Page 8 of The Big Race

Into the Unknown

T he next morning, an email arrived with the subject line: “Next Steps: Psychological and Medical Screening.” Just seeing the phrase psychological screening made my palms sweat.

Ray, naturally, was unfazed. “How hard can it be? Circle a few bubbles, talk about our feelings, move on.”

“You know these are modeled after the ASVAB or the MMPI, right?” I said. “They’re designed to detect inconsistencies, contradictions, and latent sociopathy.”

Ray gave me a crooked smile. “Good thing I’m a consistent, openly non-sociopathic guy.”

That afternoon, we each received links to an online battery of multiple-choice questions so long it needed to be divided into sections. I poured a cup of tea, opened a spreadsheet to track my answers in case I needed to refer back, and began meticulously working through the prompts.

Ray completed his in under forty-five minutes.

“You can’t possibly have answered everything thoughtfully,” I said, blinking at question 186: Do you ever feel emotions you cannot name?

He shrugged. “There was a question that asked if I feel like I’m being watched. We were literally on Zoom yesterday. What do they expect?”

“They expect you to understand nuance!”

Ray raised his brows. “Oh, sorry, I must’ve clicked strongly agree to that one.”

I groaned. “You’re going to get us flagged as unstable.”

He winked. “Unpredictable. It’s good TV.”

The next phase brought us to the glamorous world of blood work, cholesterol panels, vaccination updates, and detailed personal histories.

While I fretted over whether my mild needle phobia would be visible on camera, Ray got a warning about elevated cholesterol and immediately declared war on cheese.

“We’re running the race, not surviving Naked and Afraid ,” I muttered as he swapped our sharp cheddar for something plant-based and vaguely rubbery.

Still, we jumped through every hoop: fingerprinting, release forms, waivers. The final packet included questions so personal I joked about writing The Big Race: The Colonoscopy Cut .

We were poked, prodded, and processed—emotionally and physically.

And then, two weeks later, while I was debugging a stubborn checkout cart error, my phone rang again.

“Congratulations!” Miranda Harris said. “You and your husband have been selected to compete in our upcoming season.”

The world seemed to tilt slightly. After weeks of uncertainty, the test I’d proposed for our marriage was suddenly, irrevocably real.

“Are you there, Mr. Morgan?”

“Yes, sorry. That’s... that’s amazing news.”

“I’ll need to email you a packet of information and forms. The race begins filming in six weeks in Miami. Can I confirm your email address?”

I did and then hung up the phone, staring into space. It was all too hard to comprehend.

This time I waited until Ray got home to tell him. I motioned him to the bench beside me, “We’re in.” I took a deep breath. “Out of ten thousand applicants.”

He nudged me with his shoulder. “Leo’s video was that good.”

I nodded, but the truth was catching up with me. “Ray, this is probably the stupidest thing we’ve ever done as a couple.”

He tilted his head. “Says the man who let me install our own kitchen backsplash with nothing but YouTube and hubris.”

“I’m serious,” I said. “We’re going to try to fix our broken marriage on reality TV. In public. With cameras and timed challenges and international customs lines. It’s insane.”

Ray was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Yeah. It is. But I’m willing to try stupid if it might get us to a better place.”

That stopped me.

“I mean, what’s the alternative?” he continued. “More polite dinners and measured therapy sessions while we wait for one of us to say it’s over? This may be crazy, but at least we’ll be doing something.”

“And if it makes things worse?”

He looked me in the eye. “Then at least we’ll know. And we’ll have earned the answer.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. “God help us.”

Ray grinned. “That’s what the producers are for.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

“They’re sending us the material.” As if we were already in tune with Departure Gate Productions, my laptop beeped with an incoming email.

The official contestant packet was nineteen pages of rules, guidelines, gear recommendations, and legalese.

Ray skimmed it with the intensity of a sports analyst reviewing game tape.

I printed it out, highlighted sections in three colors, and created a packing checklist broken down by priority, function, and backpack volume.

“Only one carry-on-size backpack per person,” I read aloud. “They’re really serious about that.”

Ray grinned. “Now we see who the minimalist is.”

“You own fourteen pairs of compression socks.”

