SuperHero Scramble

I'm getting I the point with these obstacle races were they just aren't fun anymore. I seem to spend more time in line waiting to do an obstacle then anything & since the event is being timed...it totally throws off my results. Frustration.

Last year, I did the night wave & it was awesome, no waiting in queues to do the obstacle, no waiting in queues to pick up the packet & I flew through the course...even meet a new friend on the way (still in contact & of course see him at other races all the time.)

So this year...they had a living social deal, let's be honest, I'm not gonna pay $85+ to wait in line. The special was for $45 so I decided why the hell not, but once you add in the $15 insurance & $10 parking (also had to sit in a long ass queue just to park!) it was still a $70 investment!

So here is basically how this day of waiting in queues went. 

Queue to get into the park & find a spot

Queue to pick up your bib & timer

Queue to start

Queue at EVERY obstacle

Queue to get water after

Queue to get your picture taken

Queue to get the free beer

Queue to LEAVE the park

Jesus! I spent more time waiting around then I did actually leaping, running & frolicking along the course and being happy.

Let's be honest NOBODY enjoys waiting in queues. 

So they were behind a half hour on the waves, but that didn't matter, we (like I'm sure everyobe else did) jumped into whatever wave was preparing to go once we got out stuff. Honestly, I don't know why they even bother with waves. 

We set off. The course is pretty nice, around a lake, into some bike trails. It's nicely marked & for a change multiple volunteers at every obstacle. 

But about 3 miles into the course we come to the first water station...which is out of water (surprise) and the next one isn't for a good 3 miles. I was fine, but there were people there that looked like they needed water, yet there is none and they are miles from the start/finish line. 

Now I went to the race with my girl & we usually run together, since I knew this was going to be a pretty shitty times race I pretty much stayed with her until I saw a (more than slightly overweight) girl drop like a sack of potatoes up ahead. I ran up to see if she was OK. She was dehydrated & and honestly in no condition to take on a 9+ mile obstacle course. Even between my friend & I, we would not have been strong enough to carry her out of the bike trails. I asked is she was able to walk & we would help her, she said no. Knowing I was closer to the next obstacle, I told her I would go let someone know & headed on leaving my friend as I picked up the pace to get to help sooner. 

Once I did get to the next obstacle, I explained the situation to one of the volunteers & he called it in. Knowing there was nothing more I could do for her, I went ahead. 

I have no idea if or how they got that girl out, but in all honesty she should not have been out there, especially without active water stations. It was extreamly dangerous & she could have hurt much worse. Some people don't realize how long & challenging a 9 mile race can be & although I LOVE seeing people getting active & healthy, they need to be aware of their personal fitness & health level to avoid situations like this. 

Although it was fun to go with my friends, I regretted not signing up for the 18 mile challenge. I don't plan on doing many more obstacle races (for the reasons above) unless it's in a elite or competitive wave - and those are outta my budget even though I'd love to experience the real challenge these races can offer. 

Next (and maybe last) OCR is the Spartan in April. 

OCRs are just becoming over priced, over saturated & just not challenging (having to wait in line at every stop) 

Beach Beast Race

Well this month I turn 30, it is officially. I don’t know whether to scream, cry, or what. I think I am going to have a nervous breakdown. I feel like I have officially hit a point in my life where I have stopped progressing, growing, and developing. I have no relationship (being single does really sux sometimes) and I have a job, that I feel like I am stagnant in…basically, I need a change. Soon…the only thing I have going for me is my running right now so I am embracing it. Because, well running can’t leave me. :)

So this month, since I am having a big “Damn you’re getting old party” I only signed up for this race. I feel kinda bad, because I wanted to do the Doggy Run with Jake since he loved it so much last year, but it is the day after my party and I have a feeling I won’t be getting up at 7 am to run a 5K.

I signed up for the Beach Beast when I saw a Living Social Deal, I didn’t have any races yet for April and if I am going to hit 24 in 12 months, I can’t really take a month off, especially when Summer here is so hot that I don’t plan on doing many races from (June through Aug).  None of my friends wanted to sign up for it with me, so it looked like another race I was going to be doing alone. Last minute I did find out that my friend Amy had signed up with some people from her gym, but that is different. I figured I would just see her there, say HI and go about my run.

