Wet & Wild 5K...

Yup. Had two in a row two weekends here. That was something.
So - Wet & Wild 5K.
After we had signed up for this one, I looked at the course and realized it's similar to the Fair Fun Run meaning there is only 1 really "Fun" thing. You got to run through the Lazy River at Wild Rivers. So, my expectations were already on the low side for this one. This is another one I won’t do again, but I got to experience something totally different this time around.
So, mom decided to sign up for this race. My mom is not an athletic person, and has been frustrated with her weight and the fact that she's out of shape for quite some time now. She's starting to make an effort lately, and I'm hoping I have some influence. I gave her a pedometer, and she's working on the 10K steps challenge I mentioned earlier that my work is doing. She of course can’t sign up since it's through Chapman, but I've made her a little spreadsheet and she's tracking her steps etc. She also attended the Warrior Dash we did back in April to cheer us on, and I believe she noticed the mix of people. The types of races I sign up for, as you know, are not the hard core marathon races. They're fun ones. So they have all sorts of people. Runners, families, people with injuries, larger, smaller, etc. I've told mom she could do some of these and take her time. Do her own pace sort of thing. Hell I'm never in it to win it - I'm in it for a fun different way to exercise. (Although I'm noticing I'm getting a little more competitive, but I'll save that for another blog).
So today's race started out like this:
Robin and her dad met us there (They are runners). D and Court were meeting us there. Lib was supposed to come with mom and me. She didn’t make it. The plan was, D or I were going to walk with my mom so she wouldn’t be alone. It was most likely going to be me & Lib, well now it was just me. And I'm so glad.
I knew this was causing my mom some concern. When we started getting close, she started worrying and lamenting over the fact that she was going to slow us down, and run ahead without her, etc. etc. She was worried she was going to have to stop and rest throughout the race. Worry worry worry. The closer we got, I could tell she was getting a little excited, but still not sure. She got some good walking shoes, she got herself some running shorts and shirts. She was prepared.
As we headed over this morning, I was actually looking forward to taking it easy today. As we ladies all deal with once a month..well yes...and I was extra crampy this morning and my neuroma has been flaring up all week. It wasn’t too bad today, but the thought of not pushing myself too hard today was defiantly pleasing.
After we checked in, got our crap, stretched, battled the nasty porter potties, there we all were in the giant cluster to start the race. Horn blows - we're off. We say goodbye to Robin, her dad, D and Court and mom and I start walking at a decent pace.
I see her start to react as most of us do...noticing we're getting lapped by strollers, children and old people and I see mom start to push it a bit. She tries to jog a couple of times, but is not able. I tell her not to worry, she's keeping up an amazing pace! She truly is. I was honestly surprised at how brisk she was walking. We're chatting, I'm jogging around her encouraging her. She refuses to be lapped by certain folk and speeds up at times. As we near the 1 mile mark she starts to tell me how important this is to her and breaks down. I of course immediately start acting like a jack ass trying to get her to laugh again, but at that moment I realized how hard this is for her. I knew that, but I didn’t realize how much. She can’t get the words out, but she doesn’t have too. We pass the 1 mile mark and I now am even more excited to be trotting around her. She tells me she never thought she could do something like this. She's so proud of herself and excited how well she's doing. I couldn’t be more proud.
We near the 2 mile mark and a couple of women walk past us shouting encouragement to mom - they chat a bit and the woman tells her "You don’t have to be a runner!! You're doing it! Good for you! You go girl!" At this point, I've decided to actually kick my own ass a bit and run backwards in front of mom for a long period of time (which I'm feeling the burn on that one as I'm typing right now...). We're chatting face to face as she's walking and I'm trotting backwards. I can see the determination on her face. I still can’t believe we've gone this far and she hasn’t had to stop and rest.
We finally reach the river portion. We have to wait a moment to get in, and the heat hits mom. She's a bit light headed, but I know once we're in the water she'll be fine. I was right. She's lovin it. She is a fish actually so now she's in her element splashing around as we walk thru the lazy river. Sadly this was only a very short distance. I seriously wanted to run the entire lazy river. Ah well. I help an old man out who’s having a hard time in front of me, and we round the corner to the last leg of the race. I see the finish line. "Mom wanna run it?" We do. D and Court are cheering us on as we pass them and mom crosses the finish line beaming. We did it in under an hour. (I'm guesstimating about 50 minutes).
We get our medals and our bananas and I shove a few waters in her hand making her drink. She did it. I was so proud of her and she was so proud of herself.
This was a race that wasn’t about me at all and I loved watching mom make her goal.
Way to go mom!!

