Hybrid Adventure Series is a new entrant in the mud-run /obstacle-run phenomenon that is taking over the planet. This is their first year. They have only four races on the schedule, one of which is in Phoenix on October 15th. You should check them out, it looks like fun!
A better reason to check them out is because they LOVE me! Scroll down about halfway through this link to see my name! http://hybridadventureseries.com/locations/southwest. Ok, ignore the part about me being from SoCal and just bask in my coolness!
A bit of explanation - some races have Clydesdale divisions for those weighing over 200 pounds. I guess this is because it's harder for bigger folks to run than it is for scrawny folks? This H.A.S. competition has five challenges: trail running, obstacle course, archery, keg throwing and tire flipping. And they offer a Clydesdale division. Yes, the Clydesdales may have a challenge with the running and the obstacle course, but what about tiny people? You think it's easy for us little tykes to throw kegs and flip tires? I made such a comment on the H.A.S facebook page and, like I said, they LOVE me...and they promptly added a Mini-Mite division. Awww yeah...I'm famous!
And FYI...I'm now officially in training to learn to run more than two miles without walking so I can WIN the Mini-Mite division! Though some of you may recall that it is the archery that I probably should be working on!
Fame points = 10 seconds. I now have 13 minutes and 50 seconds remaining.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Pick a pack of pickled PEPPERs
It is so overwhelming to think of the huge numbers of animals at the shelters. Right now, the Arizona Humane Society has about 300 cats and kittens up for adoption! 300! 75 of them aren't even on the adoption floor because there isn't enough space. And every day more and more kitties are turned in. And that's just the cats. The number of dogs is overwhelming too! I'm on a facebook group of the "5am Dogs", which is a daily photo list of the dogs that the county shelter put on their E-list for the next day. The point is to network these dogs to get rescues or adopters to pull them before their deadline (sadly, pun intended). Sometimes a dog gets rescued (check out Phillip Bruno) and we can all smile for a second, but mostly the dogs get put down at 5:00 am and a new list is issued. There are just too many animals and not enough adopters. It's heartbreaking.
While we are talking about shelter dogs, let's talk about breeds. The prevalent breeds of shelter dogs trend with current breed popularity. When I worked at the Humane Society 14 years ago, the majority of the dogs we saw were Chow mixes. Very rarely would we get any small dogs at all. For the past few years, the majority of the dogs have been pit bulls/pit mixes. While there are still tons of pits, lately the new prevalent breed at the shelter is Chihuahuas (and chihuahua mixes.)
Chihuahua mixes like my pretty petite Pepper:
She is such a sweetie! Look at that tail, going 100 miles an hour like it always does. She is the waggiest little dog ever!
Her broken leg healed quickly and based on her x-rays, she was cleared for PUFA (shelter speak for Put Up For Adoption). However, she didn't recover from her bout of kennel cough very quickly at all so no PUFA for her. Many of my fosters get over kennel cough with no medication, but Pepper's persistent goose-impersonations would not go away so I had to get her some meds. The upside to no PUFA for Pepper was that we got to enjoy her for 10 extra days!
After her leg healed, Pepper became quite playful. She loves playing with the other dogs. Or trying to get them to play with her anyway! Her method of initiating play is to pick a big dog and jump up into his or her face. This method is rarely successful.
Mo: "Seriously? Ugh."
If Pepper's invitation to Mo fails, she'll try it on Frankie.
Every once in a while she gets lucky and Frankie will play with her. When he gives in and plays, she is so happy!
I think Pepper views Georgie as the alpha dog. She never jumps into Georgie's face! She does something even weirder. Georgie loves to wriggle around on her back in the grass like this:
Whenever Georgie does this, Pepper goes running over to her and lays down and rolls onto her back too and shows Georgie her belly. She does this every time. It's pretty stinking cute.
After her 10 days of medication, the kennel cough was gone and so I had to take poor Pepper back to the shelter. She was none too happy when I dropped her off there. And I was nervous because there are so many little dogs to choose from at the shelter right now and it breaks my heart when one of my pups has to spend nights all alone in a run. But such is the nature of fostering...you have to return them to the shelter so they can be adopted.
When I checked at 4:00 that afternoon, Pepper was listed up for adoption and her adoption info had some crazy remark that said "REQUIREMENT! Must meet other dogs and kids prior to going home." Huh? Pepper is absolutely lovely around other dogs, all dogs! And she was good with the Bacon Bits. On her info sheet I marked her as friendly with dogs, cats, men, women, kids. On her remarks about favorite toys I put "stuffed animals, bones and other dogs." Why would they make her sound non-dog friendly? I called the shelter staff immediately and they responded immediately and changed her adoption info. I love my shelter staff! And then, when I checked the website late, late that night...guess what?! Pepper was gone! Another foster adopted in ONE DAY! WOO HOO! YIPPEE!! Some very lucky family picked a pack of pickled Pepper and I'm sure they will enjoy her petite, pretty, playful Pepperness.