 

I meet up with her at the parking lot and we walked over together and hung out for a bit, but she was in the WAVE before mine, so as she took off, I went and chilled on the wall waiting for my wave to start. This guy came over and started talking to me…kinda, he was cute and I had seen him at a few other races, but I was pretty sure the girl staring at me was his girlfriend, so I just played nice. And what are the chances of me meeting a nice guy?? We all know how my track record is, and considering I am having a nervous breakdown about being single at 30…it might not be the best time to start talking to a cute guy!  But he told me I should run in their wave and do it with him, so I figured why the heck not!

The beach race was awesome…hard, but awesome. I had never really run on the sand before and holy cow is it harder than grass, trail and street! I felt like I couldn’t get speed up. But DAMN did cute boy take off and kick some butt, he totally smoked my ass (kinda cute) but I totally passed his friend

 

**not the girls – come to find out later, they are just all a group of friends – but I will get to that**

Running along the beach was like having your feet stuck in some type of goo. I just didn’t feel like I could get my momentum up or anything, but I totally kicked ass on the obstacles. On one of the first ones we did I watched the guy in front of me fall right over it, I had to laugh…after making sure he was OK of course.  They had “Over-Under”, walls, burpees, crap crawls, tires, rocks and more! It was a blast!

I didn’t think I did that well, but I ended up doing much better than I thought! I came in FIRST Female in my wave, and 3 Female ages 23-32

*I don't think Chris #5 & Stephan #3 are woman so let’s not count them in the Female placing. LOL)!!!

I managed to place 66th OVERALL!!! I am proud of that one, considering that is male and female.

Time: 28:52 (considering it is my first obstacle race on the beach - and running on sand suxs - I am pretty proud of that!)  Not to Shabby at all :)

I did run into the guy again after the race, he came in shortly before me, which I found kinda hot! LOL. He was...is single and we started chatting and found out that we had done some of the same races…I had seen him around before. I nicely asked about the girls with him...just "friends" - but I have heard that before. However his friend came up and totally did the cock-block thing. I wanted to give my number to the cute boy – John I think his name was – but then I would have had to give my number to his friend, which not so much. I thought it was funny, John was also an Aries…DAMN, and I am still kicking myself for not exchanging numbers with him.  Well if it was meant to be (which hello this is me…I* will never see him again) it will be, and I will run into him at another race. He told me he was doing the Single Mingle 5K, but of course that is the same day as my bday party, so I am not doing it! But nice smooth way of him asking if I was single and telling me he was! Shoot, I shoulda given him my number!  Oh well…can’t regret things that can’t be changed, just need to move forward in my nervous breakdown mid-life crisis.

Next race I am doing, I will be 30! EEEK! Please tell me, am I the only girl that has ever freaked out about turning 30? Dude, I don’t want kids, but if I did…I only have like 5 years left! Life is freaking short!

Well, I have nothing really planned until May…then I think I have to do that race with my work…not like I really want to, but it is “team” spirit or whatever and I like to run! LOL

The Challenge Mud Run

We signed up for this one a long time ago, back in December of last year, thinking “Well it’s only $25” why not, it will be awesome!

Pre-Race Disappointment

The Challenge Mud Run was advertised the race a 5 mile with 20+ obstacle and puzzle race. We have never gotten to do a puzzle race before, where they ask you questions and you have to figure things out, so this sounded awesome! We signed up as a Team, I have an addiction with TEAM VENTURE…obviously and if you have ever seen Venture Brothers, you would know why J Awesome Show! LOL.

Anywho, this race was a complete and utter failure. It was literally the worst and most unorganized race we have ever done!

Where to start…

There was no organization on parking. We have done a LOT of races at Amelia Park, and they have had more people and not as much traffic. I am not quiet sure what happened, but lines were backed up for miles. After sitting in traffic for about 45 min we realized we would miss our Start Time if we didn’t park soon. So instead, we pulled off onto the side roads and parked back by the school. At least we saved ourselves $10 in parking.

We headed over to the packet pick up line. The packet pick up had been available the day before, but it was ALL the way down South Miami towards Homestead and being from Davie, I was not about to drive over an hour after work, during rush hour traffic to pick up the packet. We haven’t really had a problem picking up packets on the day of the even before, so we figured…how bad could it be.