Urban Dare...

Urban Dare.
Fail.
When we signed up for this Urban Dare, and watched people's U-Tube videos, and saw pics, etc. It looked like the Amazing Race. You get a clue, you arrive at a destination, you perform a dare then get another clue. The dares had rock climbing, eating fun things, riding a paddle boat, things like that!
Ours did not.
So here's the breakdown of the Urban Dare Race along with me and Lib's photo re-cap. There were fun moments; I mean how can there not be with my best friend in the whole world and me as a team.
We were the Darling Devils.

Joining us were my bro and his wife, our friends Court and Nat, and later on Julie and her man. We started out well enough. We arrived early to grab some breakfast and as some were waiting for me to come from the parking lot, some woman walked out of a what we didn’t realize was a restaurant and said - "You guys looking for something to eat? We have Bloody Mary's and Mimosas!". Sold. So we started our morning off with a couple of drinks and a very greasy breakfast. Probably not the smartest thing, but most of us were smart and just ate a portion as not to offend the "cook".


Julie & Gabe phone us that they have arrived and checked in, so we head over to Auld Dubliner where we check in, and end up hanging out for a while since we were so early. We got out T-shirts (You didn’t have to wear it if you were in a costume), our bibs and a passport. We of course all treated ourselves to a few more drinks...I mean we were in a bar and started getting excited. Court and Julie were a team, Gabe and Shane then D and Nat (Beer Brains 09 - consisting of tutu’s and personalized trucker hats. That's D. I love her).


The head guy tells us all to head out and meet in front of Laugh Factory. We all gather, they have a costume contest, then we are handed clue sheets. Lib and I dart to the side, plop in the shade and start to go through it. I realize right then - this is not what I was expecting. There is a list of 12 clues - all ending with an answer of some place you're supposed to go and take your photo. There were only 3 "Dares" and a "Photo Hunt challenge". WTF! Oh well, we start in. D had loaned us her phone, but unfortunately we are technologically retarded and it was difficult. We can also call people, so I was on the phone calling friends to help with answers. We get to a point where we have the answer to almost everything and figure we should get going.
Here's where we went wrong.
We decided, well let's just to the 1st thing on the list. The clue was "This was #2 in the Travel Channel's top 101 places to eat. Go there and take your picture in front of it.". Thank you to Vanessa - the answer was Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles. We attempt to use D's navigation thing - I speak the name into the phone and after some cursing and having no idea what its doing, Lib squeals - "It’s working! This way". We're off.
We running, and running and running - "How Long!!!" Oh Right (I think to myself) you're usually in a car, it's a bit farther than we thought. It's cool, we start to laugh and as we're running I'm calling people and making notes. Seriously - How we didn’t die is beyond me. Running while writing/texting/calling isnt the smartest idea. We just happen to come upon one of the dares! The luck! So we jet over and the gal tells us that the name of our passport (Which was SteamPower) has # value's. There are little sticks in the ground all over the grass each with a letter and a # value. We are to find ours, add them up and give her the correct total. We start. We have fab teamwork here as I shout the value's to Lib who writes them down while still juggling D's phone. We right out the #'s - she shouts them at me as I add em up on my phone calculator (See my phone was good for something). Stamp. We're off.
We are now running up a f-ing hill.
We happen upon another one!! Sweet! We jet over to see what it is. This is the "Urban Lab Chantilly Clad" or something. It's an odd looking installation. As we run up to the girl, she says "3-Legged Race! Run 3 times around this thing". We're off, after a few stumbles we f-ing rocked. This was the one we probably did best at. We got in a perfect rhythm with each other and lapped all the fools stumbling next to us and then STAMP. We're off!
Now we're almost to Roscoe's. I decide we need to figure out where we're going to go so we don’t end up back tracking. We sit down, I'm on the phone with my lovely mom getting the addresses of all our locations since Lib is afraid to turn off D's phone and lose Roscoe's. We pull our our map. FAIL. It's not a detailed enough map. WTF!!!!!!! We're screwed. We now have no way of figuring out where the hell we're going, because D's phone is not working for us either. Fuck. Well, what can you do. We head off to Roscoe's. On the way we bump into Julie/Court. They tell us where one of the local's is and we head off. We have totally lost our devil horns at this point and we are sweating and dying already. We finally find Roscoe's.
The nice thing was, the other peeps in the race were, for the most part, really cool. Alot of times you'd hit something at the same time and we'd pull the you take my photo I'll take yours sort of thing. So - photo local #1 -

