Adventure Race Camp Day 1

After yesterdays fiasco with the hotel room, I got up early, scarfed down a banana and some water waited a bit, then headed out for a run. I had emailed Joe earlier about an easy trail run for the morning since we were doing kayak and classroom I thought I could handle an hour. He said there was an exercise trail about 3 miles from the hotel that was flat and ran along the river. Never really found out how to get there so I figured I would just run 30 minutes then turn around and come back. Started out downhill from the hotel and saw a sign for the Pisgah forest and followed it. The next sign I see is.

First thought I had was oops, wrong way, but then I was like this is supposed to be an adventure so why not, and I only had 20 or so minutes to go till I turned around so it can't be that bad. Anyway I kept going and while it was uphill, it was just a slight uphill and the scenery was keeping my distracted enough that it didn't matter. After a mile I see a trail off to the left paralleling the river I have been following so I decide to take it.

After a few minutes on the trail I see the sign for the exercise trail, amazing... So I follow that a while taking it easy and taking pictures. When I arrive at the English Chapel I'm at 34 minutes and decide to turn back so I can get breakfast #2 in before camp starts.
Turn around and it takes me 26 minutes to get back, I guess it was a bit more of an uphill than I thought, but I was moving much faster and the temp was a brisk 63 so feeling really good.
After the run had breakfast at the hotel, eggs, sausage, and biscuits. Then headed off to camp. Tim when to get the truck and meet us out front, but he comes walking back in and the truck would not start, so we had to take Michael's car. Met Joe from Pura Vida Adventures at his office which was just around the corner from the hotel and right next to the Indie Coffee shop. Started with some admin/paper work, camp itinerary and then some kayak classroom instruction. next we packed up the van and headed out to the lake for some on the water learning. We learned to do a boat rescue where you after purposefully roll over, then get out and then push the kayak onto someone Else's kayak upside down to get the water out and flip it over. Then you have to get back in with out filling it back up with water.
Then we learned a self rescue with a bilge pump and floaty. This was more of a challenge especially for me. I could get the kayak over ok, but then every time just before I got in, I would flip it over again. I think it took me 6 tries to finally get it. Next there was some basic paddle instruction and we headed to the waterfall.
I was amazed that we only went about a mile but the water was much colder and cleaner near the falls. We hiked up to the top and I swam out to the middle almost to where the water was landing. I felt like I was in my endless pool because the closer I got the harder it was to keep moving forward.
After a few minutes we paddled back, then headed back to the office for lunch and some rappelling instruction so we could head directly to the rock in the morning.
Got back to the hotel and Tim called AAA to come look at the truck after it still wouldn't start when we got back. We headed off to a local place to eat and he waited for the tow truck.

At the restaurant it was taking more than 45 minutes to get our dinner so I talked with the manager and got our appetizer and drinks taken off the check. When the food finally arrived, it was really good or I was really hungry, or both. And this ends day 1, I really needed this.