While we are talking about shelter dogs, let's talk about breeds. The prevalent breeds of shelter dogs trend with current breed popularity. When I worked at the Humane Society 14 years ago, the majority of the dogs we saw were Chow mixes. Very rarely would we get any small dogs at all. For the past few years, the majority of the dogs have been pit bulls/pit mixes. While there are still tons of pits, lately the new prevalent breed at the shelter is Chihuahuas (and chihuahua mixes.)
Chihuahua mixes like my pretty petite Pepper:
She is such a sweetie! Look at that tail, going 100 miles an hour like it always does. She is the waggiest little dog ever!Her broken leg healed quickly and based on her x-rays, she was cleared for PUFA (shelter speak for Put Up For Adoption). However, she didn't recover from her bout of kennel cough very quickly at all so no PUFA for her. Many of my fosters get over kennel cough with no medication, but Pepper's persistent goose-impersonations would not go away so I had to get her some meds. The upside to no PUFA for Pepper was that we got to enjoy her for 10 extra days!
After her leg healed, Pepper became quite playful. She loves playing with the other dogs. Or trying to get them to play with her anyway! Her method of initiating play is to pick a big dog and jump up into his or her face. This method is rarely successful.
Mo: "Seriously? Ugh."
If Pepper's invitation to Mo fails, she'll try it on Frankie.
Every once in a while she gets lucky and Frankie will play with her. When he gives in and plays, she is so happy!I think Pepper views Georgie as the alpha dog. She never jumps into Georgie's face! She does something even weirder. Georgie loves to wriggle around on her back in the grass like this:
Whenever Georgie does this, Pepper goes running over to her and lays down and rolls onto her back too and shows Georgie her belly. She does this every time. It's pretty stinking cute.
After her 10 days of medication, the kennel cough was gone and so I had to take poor Pepper back to the shelter. She was none too happy when I dropped her off there. And I was nervous because there are so many little dogs to choose from at the shelter right now and it breaks my heart when one of my pups has to spend nights all alone in a run. But such is the nature of fostering...you have to return them to the shelter so they can be adopted.
When I checked at 4:00 that afternoon, Pepper was listed up for adoption and her adoption info had some crazy remark that said "REQUIREMENT! Must meet other dogs and kids prior to going home." Huh? Pepper is absolutely lovely around other dogs, all dogs! And she was good with the Bacon Bits. On her info sheet I marked her as friendly with dogs, cats, men, women, kids. On her remarks about favorite toys I put "stuffed animals, bones and other dogs." Why would they make her sound non-dog friendly? I called the shelter staff immediately and they responded immediately and changed her adoption info. I love my shelter staff! And then, when I checked the website late, late that night...guess what?! Pepper was gone! Another foster adopted in ONE DAY! WOO HOO! YIPPEE!! Some very lucky family picked a pack of pickled Pepper and I'm sure they will enjoy her petite, pretty, playful Pepperness.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Kitty Update
As you may recall, a dumb Mama Cat had her babies behind my shed, causing extreme insanity in my dogs. I am not exaggerating the insanity. It really was extreme! Seriously, the dogs could think of nothing else other than kitties, kitties, kitties. This is how they spent ALL of their outside time:
Mama Cat is quite feral. I think Daddy Cat used to be someone's, as he will let you come near him, but Mama runs as soon as she sees people. I don't want the kittens to be feral so every once in a while (when I had the energy to move all the barriers) I would take the kitties out to play with them and get them acclimated to people.
This was on May 1st:
I haven't named them yet, other than Black Kitty and White Kitty. Black Kitty:
White Kitty:
One day, Mama Cat got tired of us playing with her kittens and she moved them. The nerve! I looked all over for them...in our yard, the 2 neighbor yards and the Montessori school yard that shares our alley. I scaled the school fence and sat on the roof of the school where the cats like to hang out, and I watched for about 30 minutes. I saw Mama Cat, Daddy Cat (who are both black and white like the kittens) and Uncle Tabby going about their neighborhood business, but I couldn't find the kittens. In their absence, the dogs went back to normal...playing, going potty without being ordered to, wanting attention from me. It was nice.
A few days later, on May 6th, the dogs found the kittens. Mama Cat had moved them back into my yard! This time she wasn't quite as dumb. She put them in the pool pump house where they were completely safe from doggie teeth.
The dogs went kitty-crazy again. Ergh.
I didn't mind as much this time because I didn't have to do any extra work to keep the kitties safe and I had easy access to them. I could work on socializing them every day. Except that the next day, Mama Cat saw Pat playing with the kittens and the day after that, they were gone again. That Mama is quite protective of her two little babies. She moved them so fast that I didn't get any pictures of them that week.