We're off to "Anita Ekberg started in this Fellini film. Take your pic in front of the Spa with the same name". We find La Dolce Vita Spa and shoot the pic with the help of other Urban Dare folk.

We head off, knowing the addy of places and hoping they're this way. We are going for a very long time. We are also now in a very questionable area of Long Beach. I'm not going to lie, there were a few times I was a little worried. We did see 2 drug deals, and had quite of few homeless asking what the hell all these people running around were doing, but other than that nothing too bad. We run into Shane/Gabe. They point us in the opposite direction we're going saying the one is closer. Sigh - we turn around and finally find the "Mel Brooks starred in this TV Series with Don Adams. Take your pic in front of this tutoring academy".

Now, at this point I have an enormous blister forming on the side of my heel. I state to Lib we have to stop somewhere for me to get a band aid. We wander into a very scary liquor store and battle the counter fellow with a language barrier explaining I need a band aid. His buddy - a very ancient Asian man shrieks at him what I want in his language and he finally understands. I also notice the double pain glass shield we have to exchange our money through. Yup. Not a great area. I get my band aids and we take a 1st aid break.


We're off again. We drag up to the "Robin Williams movie where he played a gay biz owner or something...yup. You guessed it. Take a photo. As you can see by this photo - we're kind of over it.

I had spotted our other local while on our way to the Birdcage Cafe. "You need 98% to pass this test, or something - take your photo in front of the nightclub. Thank you Vanessa - I had no idea what the hell that one was!

We're off again. One of the photo hunt challenges was we had to take a photo of someone not in the race re-inacting the famous WWII photo of the soldier kissing the gal all romantic like. I was thinking this was going to be tough, especially since most of the people we have encountered are mean or on drugs. A lovely couple is walking towards us and Lib stops them to explain our task. The dude looks suspicious but his adorable GF says "Come on honey!!! It'll be fun!!!" so they get ready and he looks at me and says "Now what's the pose? Oh..this?" and promptly nails it. They were so awesome!!!!! Look at her pointed toe!

At this point we're a little flustered and we're wandering around trying to find Civic Center. This is when we get a call from Julie. They finished. I wanted to cry. I knew we weren’t close. She says since we got screwed with the wrong map, she'll help us out. We find the Civic Center while on the phone with her and follow some other racers to find the Bram's something Marlin we're supposed to photo ourselves in front of.

I call Julie back and tell her what we have left. "Oh no." She says. Yup - all 3 of our last places were totally scattered. She tells me where they are and this is the moment I almost quit. I just want to sit down and start to cry. I hang up and tell Libby. She has the same face as me. We're so f-ed. I'm now not even sure if we'll finish before the cutoff time of 3:45. We start off to the 1st one, bitching to each other about how lame this f-ing race has turned out to be and why didn’t I look and see we had a bunk map and FUCK!!! We call Julie again, because - yup we passed our 1st damn one due to our anger. So we turned around and took a photo in front of the stupid toy car pileup.

