The Amazing Race: The Yak Chats with Caroline and Jen

Caroline Cutbirth and Jennifer Kuhle
Caroline Cutbirth and Jennifer Kuhle

As the 11th leg of The Amazing Race completed on Sunday evening, the remaining 4 teams had worked their way through Belfast, Northern Ireland, by locating a giant ring, swimming in a muddy bog, and serving up trays of food for diners on the dry dock where the Titanic was built. After all was said and done, the country singers, Caroline Cutbirth (@TXSweetCaroline) and Jennifer Kuhle (@jenwayne), were the last to the Pit Stop and missed out on the chance to race for the million dollar prize. The Yak sat down with the girls to discuss their favorite locations on the race, their upcoming songs, and the flirtatious moments with Anthony and Bates.

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The Yak: Thanks for chatting with us today, ladies! How are you both doing?
Caroline: Awesome!
Jen: Good.

The Yak: It was a pleasure watching the two of you race, so it made it even more heartbreaking to see you get so close to the end, but miss it by just a short distance.
Jen: I know, we were so close!

The Yak: You mentioned you’d be writing songs about your time on the race. When do you think we’ll be able to hear those songs?
Jen: Caroline, why don’t you tell them your latest song?
Caroline: We’re going to release a song called “Hockey Player Heartbreak”, and it’s about our romance with the hockey players and how heartbroken we are that we’re not together any more.
The Yak: Sounds like a hit song to me.
Jen: It’s going to be huge! Heard all around the world!

The Yak: The viewers were glad to see that you didn’t give up in the bog snorkel challenge. If you had been able to chose the other teammate to complete the Road Block, do you think you would have made it to the Final 3?
Jen: We couldn’t switch because Caroline had already done 6 Road Blocks and I had done 5, so I had to do that Road Block. If Caroline had done it, we absolutely would have been in the Final 3. She loves getting down and dirty, and she’s a swimmer and I’m not, but you can’t really look back because we didn’t really have a choice.
Caroline: And I think that’s the thing with the Amazing Race that’s so cool and frustrating: circumstances happen and there were certain Road Blocks that Jen would have been better at than me, but I was in them and you just have to roll with it. She did the best she could, and I think that’s why we had such a great experience. It killed me because I knew that I would have been fine, but that was Jen’s 3 worst things: being cold, claustrophobic, and swimming.
The Yak: So, Jen, that’s why you were ready to get out of the suit so badly at the end of the task? It was your claustrophobia?
Jen: Yeah, and I would have been fine if I had finished it the first time. Then I got out and jumped into the second bog, which was even worse cause it was 5 times more muddy. If I had just touched the end and gone back, I would have been fine. I had over a minute left when I was watching it. So, getting back in the second time was the killer because you’re frozen. It was so cold. My hands and feet were completely numb. I couldn’t feel them. When I got back in the second time, I started cramping from being cold, and then the worst part was I just couldn’t breath. I was claustrophobic, my wetsuit was choking me, and so I had to get out and change wetsuits. I literally changed wetsuits 6 times, and each one took a half-hour because your body is swollen. You should have seen Caroline and I trying to get me into the second wetsuit.

Caroline and Jen Discover Haggis
Caroline and Jen Discover Haggis

Caroline: It was a task all by itself!
Jen: So that was the struggle. If I had made it the first time, it would have still been awful and horrible, but I wouldn’t have had to get back in. The getting back in was the tough part.
The Yak: The important part was seeing that you didn’t give up.
Jen: We had made a promise to each other that we’d never give up, and if I had been by myself, there would have been no way I would have gotten back in that water, but I promised Caroline, so I really did it for her. I knew we made a promise that we’d never give up, and she’s the only person in the world I would have gone back in there for.
Caroline: I’m so proud of her because I knew how much Jen was struggling, and Jen’s not a quitter and not a complainer, so I knew she was really struggling. I’m so proud of her, and we just wanted to finish the race with our heads held high and know that we tried the best we could at everything. I think we did that.
Jen: Caroline was so supportive. She was a great friend the whole time. While I was doing that, it must have been frustrating for her to watch, but she was nothing but supportive and just a great friend.
Caroline: Well, you’re a great friend, too!

The Yak: Going back to the hockey players, Anthony and Bates: You seemed to get close during the race, and you touched on it a bit with the “Hockey Player Heartbreak” song, but have you kept in touch with them and with any of the other teams since the race ended?
Jen: We keep in touch with the hockey players, of course. We went and saw Anthony play a game. We became really close with Max and Katie and Chuck and Wynona. I text Wynona all the time.
Caroline: I know, me, too!
Jen: I know everything about her! [Caroline and Jen laugh] So, we really came out of the race with some good friends.

The Yak: What was your favorite location on the race?
Caroline: I love them all. It was so cool because you think, “When am I ever going to go to Africa?”, but it’s a place that Jen and I both wanted to go, so that was so cool to see. The same with Vietnam. It’s such a cool country, but I don’t know that I would have ever gone in my lifetime. Personally, I loved Scotland because I found my husband, Jim, there, and that was true love. [laughs]
Jen: Switzerland took my breath away. It was so beautiful, and I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Obviously, it’s so expensive to travel there, so we feel so fortunate that we got to do it.

The Yak: Would you ever consider doing The Amazing Race again or another reality type show in the future?
Jen: Definitely, I’m waiting on All-Stars.
Caroline: I’d love to do The Amazing Race again.
Jen: We’re waiting for All-Stars to call us.
Caroline: Yeah, hello?!?

The Yak: What was the toughest challenge that you faced, and was there anything you weren’t expecting before going into the race that surprised you?
Jen: Everything surprised us. Every single challenge is so random and I don’t know how they even come up with this stuff.
Caroline: I think we had a lot of challenging moments. Jen, of course, struggled with the bog and the sand castles during the first challenge. I struggled with the bagpipe. I mean, you try to prepare for the race, but I would have never practiced blowing a bagpipe. I think it’s all kind of surprising. You just have to get in there and go for it the best you can because it’s crazy!

Caroline and Jen Become Graffiti Artists
Caroline and Jen Become Graffiti Artists

The Yak: Speaking of trying to prepare, did you do anything special to get yourselves ready for the race once you found out you had been chosen?
Jen: We obviously trained. We both tried to get in as best shape as we could. We went through a little camp at Caroline’s dad’s rance, and he taught us how to knot tie and balance and every kind of weird, random thing we thought might help for the race.
Caroline: Yeah, we tried to get into physically good shape. I wasn’t really a great runner before Amazing Race, and now because of Amazing Race, I ended up running a half-marathon because I was running so much and I just pushed it that far. It definitely pushed us to get physically fit.
Jen: Maybe I need to try out for the race again to get back into shape. [Caroline and Jen laugh]

The Yak: What’s next for the both of you?
Jen: We’re just working on music and we’re still best friends, so you never know what might be next.
Caroline: We’re just taking everything as it comes along.
Jen: We definitely feel like we have something special together with music and we like working together, so we are open to opportunities and excited to see where the road will lead.

The Yak: Thanks for chatting with us, and we hope to see you back on our television screens soon!
Caroline: Awe… Thank you!
Jen: Thank you!