That was our bad completely, we should have taken the traffic just getting there as a sign of just how bad things were to become.

Next we stood in line for 2.5 hours, waiting to get our timing chips and bib numbers. It was complete and utter chaos. The organizers and volunteers were at a complete and utter lose, by the time we did manage to squeeze our way to the front of the line, we realized what the problems were. They didn’t have the bibs in any numerical stack. They were just tossed onto a table. That is right over 2000 bib numbers (each assigned to a chip and a person) tossed into a random pile. So when we did get to the front of the line and told them our bib number, they had to dig through this stack of disorder just to find it (They didn’t find mine by the way and had to give me a new one). Then to get your timing chip (you will see how pointless that was to give us later in the blog) they had chip of 200 each hanging from the top of the tent and they had to find the matching one for the bib number and cut it out.

**Side Note – we did meet like 3 awesome ass people from our neck of the woods in line! So it did make passing the time fun!**

After we FINALLY waited in line, got our bibs and made it to the start line, we were pretty much pissed! We were almost 2 hours after our wait time and had already been at this even for 4 hours. We were pretty much thinking we would be done by now and hanging out instead of just getting ready to start the race.

The gun goes and we start….and we go through some lame obstacles, like the tires and stuff and we get to the river, where they have set up this really cool looking like leap frog pads that people are jumping across, but there is a line…a BIG line and this race is times. After about 2 mins or so of watching people, I realize they have about 50 people in front of me and only 3 paths across…one person at a time. You do the math, so I look over for one of the volunteers and ask “can we just swim it” he said yes, So I dove in and about 10-15 other people followed suit. It was either that or wait in line for another 45 min to do the leap frog pads (which would have been awesome to do…but HELLO TIMED RACE HERE!)

My friends and I swam across the little lake and finally get to a puzzle. It is a triangle, with little triangles inside and you have to count how many triangles there are…ummm that was the only puzzle, and I have no idea if we got it right or wrong because they just told everyone to do 5 or 10 (I can’t remember) push-ups. Maybe everyone got it wrong.

Then all of a sudden we could see the finish line!! What? Really? No way was that anywhere near 5 miles! More like 3! And it was, people that took GPSs with them said it was less than 3 miles. 5K and 5 miles are a little different.

The last two obstacles also had extremely long lines. LIKE 45 min waits again at least!  First one was dive into ice water or eat a cricket…after 5 min of standing in line, my friends and I said Screw it and ate the cricket…only to get the privilege to walk over to the next obstacle with an even longer line. We stood there…for easily 10 minutes. I kept looking at my watch and after 10 minutes and we hadn’t moved, we decided to just go around it and finish.

Anyway…we finished…and it was timed, which was funny and as you can see completely pointless, because it was an irrelevant time!  We spent more time waiting in line to do the obstacles then we did actually doing the race. Our results were pathetic!

Time: 45:29
Female Division: 18 out of 1,190

At least we got to
enjoy some beer

At least we got a free Sapporo beer at the end. I like that beer and I got some KIND bars, which I LOVE! But there was no food…instead there were food trucks and honestly, I wasn’t in the mood to pay for anything after that pathetic race! We were all disappointed and completely pissed off. Checking on Facebook later, we were not the only ones. The comments and posts from people were pretty vicious, but I can’t blame them. For what some people paid ($80 or more) I would be extremely pissed off as well! I was pissed and we only paid $25 + $10 for the insurance!

I don’t know if the organizer had ever run a race before…but you can pretty much find every clue how to NOT run a race in this one. I am pretty sure the organizer was just trying to jump on the bandwagon fad of obstacle races just to make a quick buck or something.  To give them credit, they did offer us a free entry to the fall Challenge Mud Run, so we will give them another try. AND OF COURSE do better :) But if they don’t BRING it BRING IT the next time around, I know I will never do another race with them…FREE or not!

Next I am doing another strange Groupon Special Race. The Beach Beast Run, I just hope and pray that it is not as bad as this one.

