Scene 2 — Lindsey

‘I still can’t fucking believe I’m doing this,’ Lindsey thought to herself as she cruised south on a two lane road an hour south of Knoxville. She still couldn’t believe she, Linsey Grainger, top performer at her corporate job in Chicago, was going to some rural location in the backwoods of Tennessee to do some kind of weird athletics competition.

She thought back to the night this had all started. It had been particularly busy at work with several late nights and she was looking for some physical activity to get her mind off of work and to de-stress. The women’s rec league soccer team she played on had a game at 6:30 on a Thursday and she had busted her tail to get her work done so that she could get there just in time for the kickoff. She was in a good mood, excited for the break from pressure at work, until she arrived at the field and the opposing team only had 7 players. A couple more trickled in, but they only ever got up to 9 so were two women short the whole game. The game was played at a low intensity since both teams knew it would not be competitive. Lindsey’s team won by 10 goals and the match ended 20 minutes early by agreement of the captains. Lindsey was furious ... she had worked all week so she could have this break as a reward to herself. She had also wanted to get in a good workout, but she had barely broken a sweat, the whole thing felt like such a waste of time. That she had basically planned her week around the game made it even more infuriating.

As was tradition after a win, her team gathered at a bar for a few rounds of drinks and dinner. By the time she got home, her frustration had been magnified by several rounds of cocktails and she had vowed she was going to find a new physical outlet. Down the internet rabbit hole she went, eventually ending up on the page for Appalachian Adventure Racing Camp and she had signed up on a whim because it sounded intense and totally different from any of the options around Chicago. Starting the next morning her anxiety about going had begun to build. There was the basic concern about doing something without any friends, but then she had also begun to worry about the safety aspect. Was it really a good idea to travel from Chicago to rural Tennessee on her own, particularly as a single woman?