Great Urban Race Seattle, 8/29/09

Well this is now the second race I have done with Dannel, and this one was to qualify for the finals in New Orleans and a shot at $10000. That's almost enough money to retire and great motivation to kick a lot of ass. I am by leaps and bounds in better shape and can run alot further, and lost about 7 pounds since I started doing this. This is coming from a guy that goes to the gym ALOT. Again, coming off of a night with not much sleep, Dannel wakes me up at about 930 for a noon race here in Seattle. You know me, I like to cut things a little close and 2.5 hours is not cutting it close! We even had well over an hour to spare so we scoped things out a bit including a visit to Whole Foods, which was to be one of our clues. I had creme brulee french toast, the breakfast of champs, and perhaps the worst energy drink I have ever tasted. We still had over an hour to kill at the coffee shop so I worked on some fantasy football, and was totally amused at how irritated Dannel was with all the people in costume, including pirates, dr. seuss characters, and two pink panthers complete with whiskers drawn on their faces. I offered Dannel a hundred dollars if he would paint whiskers on his face. There were a TON more teams than there were in Portland, perhaps 300 in all. After we got our clues, Hans copied them and we were off. Every last drop of extra energy I had was spent on the first leg, considering we had to run straight up hill. It was like the streets of San Francisco, but running. We had to learn how to do sign language from a random guy in a coffee shop, do the rumba?, and donate three cans of tuna to charity all while hauling ass. We were way ahead of schedule and the first people to do the first three checkpoints. We then took the long run over to where the stadiums are, did a few more checkpoints and had to make it to Pike Place by 130 for the picture up at the top. We did three more challenges, and headed BACK to the stadium area for two more challenges, both of which cost us valuable time. We got on a bus all the way down third which dropped us off by the Space Needle at our original location, and we see two jokers dressed like pirates heading towards the finish. It became an all out sprint and with pulled muscle and shoelace untied we left them in the dust. Now there were a few teams inside already, and we figure we finish in the top ten which more than qualifies us for New Orleans. We may even be top five but we will know by Tuesday. If it werent for having to wait ten minutes for the clock picture, and another ten minutes in line to do sharades, we may have won the whole thing. Once again, so close, yet so far away. Buca De Beppo never tasted as good as it did after the race and I am not sore today!!!

High Trek Adventure

So I agreed to go on a fool hearty adventure with Dannel, and do the High Trek Adventure with is a race throughout Portland, where you have to figure out clues along the way, and take your pictures in front of certain landmarks. My only experience is that I went to Las Vegas with them for the Great Urban Challenge last year, and ran about 100 yards with them, while holding a Bud Light Lime, and showed them where the New York New York Roller Coaster is. Oh, and I haven't ran a mile in ten years. I have ran at most two...EVER. Not that I am in bad shape, but I just don't run! So I was actually preparing for the Seattle race when Dannel informed me of this Portland race as a tune up. So after three weeks of running, I was ready (I guess!) I was actually quite nervous day of, considering I was up til 430 the previous morning, left Spirit Mountain at 9am, and had a lot to drink the night before since it was Jonathans birthday! I felt AlOT better when we got to the coffee place and most of the teams did not look in good shape. Actually there were some marathon runners there, and I certainly am not one of them. I once did the Fresh Prince Marathon. 8 hours...non stop. So the first clue is outside, its a puzzle, and it leads to where we get our real clues. The first running...see if I can keep up with Dannel, a former Division 1 Athlete. We get the clues, run back, make copies and Hans and Kat are the support team that immediately start figuring out the clues and telling us where to go. I think that Dannel does some lolligagging and can save some time by just being a little bit more on it, but don't tell him I said that! I think that I saved us some time by taking charge of the phone while he was figiting with his iphone and getting frustrated. I actually ended up doing the majority of the communication with Hans, but Dannel is the superior runner. His phone camera is a POS and we need something better next time. We started in the pearl, ran all the way to the South Park blocks, fought our way through Saturday Market, found or next two clues and ran to the bus that was going to take us over the Ross Island Bridge. This was my first time getting on Portland Public Transportation. We took a picture IN FRONT of sock dreams, got bonus time for taking our picture with a musical note, and hopped on a bus North on 11th, bypassing one of our clues, which we are allowed to do. We found our next two spots and realized we are now way ahead...UNTIL...we realized we were supposed to perform a task at sock dreams. There is nothing more discouraging and crushing than realizing you are going to win and have to run from Stark to DIVISION BACKTRACKING! Dannel has this angry gear, which I don't have and he basically left me behind in the dust. Things were starting to hurt and I was starting to get tired but I could not let the team down. He basically did the challenge at sock dreams, and I got there just in time to take the picture. We immediately jumped on the bus back downtown and realized we were going to have to do the next bonus to have a chance. We needed to find someone with an Oregon AND an Oregon State shirt and pose for pictures with them, but you can never find this so Hans and a friend grabbed some shirts and met us on the water front right next to Velour, which was our last stop. Let me tell you, the last stretch was about 6 blocks but it may as well been six miles through the Sahara desert. Well it turned out that every second counted as we are the third team to make it in there. We have a little bit of optimism as we were the only team to get both bonuses and one of the teams had made a mistake. Well, the mistake was taking their picture at Velour instead of Velvet, which we did too. Had we taken it at Velvet or somehow managed to take our picture at Absolute, we would have won by a lot. As it turns out, with the bonuses, we ended up in second by 3 minutes. Not too shabby for an "out of shape" 32 year old guy that has never done this before. Dannel was very discouraged but I was actually pretty happy considering my tempered expectations. We got these really nice bags and free entry into the Vegas race which I think I can help us win. Try $12000 to the winner. That will motivate me to do a little extra on the treadmill eh?