Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

Steve Solloway: In sport, few challenges are tougher than this one

BRIDGTON - To win, Aaron Colman had to run up a ski slope, walk across wooden beams, shimmy under barbed wire, zig and zag back down the mountain, cross a pool of water using monkey bars, scamper on all fours across a steeper pitch and climb up and down three sets of cargo nets at three heights.

And that accounted for just part of the course at Saturday's Shawnee Peak Challenge, which featured 15 military-grade obstacles. Colman completed it twice over a span of about three hours which included a rest-and-rehydrate break. He finished first in the morning's preliminary race and again in the champions heat.

He did it easily, looking too much like a mountain goat set free from its pen at the game farm.

"I'm dead," said Colman, just before he stepped forward to claim his championship trophy, a gold-painted G.I. Joe helmet with a crest of barbed wire on its front. He's a 37-year-old triathlete from Rye, N.H., in his spare time. Carrie Hale of Center Conway, N.H., was the first female finisher and got a matching helmet.

"That was the hardest thing I've ever done," said Colman. "I just want to take a nap."

How hard? "Physically it was harder than childbirth," said Karen Tucker, 43, of Old Orchard Beach. Her daughter and son, not quite 6 and 3, watched her finish. Her husband, Steve, might have been close to tears as he watched her get up and over the cargo netting that stretched some 14 feet in the air. "I can't tell you how proud I am of my wife," he said several times.

"I'm afraid of heights," said Karen Tucker, who patrolled Shawnee Peak on skis for nearly 20 years. Saturday, she labored to get her second leg over the top of the wood frame that supported the netting. The crowd cried out encouragement. Tucker tried harder to stabilize her footing. "I thought of quitting, but I couldn't. Not with my son and daughter watching. My goal was to finish."

How hard? Ken Mason of Arundel is 44 and six years removed from active duty in the Coast Guard, although his haircut and physique belied that. "Nothing in my boot camp experience could compare with this. This was tougher."

He grinned, reminding that he went through Coast Guard training. A Marine might very well have a different perspective. Mason's mission was search and rescue over water, not search and destroy in mountains or desert.

How hard? "It was all that running up the mountain and back down," said Sue Wiemer of Freeport, the world-class masters heptathlete who was the first female finisher in the first heat. "You didn't catch your breath until you came up on an obstacle."

At the monkey bars, many did pause. Fatigue had set in, even with the best-conditioned. They gauged their jump to grab the first cross bar. And were surprised when the bars rotated in their moorings. Maybe every fourth runner lost their grip and splashed into a pool of cold water two feet deep. Bill Brown, 36, of New Sharon lost his wedding ring while traversing the bars. He didn't stop to retrieve the gold band but notified a course worker.

"That's my wedding ring in the water. I gotta go."

He sent a text to his wife after he crossed the finish, just missing the cutoff to the champions' heat. "She doesn't like surprises, so I try to give her one. I got the ring back. I put it in my car."

Blake (I'm not my twin, Kirby) Davis of Falmouth isn't long removed from his tenure as a runner with University of Maryland-Baltimore County. "Hands down, that was the hardest race. The downhill was tough. I kind of ran sideways so I wouldn't fall."

The race made him and others feel like they were 8 years old again and turned loose on a playground, burning off energy. Except no playground at any school was as demanding.

Miles away from Saturday's Deering-Cheverus football game where two strong high school teams waged a war of wills, nearly 150 men and women tested themselves in far different and harsher ways. As the name said, this was a challenge to the fit and not-so-fit.

"This is an extremely challenging course and you have to pace yourself, whatever that means," said the race starter through his bullhorn. "Have fun, be safe."

"I've never been in something like this before," said Chris Streifel of Windham. "I wanted to do it and see if I could survive."

He did.

Staff Writer Steve Solloway can be contacted at 791-6412 or at: ssolloway@pressherald.com