On February 20th, 2025 (Happy 32nd birthday to me) David, Mike, and I competed in the Sea to Sea Expedition race across Florida. This was David and Mike’s 3rd time participating and my second since 2023 and this year… was epic.
To recap what this race is, you start on the west coast of Florida (near Ingles this year) and have to travel by foot, bike, or canoe across the state of Florida to St. Augustine (over 300 miles). To navigate across the state, you use map and compass, no GPS devices allowed. While navigating, you search for “checkpoints” along the way and whoever has the most checkpoints the fastest wins the race.
We all woke up around 5 AM on Thursday. We had to get our maps for the race and load the shuttle buses at 6 AM. I was dragging my feet as I only got 2 hours of sleep the night before (This messes with me later in the race 😬). For the first part of the bus ride, David and Mike worked on prepping the maps and I looked at google maps to get an idea of where we would be heading. Eventually, I decided to put the phone away and try and close my eyes, I was so incredibly tired already.
Around 9:30 we arrived at the race start location and all teams scurried around to finish last minute preps before the start of this 72 hour adventure. We all used the restrooms, ate a snack, put on our live spot tracking (provided by the race), took a race start picture, and lined up to hear the race directors last bits of information. I shook off the sleepiness and got excited. It was here, all the training was leading to this moment.
At 10 AM the race director counted us down and the front pack took off running and the rest started walking. We quickly realized we were in the wrong bunch of people and took off down the side of the path on the grass to get to the people who were running. We were approaching this race differently this year, it wasn’t just to complete the race, it was to compete.
We ran down the path to the “beach” and noticed the race had emptied out a pile of fresh, white, dry sand on top of the wet, dirty sand. This made it easier to fill our sand bottle halfway, but the view also made us chuckle. (We are required to fill these small bottles with sand at both coasts).
Once Mike filled our bottle halfway we ran back down the path and kept a good pace. We were off to catch a few trek checkpoints. Our running pace let us pass teams left and right. It felt good to run, but I also worried if we were starting out too hot. I reminded myself to drink water and eat, the most important piece to any endurance event. We were looking for a side trail to turn off of until we noticed a path through the grass and a few teams further down. We decided to take it and realized whoever was in front had a good idea to cut across the field instead of searching for the trail. We bobbed and weaved through muddy patches from the previous days rain and quickly found ourselves at our first checkpoint. As we made our way to the second checkpoint we caught a glimpse of the first place team (They are the team who is from Florida and typically win every year) we all looked at each other with a giddy in our step, OH SNAP, are we up here with the front runners?!
We figured they had already grabbed the next checkpoint we were going after, both of us running the loop in opposite directions but didn’t let that startle us. Its a long race and anything can happen.
It set us off on a good start and we collected the next couple of checkpoints along the trek with ease. We were feeling confident.
Before the race we were sent an outline of roughly what each leg would consist of. We noticed there was a “swim” portion this year and I felt myself nervous for this part due to the cold weather and well…alligators. Especially after seeing this sign.
After a couple hours, we had made our way to the swim crossing area and quickly took out trash bags, took off our shoes, pants, and shirts to get the least amount of clothing wet as possible. We stuffed all our belongings in the trash bag and tied it tight. The trash bag was to keep our belongings dry and provide a little floatation device in case we needed it as we swam across the river.
After stepping in, my fear of freezing water disappeared, it actually felt rather nice. We had been running and sweating all morning and the blast of cold was quite refreshing.
Mike swam out ahead like Michael Phelps and David and I had a steady pace inching along, dragging our trash bags, with that keen awareness of potential alligators.
We made it to the other side and as quickly as we could, we tried to dry off and clear our feet of wet sand. We were back to trekking, searching for more checkpoints.
After a few hours of light running we came to an intersection that was not clearly marked on the map we were given. Meaning, we didn’t know if the trail in front of us was the right one to turn on or not. We decided to take it and after 20 minutes or so, we realized we were on the wrong path as we hit a paved trail, on the opposite side of where we wanted to be. Going the wrong way always creates a sense of frustration but there is so much relief when you finally realize where you are.
We took off on the paved road to backtrack and get the checkpoint we were originally looking for. We saw countless people heading the other way, meaning they already grabbed the checkpoint and I could feel a hit to our spirits. Dang it! But it was still just day one, we had plenty of racing left to do AND we were still getting all the checkpoints.