We luckily happened upon the other "Dare" when we saw a bunch of blue T-shirts running one direction - Wheelbarrow Race. Lib drops on all fours and we wheelbarrow around the little cones. STAMP.
We head off to our last and farthest spot. Because guess where it f-ing was. BACK NEAR ROSCOE'S!!!!! Yup, we are so screwed up and should have nailed it when we were on the other side of town. It's the Museum of Latin American Art. Fuck me. As we start dragging back, Libby is wanting to call a taxi. I'm so defeated by this point I almost agree. So, we do what we do best on our way back and just laugh. Try to look at the good side. We got our exercise! We got to catch up! Ya. Fuck.
We finally arrive and take our photo in front of the (which we now hate) Angel of the America's.

We see a really neat mirror thing (I make a mental note to come back when I'm in a better mood and do some camera play) and take our FUCK YOU URBAN DARE! Photo.

We start our trek back. We also realize we haven’t done our last photo thing we need to do to finish the damn thing. We need 3 people not in the race to do the Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil. We're also walking through and area where there IS NO CIVILIZATION! We've now heard that everyone in our group has finished of course. Whatever.
So we pass (again) this lovely park and figure fuck it, let's go take a nice happy picture on the bridge!

We then see these women walking towards us. Libby stops them to explain our last photo dare. One women leaves - now there's only 2 of em but another women is walking towards us so I stop her. They look a little wary at first, but since we're pretty much begging the lovely lady who is doing the Hear no Evil says "Come on ladies!!" and promptly assigns who’s doing what. I wanted to kiss them all.

We finally drag ourselves into the bar. Stamp our card. Show the gal all our pictures. They say congrats and we're done. Where's my f-ing medal!? Whatever. We collapse with our group, finding out Shane/Gabe didn’t get there too far ahead of us, and we notice we did it in about 2 1/2 hours I think - which isn’t horrible. But - the fact that we would have probably have been amazing had we had a f-ing map.
I got myself a glass of white - wanting booze but something cold.

Julie and Gabe had to peace out, but I got the final photos of us, exhausted but actually looking happy! :) So in conclusion - won’t be doing Urban Dare again. We all agree we were really disappointed that there were not more activities to do. I think that would have made it better, because even if we screwed up our route like we did - we would have had fun activities to look forward too. Oh well. We finished, and of course there were really fun moments! Thank you to my partner in crime and my best friend in the world - Miss Lib. We do make a pretty damn good team!

Fair Fun Run 5K...