“Which roll up tighter than your T-shirts,” he said, grabbing a pair of lightweight trail pants from the closet. “We’ve watched every season. You know the winning teams don’t overpack. Lightweight, drip-dry, odor-resistant. And no cotton.”

“I know,” I said. “But do we bring one pair of shoes or two? What if it rains? What if it’s muddy? What if we’re running through a market in Mongolia or a sand dune in Sudan and I step in something unspeakable?”

“Then we toss the shoes and buy flip-flops like the couple from Season 22. They made it to the top five with sandals and duct tape.”

I stared at the open suitcase. “This feels real now.”

Ray’s voice softened. “It is real.”

We started laying out gear on the guest bed like we were prepping for a military campaign. Ray’s side was all mesh zip pouches and merino wool. Mine was spreadsheets, Ziploc bags, and backup batteries.

“Do we bring headlamps?” I asked, holding one up.

“Only if you want to look like a spelunking accountant.”

“First leg is probably at night. You want to be the guy tripping in the airport stairwell?”

He took it and clipped it to his backpack strap. “Fine. But I draw the line at trekking poles.”

“They fold up!”

“We’re not crossing the Alps,” he muttered.

We bickered over socks (“Wool or synthetic?”), snacks (“Can we bring protein bars from home?”), and the color of our matching shirts. “We’re the magenta team,” I said. I held up one of the shirts that had been shipped to us.

“That’s fluorescent pink,” Ray said. “Did they also send us tags reading “The Gay Team” to wear with them?”

“They want us to pop on TV,” I said. “And they have gay teams every season.”

“Trust me, they’ll know we’re the gay team without a label or a magenta shirt.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Since when are you concerned about our brand?”

He didn’t answer, just laid the shirts side by side on the bed. For a moment, the bickering faded. We were just two fans living the dream, surrounded by moisture-wicking fabric and far too many charging cables.

“You think we’ll kill each other on day one?” I asked, carefully labeling my compression cubes.

Ray leaned against the doorframe. “Probably. But we’ll look fantastic doing it.”

I tossed him a packet of travel wipes. “Don’t forget these. They saved that couple in the Philippines when they fell in the pig mud.”

“You know,” he said, unpeeling the label and tossing it into his bag, “for two guys barely holding it together, we make a hell of a team.”

I didn’t reply. But I didn’t disagree, either.

I forwarded all the information to Leo, and he showed up with a six-pack and a pizza the next evening like it was any other Friday night. But the way he lingered in the doorway, backpack slung low and eyes cautious, told me something was off.

“You’re really doing this,” he said after we’d eaten, standing at the kitchen island and staring at our two loaded backpacks like they were IEDs.

“We leave in six weeks,” Ray said, trying for breezy. “Ready to cheer us on from the couch?”

Leo didn’t smile. “You really think this is going to fix everything?”

Ray’s posture stiffened. “We’ve been over this?—”

“No, we haven’t,” Leo interrupted. “You told me the race might help. But what if it doesn’t? What if you two have a blowout on camera? What if the whole world watches you implode?”

I looked at him, startled by the edge in his voice.

“What if you come back worse ?” Leo asked, voice cracking slightly. “What if you ruin what little you still have?”

Ray tried to step toward him, but Leo backed up. “I love you both, okay? But this is not a reality show to me. It’s my family. And I don’t want to wake up to memes about Pop crying in Kathmandu or Dad sleeping on a bench in Bratislava because they couldn’t agree on a clue.”

I tried to inject calm. “Leo—this is our decision. You don’t have to carry it for us.”

“Too late,” he snapped. “You made me part of this with that video. And now I’m scared you’re chasing a Band-Aid when you need surgery.”

Ray looked gutted. “You really think we shouldn’t go?”

Leo was quiet. “I think... I think if you go, you need to be ready for it to break you. And if it does, you can’t pretend it was just a race .”

Silence fell over the kitchen.

Finally, I said, “We know the risks.”

Leo shook his head. “No, you know the rules. That’s not the same.”

He grabbed his bag. “Just... promise me that if this gets ugly, you’ll stop pretending it’s therapy with a camera crew.”

He left before either of us could answer.