Once we snagged the checkpoint we headed back in the direction we came from and made it to our next leg, the canoe. We quickly grabbed a snack, put on our rain protection gear (to keep our clothes from soaking from splashing) and hopped in the canoe. I was excited as I was trying out a new paddling seat that had a back rest. All previous races I sat in the middle seat with no back rest for hours and hours. After a quick 20 minutes paddling, I was pumped, it was so nice to be able to lean back.
However, after a while of paddling across a lake to get to our first paddle checkpoint, I realized that I was slowly leaning further and further back, lower and lower in the boat. I asked David if I was encroaching on his space and he let me know I was. Once I looked down to analyze what was going on, my seat had moved on the straps and I was low riding in the canoe, leaned way back and relaxed. It set me off in a laughing fit. Was I already slap happy? Probably.
The first canoe portion of this race went by with ease and we passed other teams. This was the first race where we hardly ever got passed by a team on the canoe. We had finally, finally figured out a good method for paddling and how best to sit in the canoe, Mike up front, me in the middle, and David in the back. We also brought our own paddles which helped us a lot too.
We cruised along easily and found all the checkpoints as we went through little passages that we think we did two years ago as well. I wasn’t too nervous about alligators while paddling this go around, it wasn’t new and scary any more. We knew they were around but as long as we stayed in our canoe, we were fine.
Our goal for the canoe was to make it to the transition area (TA) before it got dark. As we came to the area to pull out our canoe, we had a decision to make. Did we want to pass this spot and snag the last canoe checkpoint or get out like most other teams. We decided since we hadn’t missed a checkpoint yet, we should go for it.
As we did this, we noticed other teams getting this checkpoint on foot, from the next leg. WHAT?! I felt a surge of frustration. Typically you can only get checkpoints by the mode of travel determined, so was this cheating or did we miss the ability to do this?
Regardless, we got the checkpoint and turned the canoe around. As the sun was going down, we all started to feel a shiver and put some layers on. We didn’t spend too long at the TA as we shoved food down our face, refilled our water, and headed out on foot. We had another trek leg to embark on during the night.
Additionally, this was going to be our coldest leg of the race, with the lows in the 30s. Thankfully we had enough energy into the evening to do a nice run/walk mix.
After about an hour we came to a point where there was a “Waypoint” marked on our map, a couple of them in fact. In our minds and from previous races, this meant you HAD to go through this area, typically as a safety measure. As we started to turn down a path, we realized other teams were ignoring this and continuing on the busy road.
What is going on?? As we continued on, we later saw multiple teams coming from a different direction, none of them taking the waypoint that was on our maps. We were flooded with frustration again, why were these teams not taking the waypoint? We decided we would ask once at TA.
We continued on in the night and found that our navigation skills paired with pace counting was extremely successful. During our first Sea to Sea we saw multiple teams do this, walk a certain amount of paces in the direction of the checkpoint and it would appear exactly where they thought. David and Mike had practiced this at other races and I kept my eyes peeled scanning. We did this as much as we needed to and each time, came upon the checkpoint. It was glorious. We were no longer guessing.
We kept up with a run/walk pace and I could feel the fatigue in my quads (I guess I didn’t train enough with running with a heavy pack) and I started to have an intense pain in my right foot, a pain I had felt while on the CDT and afterwards. I kept quiet about it at first, each time knowing that I could change my gait and after awhile it would slowly fade. I also knew that our next leg was a bike ride and I could be off it for a while.
Eventually in the night we decided to do more walking than running and I also let them know how my foot was. I was hopeful it wouldn’t take me out of the race, but figured they should be aware.
We kept finding all our checkpoints, even one towards the end of the leg where there were multiple teams around searching and with a gut feeling by David, we found it hidden behind a large group of trees. SCORE! We shared with a few nearby teams that it was “back there” trying not to completely give it away. This type of behavior is typical in Adventure racing, sharing tips with each or asking “Where do you think you are on the map” and working together to figure out where you are.
After 15 hours, 3 legs, and roughly 50 miles we made it to our first transition area in the middle of the night. I was glad to be there to restock our packs and clothes for a cold bike ride and the early morning start of Day 2.
Izzy + Ozzy 