I went on daily kitty hunts and a few days later, I found them in the school yard. They were hidden behind a tree in what I think is a wooden sandbox frame stored on it's side. They were probably about 4 weeks old then, and they were already hissing and spitting at me...on their way to being truly feral. Boo. I pet them and talked to them until they were happy again. And then I saw Mama under the tree, giving me the stink-eye. The next day the kittens were gone from that spot, too.
I looked a few times, but couldn't find them. I thought they were gone for good. I still saw Mama, Daddy and Uncle Tabby in the usual places but never any kittens.
But after about a week, they were found! Mama Cat put them in a fenced off area behind the school that is used for crap storage. This was the best place yet. No one from the school accesses this area and best of all, my dogs are 2 block fences and an alley away! I have to climb up on their 6 foot wall and then climb down onto the step stool to be able to get them.
I took them out to play on Sunday night. The white one hissed at me. The black one just acted scared. After I had them out playing for a while, they warmed up and acted like normal curious kittens. This was May 15th:
White Kitty:
Black Kitty:
I am torn about when to take them away from Mama. I want to keep them with her for as long as possible so she can teach them all the cat things they need to learn and keep them healthy. They are still nursing right now and I'm not sure if they are ready for solid food. However, if I wait too long, Mama might move them again and I may miss my chance. I went to go get them tonight, but when I climbed up on the fence, Mama Cat was in there nursing them. I left them alone. Hopefully I didn't spook her away.
So, anyone want a kitten in a few weeks?
Mama Cat is quite feral. I think Daddy Cat used to be someone's, as he will let you come near him, but Mama runs as soon as she sees people. I don't want the kittens to be feral so every once in a while (when I had the energy to move all the barriers) I would take the kitties out to play with them and get them acclimated to people.
This was on May 1st:
I haven't named them yet, other than Black Kitty and White Kitty. Black Kitty:
White Kitty:
One day, Mama Cat got tired of us playing with her kittens and she moved them. The nerve! I looked all over for them...in our yard, the 2 neighbor yards and the Montessori school yard that shares our alley. I scaled the school fence and sat on the roof of the school where the cats like to hang out, and I watched for about 30 minutes. I saw Mama Cat, Daddy Cat (who are both black and white like the kittens) and Uncle Tabby going about their neighborhood business, but I couldn't find the kittens. In their absence, the dogs went back to normal...playing, going potty without being ordered to, wanting attention from me. It was nice.A few days later, on May 6th, the dogs found the kittens. Mama Cat had moved them back into my yard! This time she wasn't quite as dumb. She put them in the pool pump house where they were completely safe from doggie teeth.
The dogs went kitty-crazy again. Ergh.
I didn't mind as much this time because I didn't have to do any extra work to keep the kitties safe and I had easy access to them. I could work on socializing them every day. Except that the next day, Mama Cat saw Pat playing with the kittens and the day after that, they were gone again. That Mama is quite protective of her two little babies. She moved them so fast that I didn't get any pictures of them that week.I went on daily kitty hunts and a few days later, I found them in the school yard. They were hidden behind a tree in what I think is a wooden sandbox frame stored on it's side. They were probably about 4 weeks old then, and they were already hissing and spitting at me...on their way to being truly feral. Boo. I pet them and talked to them until they were happy again. And then I saw Mama under the tree, giving me the stink-eye. The next day the kittens were gone from that spot, too.
I looked a few times, but couldn't find them. I thought they were gone for good. I still saw Mama, Daddy and Uncle Tabby in the usual places but never any kittens.
But after about a week, they were found! Mama Cat put them in a fenced off area behind the school that is used for crap storage. This was the best place yet. No one from the school accesses this area and best of all, my dogs are 2 block fences and an alley away! I have to climb up on their 6 foot wall and then climb down onto the step stool to be able to get them.
I took them out to play on Sunday night. The white one hissed at me. The black one just acted scared. After I had them out playing for a while, they warmed up and acted like normal curious kittens. This was May 15th:
White Kitty:
Black Kitty:
I am torn about when to take them away from Mama. I want to keep them with her for as long as possible so she can teach them all the cat things they need to learn and keep them healthy. They are still nursing right now and I'm not sure if they are ready for solid food. However, if I wait too long, Mama might move them again and I may miss my chance. I went to go get them tonight, but when I climbed up on the fence, Mama Cat was in there nursing them. I left them alone. Hopefully I didn't spook her away.So, anyone want a kitten in a few weeks?
Phoenix Oyster Race: Take 2
According to Blogger:
Update (5/15 10:55PM PST): Blogger should be back to normal for the vast majority of people affected by this issue -- if posts are still missing, please check your drafts (you may need to republish).
Yeah, right. My long-ass post is still missing. I've checked my drafts and half of it is there in draft format....the half I wrote way back in April. The half I wrote and published last week...still gone. Grrr.
Thankfully, I have followers! They noticed that my post stayed in their Google Reader, even after Blogger deleted it. They were able to cut and paste it to me. So here it is...
