2009 NAWCC

This past Saturday Emma and I took part in the North American Wife Carrying Championship at Sunday River. We beat Joe Decker, "The World's Fittest Man". You can see him eating sand in this VIDEO.

This was our fourth year competing in the wife carrying competition, we traveled up with Jim and Shauna who were competing for their second time (they took most of the photos below). Non-married types are allowed, and of the participants who are married I doubt many have been married as long as we have (10 years). I've noticed that there's something about marriage that makes many wives un-carry-able by their husbands after a few years (or husbands unable to carry their wives), so I've always thought that if they are going to call it the Wife Carrying Championship that participants should be married to each other.

Game face.

As soon as we arrived we heard the buzz going around that "The World's Fittest Man" was here competing this year. After checking in we went to check out the competition and not only did we find "The World's Fittest Man", we also found another team comprised of a guy who looked like he could beat the crap out of the "The World's Fittest Man" with a wife just about as tough. I decided that after last year's performance, and given the apparent level of competition, I'd be happy just to get through this race without dropping Emma.

I don't think out matching tops were going to do anything to help us win today.

Fezzik and Buttercup about to start their race.

We were up against a guy wearing antlers, who didn't look fast but he did look strong, and those are the types of guys that do well in this race. I decided that being a runner does virtually nothing to improve my chances at winning this race.

I ran the first 100 yards at a "comfortable" pace while moose-man sprinted out of the gate incredibly fast. I knew that there would be plenty of opportunity to make up ground once we hit the obstacles on the course.
The first obstacle is a 36" high log hurdle. We had been practicing going over wooden barriers in a local parking lot so we had this technique down pretty good and made up a little time here. (that's not us in this photo)

Moose-man ran into the waist-deep water pit way too fast, did a belly flop and dropped his girlfriend. It was a classic tortoise and hare scene, I just kept a steady pace through the water and passed moose-man while he tried to get his wet and pissed-off girlfriend onto his back.

The final obstacle was a 4' high pile of sand, and we had also practiced traversing similar terrain so we were able to cruise over this without any trouble and "sprint" to the finish. I'm pretty sure this was our fastest time ever, one minute and five seconds. It was definitely our highest place finish, 8th out of 40 teams.

RESULTS