible sense of camaraderie among all the racers. Everybody helped each other without being asked. It felt like a collective need for self-inflicted suffering had brought them all together and now she was a part of that. Trixie was bruised and bloody and none of it mattered. She stopped feeling sorry for herself. The mud went everywhere and it wasn’t going away any time soon.
Trixie slid on her belly down a narrow plastic tube into a pool of, surprise, more mud. The wet obstacles were perfectly spaced apart to occur whenever you started drying off. At least it was sunny. She wormed her way up a similar plastic tube on the opposite side and collapsed for the firs
t time. Trixie was tired, but not defeated. She would get up again in a moment, just not yet. A few more seconds on her back was all she needed. That’s when Trixie noticed one of her shoes was missing, probably floating between the two plastic tubes.
“MOTHER OF BALLS!” she shouted at the sky.
“Hey Firecracker.”
A racer bent over her supine body, raggedly drawing breath, but haloed by the sun. Trixie shielded her eyes to get a better look at him.
“I think you lost this,” the deep voice said.
Cy held up a muddy shoe while bracing his other arm on a knee.
“Thanks,” she replied, more than a little stunned.
Trixie took the shoe and slipped it back onto her foot with a squish. Cy straightened and grabbed his ribs. He wore a compression shirt covered in mud and plastered against his chest. Cy was also similarly bleeding and scraped.
“You look beat up,” she said.
“Yeah, about that. You set a punishing pace. I’ve been trying to catch up with you for five miles. If you hadn’t thrown that sneaker, I’d still be lagging behind.”
“I didn’t see you at the starting line.”
“That’s because I wasn’t there. I was scheduled to run in a later heat with some friends, but when I saw you bounding away, I joined in after the fact.”
“You abandoned your friends to run after me?” Trixie said, unable to hide a smile.
“You didn’t answer my knock on the Fairview Suite this morning, and you weren't in the breakfast room either. I’d almost given up hope until I saw your red hair among all the other elite racers.”
“Wait, I’ve been running with the elite racers?” Trixie said.
“You didn’t know?” Cy asked, genuinely surprised. “You’ve been keeping up with most of them.”
“I just signed up for the earliest race on a lark. I had no idea,” she said honestly. “This is my first obstacle course race.”
“Aren’t you full of surprises.”
Trixie couldn’t help but think of last night.
“Apparently not all of my surprises are welcome.”
Cy picked up on the double meaning right away. “No, that’s what I was afraid you might think, and why I ran after you. I shouldn’t have left like that. Last night was delightful, and playful, and I was being a hyper-sensitive jerk.”
“You heard me yell that?”
“I think the whole race heard you yell that.”
“Sorry, I was just venting. It wasn't a fair judgment. I made you feel redundant. That’s my fault. Furthermore it’s not true. You're extremely good at knocking boots,” she said.