Phoenix Oyster Race
Alternate Post Title: I Cut Myself with a Bowling Ball
Alternate, Alternate Post Title: "Are we even TRYING to run?!?!"
First of all, do you know that I am the face of the Oyster Racing Series? Yes, indeed-y! Check out their facebook page and you'll see me, Christy and Kiri as their profile picture. Yes, we are that cool!
The Oyster Race came to Phoenix on April 9th. We did the Oyster in Denver two years ago. We had fun but did terribly. We were very excited to try to crack the Oyster again, this time on home turf. We asked Kiri to be our third teammate again and without even pausing to think, she went shrieking away in terror, screaming "Leave me aloooooone!" Hmmm, were we really that bad? (Answer: Yes.) In her place I asked Kristen, another book club friend. She is competitive and outdoorsy and at about our fitness level. I thought she'd be a nice fit.
On the way to the race, we got an idea that maybe Kristen wouldn't be such a good fit after all. That stuff about her being at our fitness level? Ha! Since we asked her to join our team, she has become addicted to running. She's completed a full marathon and though she is not training for anything in particular, she is running 17 miles every Saturday. Uh oh! On top of that, I was still recovering from that crazy migraine. As a matter of fact, in the four weeks prior, my total exercise/training consisted of one 45 minute bike ride and one 3 mile hike done, respectively, on the Thursday and Friday before the race. Contemplate that for a second...that is about 2 hours total exercise in 4 weeks! I have never been this out of shape. Yikes!
The Oyster people talked to me about a year ago about locations I thought would be good if they brought a race to Arizona. I directed them to Scottsdale so they could use the greenbelt and if they were in south Scottsdale, they could incorporate Tempe via bike as well. Luckily for me, they did not take my suggestion of going to an area I'm not too familiar with and they chose downtown Phoenix instead, the area where I am most familiar. Woo hoo!
The weekend before the Oyster hit 100 degrees in Phoenix. The Saturday of the Oyster, the forecast was for rain and a high of 53 degrees. 53!! Brrrrr!!
As promised, when I woke up on Saturday, it was raining steadily. We arrived at Heritage Square at 6:45 am (6:45 am!! Wtf?) to set up our transition area. It was sooo cold and soooo wet. This is how we dealt with the wet:
I had my shade tent for agility trials in my car. I didn't know if it would be worth the hassle of putting it up, but it definitely was! You'll notice our transition area is pretty tiny. The people with the tent to the right of us moved the fencing over so they could have twice the size and left a TA that was 1/2 the size. Pretty selfish, I'd say. We chose this spot anyway because it was the closest TA to the check-in. The girls to the left of us had no shelter so they were okay with us putting half the tent into their TA. They were friends from Wisconsin who flew in from Madison, Miami and Minneapolis to do the race together. They were none too pleased with the inhospitable weather we were offering them!
This is how we dealt with the cold:
Actually, that wasn't enough to deal with the cold. I added another jacket right after this picture was taken. Kristen and Christy added gloves.
When it was time to start the race, the Oyster staff gathered all of the wet, cold teams together and explained that they were taking one of the team members away. I guess this explains why this bus was parked on the street in front:
We debated who to send. I am the best at navigating, but if the teammate had to run further than the other two teammates, I would be the worst one to send. In the end, we decided it would be Kristen. They put a bag over her head and drove her away.
When they got to their mystery destination, she was given the first clue. It had pictures of two downtown area statues on it. Oops - it should have been me that went. I know all the downtown statues. She started running towards us and we ran to her. She had called a few people for them to start researching the statue locations, but when we met in the middle, I knew immediately where the two statues were. One was at the Herberger:
and the other was at the ballpark. The picture of that one was really bad, so I'm not putting it on my blog!
We ran back to the TA to have them check our first clue and get our second clue. Kristen grabbed the clue and read something about Lions, Tigers and Bears and we have to go to the zoo by bike. This flumoxed me. The Zoo?? That's like 100 miles away and I don't even know the best route to the zoo. And the zoo isn't downtown so it isn't on my map. Kristen was getting all antsy to leave and I wasn't ready to go because I didn't even have a route thought out. I made Christy look up the zoo on her phone. I asked Kristen to call her husband to see if there is a canal or bike path that goes there. I was still kind of freaking out. Then, finally, I realized that we could take the light rail there! I am a genius!!
We rode to the light rail station. On the way there we passed lots of teams on their way back from clue #1. Yay, us!
Once we were safely on the train, I took the clue from Kristen to read what we had to do at the zoo. Guess what the clue said?! After it said the part about lions, tigers and bears and going to the zoo on bike, it very kindly added that if you are going to ride there, you should take Washington and take Jefferson back, but perhaps you might want to take the light rail!! WTF?!? I spent 5 minutes at the transition deciding how to get to the zoo and the clue had the directions?!? This is when Kristen learned the most important rule of adventure/clue-solving races...ALWAYS read the whole clue! And from this point on, I read the clues first. :)
It was a short ride from the light rail stop to the zoo, though all uphill and in the rain, so not an easy ride. It was made harder by the fact that Christy's bike was too big (she doesn't have a bike so she was using Pat's) and I was afraid to change my gears because the chain was sounding weird on my bike and if it fell off, I wouldn't know how to fix it.
