A couple weekends ago I informed Jeremy that we were signed up for an Adventure Race. Luckily the Huskers had played their weekly game (that Thursday), so by my account he had the whole day to hang out with me, cover over 8 miles of ground solving clues, and there might be some public transportation mixed in there...I wasn't sure!
We headed over to Augie's Bar-b-
que for the start of the race. I was trying to convince Jeremy how much fun this was going to be, what a great chance it was to solve clues together, and how this would be a great way to see if we could someday be on the "Amazing Race." The look in his eyes told me that he was not convinced!
(Maybe I should also mention that we had both already done some major physical activities that morning...I had done a 55 minute workout at
crossfit with over 2.5 miles of running and Jeremy had played over an hour of ultimate)....this will help you understand why in about 30
minutes from now we were both ready to throw in the towel!
There were about 35 pairs of racers, so not as big as
the one that Molly and I did last month. They held up the first clue, which you had to solve to figure out where to go to get the list of 9 clues for the race...and we were off to Joseph's Bakery!
We spent a good 30 minutes on the phone with my mom, dad, brother, and Jeremy's parents. At about minute 20 I looked up and noticed that we were *in fact* the
only racers still at the first spot...everyone else was gone! This didn't give us too much confidence. Finally we got all of the clues solved and plotted on our map...here we are at the first location...
After solving the first clue we realized that all of the rest of the locations were downtown, and we were a good 3-4 miles away....I guess this is when the public transportation comes in... something that I have never tried in SA...and I admit, is a little daunting!
We stood at a bus stop for 15 minutes staring at the brightly colored lines and just hoping that a bus would arrive! This is when my brother called and said that our next bus was about 45 minutes out!! Great, so now we sit for 45 minutes or run the 3-4 miles downtown. Jeremy just looks at me and says, "Let's just got back and get some bar-b-
que and call it a day!!" And he almost convinced me.
I guess he was hoping his weekend would be relaxing, a break from the stressful office environment...nope, I just threw him into major chaos, talking to 5 family members all at the same time on the phone, plotting locations on streets we've never seen, and trying to cover 8 miles as fast as possible. This was my fist clue that maybe adventure races were not Jeremy's cup of tea! =)
Luckily the #8 bus arrives before we can give up and we are off to the races! Well, sorta, we had to buy tickets first. I think the driver could tell we were first-timers since we had to pay $3 for the $2.10 ticket...how were we to know you have to have exact change!
We jump off at the final stop downtown and run to our first location. Jeremy busts out the camera and here is a good example of his picture-taking skills for the day... yes, that is the top of my head!
Well, at least he got me in this one...
Yep, we had a couple of tries...the boy just wouldn't turn the camera
horizontally!!
Let's just get other people to take the photo for us!
Here was the hardest clue of the day that my bro finally solved for us:
"She's so pretty...the name of this place seems out of place in the Alamo City. The same of the SATX B&B is a famous San Francisco landmark, just ask Danny, Uncle Jesse and Uncle Joey. It's located within 1/2 mile of the Alamo." Answer: Painted Lady Bed & Breakfast
So here's the route that we took...a little over 8 miles...and by my calculations we covered almost 6 miles of it on foot.
So we finished about 15
th out of the 30+ teams....not bad! Thought I do think this might mark Jeremy's first and last ever adventure race! Hey, at least he got some bar-b-
que at the end!
Highlights of the race...- Running through an entire chalk mural festival for about 5 city blocks
- Racing after buses not even knowing if they were going the direction we needed
- Strangers clapping and routing us on even though they had no idea what we were doing
- Listening to Jeremy contemplate if we could really cheat and just take a taxi back to the bar-b-
que place!
- Making it to the finish line just under 3 hours.... 2:45
The course was changed up because of the deluge of rain that Dallas had this past week, so not as much trail running/riding, but we still had a good time. Here we are trying to stay warm before our heat is called to the start!
There were some good costumes again...Mom said she saw a "Red Riding Hood and Bad Wolf" team, and we saw some good action heroes too!
Okay, still a little cold - we were definitely ready to start the race!
Here's the course that we had to follow...there were four obstacles along the way, and it was a little over 6.3 miles total. I started on the bike and Molly started out running.
Here's Molly intimidating the competition on the first leg of the race! I'm pretty sure the girl in the chicken hat is really scared right now!
Here she is on the second leg of the race...look at her taking that hill...and then there's a wussy girl walking her bike already....Molly and I are tough like that! =)
It was a really fun race! Here we are at the very end going through the mud pit!
We finished in 59 minutes 26 seconds, so we were 22nd in our age group out of 65 teams. That put us in the top third, not bad! The fastest course time over all was 40:09, so we placed 399th out of 778 teams...so around the 56th% percentile...again, not bad!
Guess our goal of *not* getting mud in our mouths didn't work out so well! =)
Then after the race we all jumped in the lake to clean off - it was freezing! I accidentally let go of my shirt when I jumped in and thought it was lost forever, but Molly finally found it....the hot pink shirt team can live to see another race! =)
All in all I would call it a success, we're definitely signing up next year! =)
