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“My heart is pounding, sweat pouring off my brow...I cram a cliff [sic] bar into my mouth fumbling over the keyboard. I’m trying to hold back the emotions as I pour my soul into this letter, hoping to be the chosen one.”

So wrote Thomas Bastis, a golf course superintendent from San Carlos, Calif. Specialized opened that fourth slot and an all-expense paid weekend with full access to the team tent for the member of their Specialized Riders Club who crafted the most compelling argument why they should join the team.

Bastis has written his way into a mean event. Though intentionally vague, early inside word on the adventure race’s course is that it will ask teams to paddle a full seven miles across the wide Monterey Bay, landing on Del Monte Beach, before moving through 20 miles of up-and-down biking and then into eight miles of trail, sand and pavement foot travel.

“We’ve all been trying to figure out where it’s gonna go, how the course will get us from the ocean to the Otter [at Laguna Seca],” Rusch says, “what kinds of bikes to use, what tires will be best. You try to guess and figure it out and usually you’re wrong.”

To his credit, Bastis seems to understand what he’s getting into—or at least how exclusive the company he’s running with is. “I can’t wait to race with SUPER well known teammates,” he wrote. “This is a recipe for true adventure.”

He even volunteered “a game plan to assure success” that includes items like “We’ll pummel anyone that whines” and a “promise [for] the time of your life while losing at least 5 lbs.” He is careful to include one key strategy right at the top, though: “I will stand by your decision to have Rebecca carry all the gear.”

Team members Stewart and Sims reinforce that wisdom.

“Rebecca is such a good teammate,” Stewart says. “That’s part of her job—the strongest makes the weakest stronger.”

“She can push through physical barriers,” Sims says. “but is mentally stronger than anyone out there.”

Bastis will be well-comforted to know, come mile 34, that the physical and mental strength he sees in Rusch is no hallucination.