At the zoo we were given a clue sheet with 5 animals we had to find and 5 numbers we had to find on each of those animals' description boards. Then we had to put those 5 numbers into a math problem, solve it and give the final answer to the Oyster staff. Fun! Did you know you can ride your bike in the zoo? Me, neither, but Kristen did so we took our bikes in.
We stopped at the info desk and had them circle where all the animals were that we needed to visit. Kristen led the way. We found four of our animals easily but one of the tortoises was not in the tortoise area. Huh? We looked again, but the tortoise we were looking for definitely had no info board. Another girl was there too and she was alone. Alone!? Cheater! The rules say you can't split up. We let her know she was breaking the rules (she wasn't trying to cheat, she really didn't know) and we discussed whether we should tell the Oyster staff. We decided that if we beat them, we'd not tattle. :)
We finally found the last tortoise (the correct location had been circled on our map all along) and while Christy did her math-genius thing, Kristen and I took pictures:
And that was the last of the pictures we took. The camera was in my jacket pocket, but with the plastic poncho my jacket pocket was really hard to get to. I thought about taking pictures a few times, but the hassle was greater than the desire.
We rode back to the light rail, downhill this time, but still in the rain, and fretted about whether the cheater-girls team was going to make our train. They had exited the zoo right as we turned in our answer. They didn't realize they had to do a math problem before leaving. We were nice and told them before the rode away. It turns out they had one of the numbers wrong so they had to go back into the zoo and get the right number, so karma got them for not playing by the rules.
The next clue was to go to Civic Space Park by foot and do a slip-n-slide. The "hill" at Civic Space park is not steep enough for a slip-n-slide. You had to get a big running start and you still didn't make it to the bottom. And now we were even wetter than before! We got a secondary clue from the staff there. Next we needed to run to the Public Market and buy 5 items that start with the letters in the word CHIPOTLE. We accidentally bought 2 P's (parsley and peppermint) but finally got it all figured out and ran back to TA. And when I say run, I mean run/walk.
By about this time I was dying. DYING. Have I mentioned that I was just off a 4 week illness? Don't bother telling that to Kristen though. She doesn't accept excuses. Ergh.
The next stop was to ride to the Duce, a bar/restaurant/clothing store/boxing gym (seriously) south of downtown. To find the destination, we had to find an ad in the New Times. However, if you turned in 6 Chipotle receipts at registration they gave you one race clue. You got another clue if you raised $500 for the sponsor charity, which we did. One of the clues we received told us that stop #4 was the Duce so we didn't have to search through the newspaper, thus saving us lots of time. We hopped on our bikes and were off. It's really fun to alternate between running and biking - yet another reason why the Oyster race is so cool.
At the Duce, two teammates had to sit in their bleachers and watch movie clips on the big screen and name 10 of 15 movies. The 3rd teammate had to take a boxing lesson with the boxing coach. I don't see many movies so I offered to do the boxing. Even though I was sucking at the running/biking, my arms were still fresh so I thought I could do okay. And I did okay. Not stellar but okay. The workout was hard! My arms were dying by the end. Christy and Kristen got through the movies very fast. They both knew some on their own and Christy had NFBF on the phone. She'd give him a tiny bit of info "Will Ferrell in a car", "football team listening to a song", and he'd know the movie. The man is amazing.
We rode back to the TA in good spirits. Our next clue directed us to 2 addresses. The first was Gold's Gym. We started running....for about a second and then I started walking. Christy walked with me. Kristen kept running. In case I haven't mentioned it, she's a wee bit competitive. And she doesn't accept excuses, remember. Even when the excuses happen to be factual. She turns around and shouts "Are we even TRYING to run?!!" Christy and I laughed and felt bad for Kiri. This is how she must have felt with us in the Denver race.
At Gold's Gym we had to listen to songs and name the artist for 10 of 15 of them while one team member rode a stationary bike. Obviously we put Kristen on the bike while we rested. Kristen also rocked the artist naming. She really was a good choice of teammate!
Then we went across the plaza to Lucky Strike. We had to bowl a strike or a spare, taking turns throwing the ball until we got it. They didn't give us bowling shoes, so we had to bowl in our socks. I went first, cuz, well, I'm a bowler. House balls are always too big for my tiny fingers so I have to grip really hard, but I did my best with what I was given. As I reached the end of my approach and slid, I REALLY slid. My sock-feet slipped out from under me and I fell...while still gripping the ball really hard and thus slamming the full momentum of the ball into my ankle as I fell down. OUCH. Ouch. Owwwie! And I got a gutter. Christy and Kristen went without getting a strike or a spare. On my next turn I skipped the slide part of my approach and got an 8. Christy picked up the spare and we were out of there super-fast. And in addition to being unable to run cuz I was out of shape, now I was limping too. :( After the race I realized that my ankle was bleeding. Bleeding! That means that I cut myself with a bowling ball!! My lack of coordination and athletic ability really know no bounds.
