June 20, 2000 — It was barely light out, not yet 7 a.m., as Team Reality Bikes arrived at the transition area of the Hi-Tec Adventure Race Sunday at Fort Yargo State Park in Winder, Ga.
Team members Bill Oyster, Brian Grizzle and Anna Barnett walked their bicycles forward sleepily. In less than 45 minutes they would be wide awake, embarking on a four-hour adrenaline bender — two parts mountain biking, one part trail running, one part kayaking — fighting the heat and tackling various “special tests” splashed throughout the course.
Sometimes I’m happy to be a spectator.
Anxious? Edgy? A bundle of nerves? I wondered — with start time fast approaching — how does a participant feel?
“Confused, mostly,” said Oyster, a 29-year-old former professional road cyclist. “I think that’s how they try to keep you at these things. It keeps it entertaining.”
Oyster, Grizzle and Barnett were inspecting their race map and compass quizzically. Orienteering was the one special test the 268 three-person teams were warned of in advance.
“It just looks like a bunch of colors and lines to me,” Oyster said, only half jokingly.
Patience and teamwork are tested as much as strength and endurance in adventure racing. Teams must work together and finish together.
Much of it is mental, but it is the body that will be sore the next day.
“So how did you guys train for this?” I asked.
That’s how the team answered me with laughter. Truth is they didn’t do much out of the ordinary. In fact, Oyster spent the last several days fishing in Florida.
But active is ordinary for this group. All three are heavy into bicycling. Grizzle, 28, of Dawsonville, owns Reality Bikes in Cumming and competes regularly. Twenty-nine-year-old Barnett, of Alpharetta, rides often and her husband races professionally.
If anything was going to give this team trouble, it was not going to be the two 6.5-mile mountain biking loops. Now, trail running was a different story. But how bad could 6.5 miles be? 
The answer: A lot worse if you’re forced to carry a brick along for the run. This was special test No. 2, and the teams learned about it at the start line. One brick for each team. Grizzle took on that task.
Some special tests are more annoying than anything. Later, teams would be asked to swap front and back tire tubes on one of their bikes. Other special tests included monkey bars and buckets, railroad ties and blindfolds, marine hurdles and 12-foot walls.
By 7:50, the nearly 1,000 participants had left the start line, and the rising sun was beginning to make the morning a hot one.
Bricks were unloaded gladly after the run and the organized chaos of the transition area began. It all happened quickly, simultaneously. Participants hanged shoes, rehydrated, boarded bikes. Then they were off.
Team Reality Bikes had some time to make up after the run. And they did, passing several competitors during the first bike leg. They kept their position during the three-mile kayak portion and looked strong heading into the final bike ride.
Oyster, Grizzle and Barnett all told me beforehand they were approaching this adventure race as fun, an incentive to train and stay in shape. But, with the end in sight, competitive juices began to flow. You could see it in their once-sleepy eyes.
Ground was again gained on the bikes. Now the wall was all that stood between them, the finish line and the Oreos and oranges that awaited on the other side.
Drained and exhausted, Team Reality Bikes approached the wall like they had everything else that morning — as a team. Eventually, one by one, they helped each other over.
As the clock clicked 3:58:51, the team crossed the finish line … together. They were the 36th coed team, out of 143, to do so. They were just over an hour behind the winners, and nearly three hours ahead of the last-place team.
“I can’t move my shoulders,” said Grizzle, who spent some precarious moments dangling from the wall. “I think we’ll actually train for the next one.”