Coaches Get Chance to Push Themselves

Coaches routinely push their athletes through physically demanding drills--torture, Janet Sherman calls it.

Now Sherman is going to get a taste of her own medicine.

The Cal State Northridge softball coach and her assistants--Kelly Ford and Randy Roeder--will compete as a team in the Hi-Tec Adventure Racing Series national championship starting at 8 a.m. Sunday at Castaic Lake State Recreation Area.

Not surprisingly, the coaches are a little apprehensive entering their first adventure sprint race, which combines trail running, mountain biking and kayaking.

“We talked ourselves into it during the summer and now we’re stuck,” Sherman said. “But we’re excited about it.

“This type of competition is a different breed for us. We’re not used to racing against the clock.”

But Sherman, 32, acknowledges that a fast finish isn’t the goal of “Team 3’s Company.”

“We want to finish before the sun goes down,” she said. “Our goal is to complete the event and prove that teamwork can overcome the obstacles that [race organizers] present for us.”

Competitors are presented with a series of “mystery tests” interspersed throughout the event. At the Oct. 5 adventure race in Pittsburgh, one member of each team was given a deflated kayak. Since teams must begin and finish each leg of the race together, the kayak had to be blown up before a three-person team hit the water.

“We’re coaches,” Sherman said. “We have a lot of hot air.”

Roeder, 40, said he is most worried about the mystery tests, which are not revealed until competitors confront them during the race.

“You don’t know what they are and there’s no way to train for them,” Roeder said. “But it should be fun. We’re just going out there to finish the race.”

The Matador coaches have mostly trained on their own, partly because they live a long distance from each other--Sherman in Northridge, Roeder in Bakersfield and Ford in Ventura.

Roeder said it’s been difficult to train for the hilly terrain near Lake Castaic by running and biking in the flatlands of Bakersfield.

“I don’t have access to a lot of hills,” he said. “Endurance-wise, it will be interesting to see who holds up. We’ll probably be drowning in the kayak race.”

A nervous Roeder said he contemplated slipping his twin brother Rick--a competitive runner and triathlete--into the event in his place.

“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Roeder joked. “[Rick] didn’t like the idea that you all have to finish together.”

The race’s philosophy that a team is only as good as its slowest member is attractive to most adventure-race enthusiasts.

Roeder believes the event will bring the Northridge coaches closer together.

“If we survive that, I guess we can survive anything,” he said.