The last clue was to go to "The Best Sports Bar in Phoenix". To find out which bar, you had to fill in the blanks of "_O_ _H & _ _L_ _ E _" with bolded letters found throughout the clues. I knew that it was Coach & Willies at first glance so we didn't have to go through all that work. When we got there, we had to play a version of beer pong. Standing behind a line, you had to bounce the ping pong ball into a glass of beer. Kristen got it on her first try, even before the guy was fully done explaining what we were supposed to do. I'm telling you, she was a good choice for a teammate!
We didn't know where we were in comparison to most of the teams. There were Half-Oyster teams and Oyster Shooter racers running around and going in/out of the TA so it was hard to judge. Halfway through the race, the Nads from Denver rode past us on a bike leg when we were just starting a running leg, so we knew they were way ahead of us. But other than that, we had no idea.
We came into the TA to check in and found out that we were the first female team back and the SECOND team overall! The Nads won by about 30 minutes, but that was to be expected. They are crazy-fast racers. We were THRILLED with second!!
Pat and Wayne came to join us for the after-party. Free Chipotle burritos and Deschutes beer. I don't like burritos or beer, so I finished off the Double-stuff Oreos. Mmmm...sugar!
The official first place female division team, Storming the Castle!
We won $110 gift certificates for a pair of Merrell shoes (I got the new Barefoots and I love them!), free entry to next year's race and really cool gold-plated Oyster cowbells. Yay, us!!
We really did have matching outfits on underneath our winter gear. We braved the cold temps for about 30 seconds to take this picture:
The Oyster Race is super-fun. You should immediately sign up for one in your area. And for all you Phoenix folks, there is always next year!!
Update (5/15 10:55PM PST): Blogger should be back to normal for the vast majority of people affected by this issue -- if posts are still missing, please check your drafts (you may need to republish).
Yeah, right. My long-ass post is still missing. I've checked my drafts and half of it is there in draft format....the half I wrote way back in April. The half I wrote and published last week...still gone. Grrr.
Thankfully, I have followers! They noticed that my post stayed in their Google Reader, even after Blogger deleted it. They were able to cut and paste it to me. So here it is...
Phoenix Oyster Race
Alternate Post Title: I Cut Myself with a Bowling Ball
Alternate, Alternate Post Title: "Are we even TRYING to run?!?!"
First of all, do you know that I am the face of the Oyster Racing Series? Yes, indeed-y! Check out their facebook page and you'll see me, Christy and Kiri as their profile picture. Yes, we are that cool!
The Oyster Race came to Phoenix on April 9th. We did the Oyster in Denver two years ago. We had fun but did terribly. We were very excited to try to crack the Oyster again, this time on home turf. We asked Kiri to be our third teammate again and without even pausing to think, she went shrieking away in terror, screaming "Leave me aloooooone!" Hmmm, were we really that bad? (Answer: Yes.) In her place I asked Kristen, another book club friend. She is competitive and outdoorsy and at about our fitness level. I thought she'd be a nice fit.
On the way to the race, we got an idea that maybe Kristen wouldn't be such a good fit after all. That stuff about her being at our fitness level? Ha! Since we asked her to join our team, she has become addicted to running. She's completed a full marathon and though she is not training for anything in particular, she is running 17 miles every Saturday. Uh oh! On top of that, I was still recovering from that crazy migraine. As a matter of fact, in the four weeks prior, my total exercise/training consisted of one 45 minute bike ride and one 3 mile hike done, respectively, on the Thursday and Friday before the race. Contemplate that for a second...that is about 2 hours total exercise in 4 weeks! I have never been this out of shape. Yikes!
The Oyster people talked to me about a year ago about locations I thought would be good if they brought a race to Arizona. I directed them to Scottsdale so they could use the greenbelt and if they were in south Scottsdale, they could incorporate Tempe via bike as well. Luckily for me, they did not take my suggestion of going to an area I'm not too familiar with and they chose downtown Phoenix instead, the area where I am most familiar. Woo hoo!
The weekend before the Oyster hit 100 degrees in Phoenix. The Saturday of the Oyster, the forecast was for rain and a high of 53 degrees. 53!! Brrrrr!!
