Monday, May 08, 2006

catsup

time to catsup. or catch up i mean. :)

This past weekend FLEW by. Saturday my hubby and I and our two friends did an adventure race. This particular race was a short one. Six hours. They can last up to 36 hours. I'm not at that level yet. Will I ever be able to last 36 hours on gu? um...probably not :) We left here Saturday morning at 4:40 am to drive to Ionia, MI (only 1/2 hour drive). We had to register and then take our bikes to a different drop off. One of our friends bikes had a bit of trouble and Ed worked on it for a good half hour. Thankfully it was fixable and we made it to pre-race instructions at 7:15. 8 am the horn blared and everyone went running. We started out orienteering (using map and compass to find the markers we needed to punch on our card...can't lose the card or else you're disqualified). After finding all three, we headed to get our bikes. I only fell off my bike once while trying to flip my lanyard over my neck and was "standing" still on my bike. Couldn't get my feet out of my toe holders in time and fell right over. No injuries..just my pride. :) Off on the bikes we went. Got to the next check point and hopped into canoes. Canoed upstream for about an hour to get our checkpoints, back downstream for another check point and then back up stream to drop our canoes off and hop on the bikes. The 2nd bike journey was a bit more hazardous as I ran into a tree, my friend gouged her knee into a tree then rammed her knee cap into her handle bars. We still had half the race and she was feeling the pain. We made it though. She was a HUGE trooper. Dropped our bikes off and headed into the woods back to the finish line. We ended up walking for an hour and a half to get back to the finish line and were dead last. It was SO nice to see that finish line that I didn't even care. It felt good to complete the race. Today, my body is not very happy with me. It's groaning every time I move. But it felt so GOOD to have that much adrenaline coursing through my veins for six straight hours. There's another race this weekend. Oh how I would love to do it, but I don't think my body will be healed in time. Ah well...hopefully soon.

Today we put together Alina's toddler bed, pray that the health department guy approves the cement job Ed did on the septic pipe that's busted and leaking down the hill, and it's sunny!! Yay for sunshine!

Oh and I had a spider crawling on my face last night in bed.

That was my weekend. Pictures to come

11 comments:

beth said...

Sounds like an excellent race! I'm glad that you all were able to finish and that injuries did not stop you! I can't wait to see the pictures...although I don't necessarily need to see a picture of the spider crawling across your face. Or the septic leak. :)

anne said...

Eeew...nothing worse than random bugs on your face in the middle of the night. But yay for sunshine!!

Glad you made it through with nothing worse than scrapes and sore muscles! Maybe next year if we both have bikes, we'll come along... :)

Hillary said...

I agree! Yay for sunshine!

That adventure race sounds like SO MUCH FUN! I was going to do one later this summer - kayaking, trail running, and mountain biking - but my teammate can't anymore, and I don't think I can find anyone crazy enough to do it with me (and who wants to raise the $1000 per person in pledges you have to raise in order to do it! Eep!)

Ain't adrenaline great? Woohoo! Spiders on the face... not so much.

Anonymous said...

did you know that on average a person swallows 7 spiders a year while in their sleep?

pretty cool.

I'm hoping that some day I'll have spidey powers.

Jean said...

Me too Beth. It was a really fun race.
As for pictures, we took an underwater camera instead of our digital b/c we didn't know if we'd be going through swamps.

Anne, you are more than welcome to come along next year ;)

Hillary, my husband would be all over that adventure race! How long of a race it is?

Kassi...I think I will tape my mouth shut every night from now on...Some super powers should be given to people who have swallowed that many spiders!

Hillary said...

I can't remember now, and I can't find any info about it on the organization's website now! I think it was 8km of kayaking, 20km of biking, and 5km of running... something like that. But that was jsut the beginner's course. There was an intermediate and advanced one, too. I think the advanced one included 60km of biking. That's crazy talk!

Jean said...

That IS crazy talk!!!

heather said...

Jean - way to go! Glad to get some of the details of the race - so proud of you guys. It sounds like tons of fun! Plus you get to brag about it now - that's the funnest part. :)

...and yes, I said "funnest"

Jean said...

I've been trying not to brag about it too much. But it WAS so FUN!! Especially now that my body is not screaming at me.

i will never correct anyone's grammer b/c I'm so bad at it! :)

anne said...

Heather, Heather, Heather. Unacceptable, Miss "Editor".

Good call on the taping your mouth shut, Jean! There was a guy hanging from my bathroom ceiling this morning. I kept sneaking around him until hubby came home to squish it. Ugh.

Jean said...

ick. i killed two spiders in Sam's room. must of been making a happy family up there in the corner of the ceiling...