Life can throw its hardest obstacles at us and it puts us into fight or flight mode – meaning a person will either dig in their heels and preserve or they’ll quit and give up. For many, 2020 has been a year of obstacles -- one after another.
Imagine enduring endless obstacles at one time, in a span of two weeks, with people you’ve just met. Dr. Anne Bailey knows this too well after she signed up for the “World’s Toughest Race: Eco Challenge Fiji,” an ultimate expedition race, in which 66 teams from 30 countries race non-stop for 11 days, 24 hours a day, across hundreds of miles of rugged Fijian terrain complete with mountains, jungles, rivers, and ocean.
The race proved to be a battle of endurance of every way. Sixty-six teams from around the globe set out to be victorious, but only one could come out on top. And for Bailey, her ultimate goal was to finish.
Bailey said she decided to enter the World’s Toughest Race with her friend Gretchen Evans, whom she knew through a book club, Keith Mitchell Knoop, and Hal Riley. Bailey said Evans learned of the competition and asked if they wanted to enter, the group agreed, and that’s when they hit their first hurdle – entry into the race.
The team’s dynamic is different, they’re a mixture of old and young. Members are from different generations, and each member has his or her own silent battle. But, they had to work together to overcome their battles to attempt to overcome the elements of Fiji.
She said Evans had to fight to get the group into the competition. The reason? Each member of the group has his or her own challenge. According to Runner’s World. Bailey is a Type 1 diabetic, Evans is deaf after an accident in Afganistan, Knoop was wounded by an IED during the Iraqi War, and Riley has a severe back injury and is prone to seizures after a skiing accident.
“She asked them, ‘Well, are you going to throw fire at us or kill us?’ They said no,” Bailey said.
She said Evans told officials that she’d been in more dangerous situations.
“She told them, ‘If you don’t let us in you’re just treating us like the rest of the world treats us. They rule us out before they know what we are capable of,’ and he told her ‘Well, if we do that, then we’re jerks,’ and said ‘Well, don’t be a jerk then!’ When we got in, that was the real victory for us. Participating in the race was a bonus.”
Evans told “Runner’s World,” “We were all broken in some way. Even as competitive as we were, we knew it was unlikely that we were going to win.”
But, they persisted on after clearing the first hurdle of entry.
Bailey said after Evans fought and got them into the competition, they had to get over yet another hurdle. She said three of them, including herself, live in Asheville, North Carolina. One lives in Lincoln, Nebraska and the other lives in Austin, Texas. She said the group had to train together for eight months in three different locations.
She said after signing a lot of nondisclosure agreements, the teams were all set to compete. For Bailey, it proved to yet another hurdle. She had never been to Fiji, never did a competition like this and no idea of the terrain.
Bailey said to train, the group trained in the mountains and tried to simulate what they thought they would endure as much as possible. They learned it was more than that. Bailey said Fiji’s climate changed a lot.
“You really go through all of the climates except for snow,” she said.
Now, after enduring the first two hurdles, you wouldn’t think the group would have another hurdle, but they did. Bailey said the group had to rely on each other’s strengths and look out for each other.
For her, it was battling the elements all while maintaining her Type 1 diabetes.
“That was also part of the challenge. We each had to remember our limitations. When we would stop, I would have to go to the medical tent to make sure I was eating, check my blood sugar and make sure I felt okay,” Bailey said.
She said that was hard in itself.
She said the mixture of veterans and civilians was another challenge, two group from two different worlds, not including their very different backgrounds. She said she and Evans met because she works at the VA as a pharmacist. And there was yet another hurdle, Bailey was second youngest member of the group and Evans was the oldest.
But, they needed each other to work together, in order to endure and preserve.
“It’s like that now,” Bailey said. “When we go through our day to day life, we have to remember what drives us. We have to rely on each other and look out for each other. It doesn’t matter what race, color, creed. We have to be on board with each other and work together.”
For her team, they had to rely on each other day to day to make it, to persevere through the challenges they faced. Bailey said there were times she wanted to quit but couldn’t.
“If one member of the team quits, then the entire team is out of the race,” she said.
Bailey said it drove her to keep pushing.
There was also no outside contact. Bailey said she couldn’t talk to her parents, Cheryl and Jan Bailey, or tell anyone what she was doing. She couldn’t even talk about the race until they received an air date, which she said they got a month ago.
So, where exactly did Bailey’s team, Team Unbroken, end up? Well, you’ll just have to watch the race to find out. The first episode of “World’s Toughest Race: Eco Challenge Fiji” will air this Friday, Aug. 14 on Amazon Prime and will continue for several weeks.