As promised, when I woke up on Saturday, it was raining steadily. We arrived at Heritage Square at 6:45 am (6:45 am!! Wtf?) to set up our transition area. It was sooo cold and soooo wet. This is how we dealt with the wet:
I had my shade tent for agility trials in my car. I didn't know if it would be worth the hassle of putting it up, but it definitely was! You'll notice our transition area is pretty tiny. The people with the tent to the right of us moved the fencing over so they could have twice the size and left a TA that was 1/2 the size. Pretty selfish, I'd say. We chose this spot anyway because it was the closest TA to the check-in. The girls to the left of us had no shelter so they were okay with us putting half the tent into their TA. They were friends from Wisconsin who flew in from Madison, Miami and Minneapolis to do the race together. They were none too pleased with the inhospitable weather we were offering them!
This is how we dealt with the cold:
Actually, that wasn't enough to deal with the cold. I added another jacket right after this picture was taken. Kristen and Christy added gloves.When it was time to start the race, the Oyster staff gathered all of the wet, cold teams together and explained that they were taking one of the team members away. I guess this explains why this bus was parked on the street in front:
We debated who to send. I am the best at navigating, but if the teammate had to run further than the other two teammates, I would be the worst one to send. In the end, we decided it would be Kristen. They put a bag over her head and drove her away.
When they got to their mystery destination, she was given the first clue. It had pictures of two downtown area statues on it. Oops - it should have been me that went. I know all the downtown statues. She started running towards us and we ran to her. She had called a few people for them to start researching the statue locations, but when we met in the middle, I knew immediately where the two statues were. One was at the Herberger:
and the other was at the ballpark. The picture of that one was really bad, so I'm not putting it on my blog!We ran back to the TA to have them check our first clue and get our second clue. Kristen grabbed the clue and read something about Lions, Tigers and Bears and we have to go to the zoo by bike. This flumoxed me. The Zoo?? That's like 100 miles away and I don't even know the best route to the zoo. And the zoo isn't downtown so it isn't on my map. Kristen was getting all antsy to leave and I wasn't ready to go because I didn't even have a route thought out. I made Christy look up the zoo on her phone. I asked Kristen to call her husband to see if there is a canal or bike path that goes there. I was still kind of freaking out. Then, finally, I realized that we could take the light rail there! I am a genius!!
We rode to the light rail station. On the way there we passed lots of teams on their way back from clue #1. Yay, us!
Once we were safely on the train, I took the clue from Kristen to read what we had to do at the zoo. Guess what the clue said?! After it said the part about lions, tigers and bears and going to the zoo on bike, it very kindly added that if you are going to ride there, you should take Washington and take Jefferson back, but perhaps you might want to take the light rail!! WTF?!? I spent 5 minutes at the transition deciding how to get to the zoo and the clue had the directions?!? This is when Kristen learned the most important rule of adventure/clue-solving races...ALWAYS read the whole clue! And from this point on, I read the clues first. :)It was a short ride from the light rail stop to the zoo, though all uphill and in the rain, so not an easy ride. It was made harder by the fact that Christy's bike was too big (she doesn't have a bike so she was using Pat's) and I was afraid to change my gears because the chain was sounding weird on my bike and if it fell off, I wouldn't know how to fix it.
At the zoo we were given a clue sheet with 5 animals we had to find and 5 numbers we had to find on each of those animals' description boards. Then we had to put those 5 numbers into a math problem, solve it and give the final answer to the Oyster staff. Fun! Did you know you can ride your bike in the zoo? Me, neither, but Kristen did so we took our bikes in.
We stopped at the info desk and had them circle where all the animals were that we needed to visit. Kristen led the way. We found four of our animals easily but one of the tortoises was not in the tortoise area. Huh? We looked again, but the tortoise we were looking for definitely had no info board. Another girl was there too and she was alone. Alone!? Cheater! The rules say you can't split up. We let her know she was breaking the rules (she wasn't trying to cheat, she really didn't know) and we discussed whether we should tell the Oyster staff. We decided that if we beat them, we'd not tattle. :)We finally found the last tortoise (the correct location had been circled on our map all along) and while Christy did her math-genius thing, Kristen and I took pictures:
And that was the last of the pictures we took. The camera was in my jacket pocket, but with the plastic poncho my jacket pocket was really hard to get to. I thought about taking pictures a few times, but the hassle was greater than the desire.We rode back to the light rail, downhill this time, but still in the rain, and fretted about whether the cheater-girls team was going to make our train. They had exited the zoo right as we turned in our answer. They didn't realize they had to do a math problem before leaving. We were nice and told them before the rode away. It turns out they had one of the numbers wrong so they had to go back into the zoo and get the right number, so karma got them for not playing by the rules.
The next clue was to go to Civic Space Park by foot and do a slip-n-slide. The "hill" at Civic Space park is not steep enough for a slip-n-slide. You had to get a big running start and you still didn't make it to the bottom. And now we were even wetter than before! We got a secondary clue from the staff there. Next we needed to run to the Public Market and buy 5 items that start with the letters in the word CHIPOTLE. We accidentally bought 2 P's (parsley and peppermint) but finally got it all figured out and ran back to TA. And when I say run, I mean run/walk.
