As I was lying there on my board, one of the Hawaiians gave me the thumb-and-pinkie Hawaiian wave and pointed to the wall of water behind me. “Hey, dude. This one is going to get you.”
I looked behind me and saw this enormous wall of water collapsing. It hit me like a freight train, causing my board to shoot up and pull me with it into the air. Then I slammed down into the water. I felt like I was stuck in a huge washing machine, going up and down and spinning. All I could do was pray that the board didn’t smash me in the head.
It reminded me of running out of air under the ship. I couldn’t wait to surface and breathe, and I tried to remain calm.
When I started getting close to shore, I got my feet under me, grabbed my leash, and pulled it. At the end of it was a two-foot piece of surfboard. That’s all that was left.
Dawn, who had seen pieces of my surfboard wash up on the beach, looked very relieved when she saw me emerge from the water in one piece.
She said, “Don’t you ever, ever do that again!”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
We were married that weekend.
In August of 1998, I reached my twenty-first year in the Navy. Twenty years served was the minimum requirement for retirement. Since there wasn’t a lot going on in the teams, I decided to retire and dedicate myself to adventure sports, racing, and climbing.
It was a difficult decision, which meant letting go of the only job I had ever wanted—being a Navy SEAL. It also required my turning in my weapons, dive and jump gear, and beeper.
I could have stayed for another nine years and probably retired as a CWO5 instead of a CWO3.
But I figured that I was still young and fit enough to complete many of the great adventures I’d been dreaming of doing—including climbing the seven summits, starting with Mount Everest. I’d also have more time to spend with my family.
I didn’t know how I’d make money, but I would work that out later.
Usually when guys retire from ST-6, it’s a big deal with a formal ceremony. But I knew my parents couldn’t make the trip, because my mom was ill with emphysema. So instead, I wrote a letter to all the guys at the command. I talked about how much I respected them and had enjoyed working with them at ST-6. I explained why I didn’t want a big ceremony and ended by saying, This is my good-bye.
I was only forty years old and in excellent physical condition. I thought I’d be spending the next decade or two of my life training, racing, and climbing all over the world.
Chapter Sixteen
The Dirt Circuit
We rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us.
—Romans 5:3–5
I put the same energy and commitment I had for SEALs into extreme ultra-distance endurance sports. Since I’d paddled, run, and biked the mountainous terrain of Virginia and West Virginia many times, I knew it was the perfect setting for a long-distance adventure race. It wouldn’t be as dramatic as an event staged in a foreign country, but I figured by holding it in Virginia, I could keep the cost and entry fees low. Instead of having athletes pay twenty thousand or more each and race five hundred miles in ten days overseas, why not produce an event that was just as challenging, three hundred and fifty miles in five days here in the United States?
Together with Joy Marr, one of the first female river guides in the United States and an incredible athlete and event organizer, and Mike Nolan, another exceptional athlete, we founded a company called Odyssey Adventure Racing (OAR) and staged our first event—the grueling Beast of the East. Soon, Dawn joined our team and managed all of the race operations.
I had to sell my beloved Harley-Davidson and mortgage my house to help finance it, but the Beast of the East was a great success. Soon after, my phone started ringing off the hook. Athletes loved the concept of my low-cost, grassroots adventure race and wanted to know if we could organize a shorter race that could be completed over a weekend.
So OAR produced a two-day race, the Endorphin Fix, which became known as the world’s toughest two-day adventure race. Before we knew it, Odyssey Adventure Racing was producing up to twenty-one extreme sporting events a year—including Mega Dose, Odyssey One-Day Adventure Race, Jeep Kentucky Adventure Race, Jeep Kentucky Sprint Race, Expedition British Virgin Islands, Odyssey Triple Iron (7.2-mile swim, 336-mile bike ride, 78.6-mile run), Odyssey Double Iron, Odyssey Half Iron, Odyssey Off-Road (Xterra Qualifier), Odyssey Off-Road Iron (the world’s most difficult triathlon), and the Odyssey Off-Road Half Iron.
The company motto was Your Pain Is Our Pleasure, and I meant this literally.