Hi there!
So. Did the Fair Fun Run last Sunday. And I will say this. It was not really all that fun. I was actually annoyed. The way they advertised it was "Run, skip or walk! Play games and other fun stuff while you run thru the Fair". Ya no. There was no games to be played. No rides to be rode. Everything was closed up! The little volunteers they have (I'm realizing lots of races have these little volunteer folk that cheer you on throughout the race and give you water, medals and what not and usually have answers to questions you may have. The Fair Fun Run children did not. That may be the problem. They were really annoying kids. I had a few questions that I asked a few of these little morons and they looked at me blankly and said "I'm just a volunteer". Sigh. One of my best friends Robin was there with me, and had a teenager of her own. She stated hers wasn’t even as useless as these kids. Whatever.
So, we sign in, get our little bags of advertisements and our T-shirts. There's no sort of bag check or anything, so we trek back to my car and drop all our stuff off in there bringing only my phone so I can snap some photos of what I think will be some random fun stuff.
We're at the starting line, surrounded by real runners, and families and folks like us. I start noticing the shoes people are wearing. I noticed how mine are falling apart. Robin tells me I really need some better running shoes. I learn this in a much more painful way later.
The race starts late. Sigh. We head out. I try to run more this time, since Robin is a runner. She of course keeps telling me she doesn’t mind walking, but my pride keeps getting in the way so I push through my burning lungs and my now throbbing knee. I do walk a lot, but I ran much more than I ever have. We run onto Newport Blvd. I notice there is no cones and cars are whizzing past us. Um...that’s not very safe! The moron children who are supposed to be guiding the group and cheering us on are on their phones not paying attention to the people almost getting run over by asshole drivers. Nice. Robin and I push our way back onto the sidewalk. I will not die on Newport Blvd.
We round back into the parking lot and start around the front of the amphitheater. I see a few guys running at us and past us.
"Are they in this race?!" I shout in amazement to Robin.
"Yup" she states. Holy crap!! These dudes just did a 5K in like 5 seconds!!! As we round our way and a few other dudes go running by - I realize there's no girls!
"Where are the gals?" I ask Robin.
"They're usually 2 minutes behind the men". Huh. I learn something new every day. Although my friends Julie and Rose are pretty badass in the running area - I bet they would smoke those guys.
Anywhoo...we run into the Fair. Sweet! It's of course closed, but I'm getting excited to see all the fun stuff we get to do! We run. We keep running. We run past the rides. We run past the games. WTF!!!! There is no fun. There is nothing open for us to do! I notice a few other people are slightly annoyed as well w/some of the comments I'm hearing. Sigh.
Well - I make the best of it. I start stopping Robin and taking shots of her. As she does of me. We run through this one Fun Zone area and I start leaping up on the benches and running across them screaming "Where are my obstacles!!! Where are my fun things!!! I want to jump!!" I hear laughter all around me and some people cheering me on. That's right. I have support. And I'm entertaining people which is what I do best anyway.
So we run. We pass two of the moron teenagers and I hear her mumble something about a slide. I do a U turn and ask her what she just said.
"Take a detour and go down the slide!" she says!
"Hell to the fucking yes!!!!" I grab Robin and we run over to the slide ignoring the angry look from the father in front of me since I just swore in front of his daughter. Oops.
So that was our fun. That's it. The slide. I also felt bad because I noticed the idiot teenagers were chatting with each other and not telling everyone about the slide detour!! When Robin and I re-joined the runners I shouted about the slide and saw a few folks turn around. That's right. I'm helpin out.
We run up through the amphitheater which was kind cool watching them set up for whatever band was playing that day, then down and out and to the finish line. I'm now dying mind you because I've been running and jumping on shit and acting like a child so my knee has started to swell and my run has turned into what looks like a lame horse sort of lopping along next to Robin. We pass 2 moron teens that are actually cheering people on and I scream at them to keep it up. As we approach the finish line, I see supporters with signs for people "Go Brian!" or "Way to go Nora!". This is awesome. I make a mental note to find some fans to bring to the next race. What's also awesome is as my limping, sweating, red faced, and pain ridden body comes stumbling down the last stretch people are yelling encouragement my way. I don’t know these people but they see my pain and are screaming "You can do it!!!" "Power through it!!!!" "You’re doing great!!" I heart those people.
We cross the finish line and the retard teens hand us a medal. Robin and I stumble out of the way and take we finished photos as fire red hot pain starts shooting through my now swelling knee.
We decide to skip attending the Fair and have breakfast instead. I won’t do the Fair Fun Run again, but I'm so glad Robin was there at my side. She's one of my besties, and I'll always love her. And even though I pretty much screwed myself up for the rest of the week, I was glad I powered through. I got some great advice from Running Rose about running properly, and some great tips. Robin jumped on my ass about better shoes. And mom was ready for me with ice and Advil when I came home.
I'm no runner. I never will be. But I'm athletic. And stubborn. And I have to be active to live. So I really am enjoying all this random activity! Now to save up for a better pair of shoes...I got Urban Dare next weekend!