Big Mountain Adventure Racing: You don't have to be bionic, but a little determination and a sense of fun helps

Jeri Lewis, right, and the Boom Boom Pow Adventure Racing Team from Omaha, Neb.

"Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is." - The Outlaw Josey Wales

OK, so maybe Jeri Lewis isn't "mad-dog mean," but she is tough.
The 37-year-old adventure racer from Omaha, Neb., could be the new Bionic Woman. She has been broken, twisted, gashed. She has hobbled around with screws and plates attached to her body.
But she has healed - for the most part. And earlier this month, Lewis and her adventure racing teammates Stacey Rybar and Jerry Badders won the coed team race at Big Mountain Adventure's Rampart Rage event at Rampart Reservoir.

Check out the PikesPeakSports.us Adventure Racing Group

"In a race, you know you have to be tough for eight hours and there is a finish," Lewis said. "But through all injuries, I had to learn to be tough, because that's something you live with. You have to be tough when things feel like they keep happening to you. You get tough when you have to be."
Lewis was a college softball player. She ran some marathons and did some bike races. She thinks triathlons are pretty cool, but doesn't like to swim. Adventure racing was a good fit. And then came a streak of bad luck.
In August of 2009, she was driving to work. It was a normal day with nothing special happening, until another driver turned in front of her.
The collision sent her vehicle into a light pole. Her car then took out 50 feet of a guard rail.
She remembers wedging herself out of the car with smoke filling the air. A 4 1/2-inch gash in her scalp gushed blood into her eyes. But the worst was the neck injury she received. Months of physical therapy and chiropractic treatment followed. Still, she could not turn her head to the left. She eventually had surgery and regained some of the movement she lost.
"I spent every second of every day really uncomfortable during that time," Lewis said.
She finally felt good enough to crawl on her mountain bike. In April 2010, she was racing when she wrecked and broke her leg.
"I was on my first lap of the race, three miles back in the woods," she said. "I walked out through creeks and over fallen trees."
A doctor's visit the next day revealed that she needed a plate and 10 screws.
Six weeks later she was scheduled to have the cast removed and be fitted with a walking boot when a staff infection flared up in her ankle, which quickly swelled up to three times it's normal size. She had emergency surgery the next day and eventually healed up, but the infection meant more time in the boot, which she wore for a total of 5 1/2 months.
A second neck procedure and shoulder surgery followed.
But Jeri Lewis is tough.
"Some days, I can barely move and it hurts to get out of bed," she said. "It gets frustrating when I haven't done anything and my neck hurts, ankles hurt. And I think, 'there is no reason I should be in so much pain.' But I find that I hurt if I don't do anything."
She has chosen adventure racing. She enjoys the camaraderie and special challenges - such as Big Mountain Adventure's zip lines - that the sport offers.
"In adventure racing I found people who are fun, who'll do things with you that you wouldn't dream of doing on your own," she said. "People who adventure race don't do it cause it's easy they do it because they love to be outside. It's fun to find others willing to do these crazy things with you. Our team is not the most competitive, we enjoy experience," she said."I love the idea of going to a barbecue on a weekend and people ask, 'what did you do today?' I say, I did an adventurer race."