By about this time I was dying. DYING. Have I mentioned that I was just off a 4 week illness? Don't bother telling that to Kristen though. She doesn't accept excuses. Ergh.
The next stop was to ride to the Duce, a bar/restaurant/clothing store/boxing gym (seriously) south of downtown. To find the destination, we had to find an ad in the New Times. However, if you turned in 6 Chipotle receipts at registration they gave you one race clue. You got another clue if you raised $500 for the sponsor charity, which we did. One of the clues we received told us that stop #4 was the Duce so we didn't have to search through the newspaper, thus saving us lots of time. We hopped on our bikes and were off. It's really fun to alternate between running and biking - yet another reason why the Oyster race is so cool.
At the Duce, two teammates had to sit in their bleachers and watch movie clips on the big screen and name 10 of 15 movies. The 3rd teammate had to take a boxing lesson with the boxing coach. I don't see many movies so I offered to do the boxing. Even though I was sucking at the running/biking, my arms were still fresh so I thought I could do okay. And I did okay. Not stellar but okay. The workout was hard! My arms were dying by the end. Christy and Kristen got through the movies very fast. They both knew some on their own and Christy had NFBF on the phone. She'd give him a tiny bit of info "Will Ferrell in a car", "football team listening to a song", and he'd know the movie. The man is amazing.
We rode back to the TA in good spirits. Our next clue directed us to 2 addresses. The first was Gold's Gym. We started running....for about a second and then I started walking. Christy walked with me. Kristen kept running. In case I haven't mentioned it, she's a wee bit competitive. And she doesn't accept excuses, remember. Even when the excuses happen to be factual. She turns around and shouts "Are we even TRYING to run?!!" Christy and I laughed and felt bad for Kiri. This is how she must have felt with us in the Denver race.
At Gold's Gym we had to listen to songs and name the artist for 10 of 15 of them while one team member rode a stationary bike. Obviously we put Kristen on the bike while we rested. Kristen also rocked the artist naming. She really was a good choice of teammate!
Then we went across the plaza to Lucky Strike. We had to bowl a strike or a spare, taking turns throwing the ball until we got it. They didn't give us bowling shoes, so we had to bowl in our socks. I went first, cuz, well, I'm a bowler. House balls are always too big for my tiny fingers so I have to grip really hard, but I did my best with what I was given. As I reached the end of my approach and slid, I REALLY slid. My sock-feet slipped out from under me and I fell...while still gripping the ball really hard and thus slamming the full momentum of the ball into my ankle as I fell down. OUCH. Ouch. Owwwie! And I got a gutter. Christy and Kristen went without getting a strike or a spare. On my next turn I skipped the slide part of my approach and got an 8. Christy picked up the spare and we were out of there super-fast. And in addition to being unable to run cuz I was out of shape, now I was limping too. :( After the race I realized that my ankle was bleeding. Bleeding! That means that I cut myself with a bowling ball!! My lack of coordination and athletic ability really know no bounds.
The last clue was to go to "The Best Sports Bar in Phoenix". To find out which bar, you had to fill in the blanks of "_O_ _H & _ _L_ _ E _" with bolded letters found throughout the clues. I knew that it was Coach & Willies at first glance so we didn't have to go through all that work. When we got there, we had to play a version of beer pong. Standing behind a line, you had to bounce the ping pong ball into a glass of beer. Kristen got it on her first try, even before the guy was fully done explaining what we were supposed to do. I'm telling you, she was a good choice for a teammate!
We didn't know where we were in comparison to most of the teams. There were Half-Oyster teams and Oyster Shooter racers running around and going in/out of the TA so it was hard to judge. Halfway through the race, the Nads from Denver rode past us on a bike leg when we were just starting a running leg, so we knew they were way ahead of us. But other than that, we had no idea.
We came into the TA to check in and found out that we were the first female team back and the SECOND team overall! The Nads won by about 30 minutes, but that was to be expected. They are crazy-fast racers. We were THRILLED with second!!
Pat and Wayne came to join us for the after-party. Free Chipotle burritos and Deschutes beer. I don't like burritos or beer, so I finished off the Double-stuff Oreos. Mmmm...sugar!
The official first place female division team, Storming the Castle!
We won $110 gift certificates for a pair of Merrell shoes (I got the new Barefoots and I love them!), free entry to next year's race and really cool gold-plated Oyster cowbells. Yay, us!!We really did have matching outfits on underneath our winter gear. We braved the cold temps for about 30 seconds to take this picture:
The Oyster Race is super-fun. You should immediately sign up for one in your area. And for all you Phoenix folks, there is always next year!!
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Grrrr!
I posted a really long post about the awesome Oyster Race in Phoenix. It was up for a little bit. Then Blogger broke. To fix themselves, they restored to a few days prior and my post was taken down. They are supposedly restoring all the blogs, but my Oyster post is still missing. The latest update from Blogger is that "most" blogs are restored. Sadly, I am not in the "most" catergory. Boo.
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