I also turn 30 next month, so I am going to be in a different age division. I hope I can continue to do well and place. Makes me nervous, I am getting old…and I am still single and basically at a stalemate in my life…but you don’t want to hear about that crap. I guess I am going through a slight mid-life female crisis.

Spartan Race 2013

Last year I signed up for the Spartan Race, and let’s just say that yes I finished, but I was pretty sure I died about half way through the race and really my body was back on the course somewhere. IDK what possessed me to sign up last year…oh wait, yes I do, my crazy ass friends and a GROUPON for $45. But seriously last year, I am pretty sure that I walked more of it than I ran and the 4 miles back in the trails…HORRIBLE! I knew I was doing bad last year when the wave (or two) that started after me passed my fat ass in the woods!

Well this year was going to be different! Last year, waddling around the Spartan Race, when I “thought” I was in shape made me realize just how outta shape I was! Thanks Bad Knee for making me fat! LOL. So for my birthday last year, I signed up for Kickboxing and going 2 a week turned into 3 times a week, turned into 5 times a week, turned into 7 times a week (2 of them boot camp!) Let’s just say that JWKFA has kicked my ass into shape and this year I was going to rock the race! 

And let me say right now that I DID!

I went with my girl Kristin and my friend Cameron, I had a few other people that were going to be around, a few co-workers that we got hyped up and this one boy that I totally have been crushing on for about a year now (boy has no idea I exist beyond the social talking and “hey any races come up”)

The race started…and we were in the front of our wave…I was making GREAT time and keeping up with the big boys, you know the ones I am talking about…the ones that take of their shirts and your jaw HITS the floor as you wondering if they would mind if you just licked their chest…just once…real quick?! I was actually passing them in the running and they were helping to toss me over the walls. I smoked EVERY SINGLE obstacle (except the stupid one at the end – put I did my 30 burpees, no problem!). 

BUT the path was not clearly marked, and I know it wasn’t just me because after the fact I followed up with all my friends that had been in the front of their groups and we ALL got lost at the same point, pushing all of our rankings down and our times up. 

Those of us (about 8) that were out front and ahead of the pack ended up totally missing the turn and taking this rugged bike trail in this back area for about 10-13 min. We started to wonder if this was right, but we had already gone so far, we couldn’t turn back now…and we ended up meeting back up with the middle of our wave…and having to pass them all over again, which we did! 

But this caused the competitive me to be completely and utterly depressed and disappointed in my time. I came in a pathetic 1:48:07!! I truly believe that without the loss in the trails...would have been around 1:35:00, but that is not what shows up right! What matters is the time you get. I guess it was a lot better than last year, considering I came in at 2:47:15. So really…I cut an HOUR off that bitch! NICE

Sadly a lot of girls didn't do it 100% and cheated, which also frustrated me. Nothing like doing the monkey bars or walls or ropes or tires and watching the girls walk by and just walk past the obstacles. I mean, come on at least try it! But whatever, I guess when it comes down to it, the only person they cheat is themselves, I know what I am capable of!

Next year, I am going to train my ass off to drop that time down closer to 1:20:00 (and NOT GET OFF COURSE)

One crazy thing, as we were taking the bus back to our car, we saw a few girls walking off into the woods with a 5^th of Vodka…I was watching the news to see if anyone got lost on that race, because damn…them girls were crazy! You drink after…not during! LOL

Next race is the iRun 5K. Something nice and easy … Right :)

5K Foam Fest 2013

I have definitely kicked the year off right, going into my 2^nd month of 2013 and I just knocked out my 4^th race.

This one however left a little bit to be desired, when I first saw it, I thought it looked like a lot of fun! Foam…like mud right, just a bit different! I am totally down…until I saw that it wasn’t timed. Ummm. Does that even qualify as one of my 24 for 2013 if it isn’t even timed??

 

But my girl talked me into it. Something about an easy relaxing fun run. “And we can still run it anyway” she claimed. Well we made it competitive and pushed ourselves to do well!

We get to the event and it seems to be pretty organized….we start off in our 9 am wave and run yet more trails at Amelia Park. To be honest, those bike trails can be kind hard!

But the obstacles, Foam Obstacles, were not very good. They had big blow up bounce housed filled with foam and some of the bounce houses had holes dropping to the ground and others had things sticking up to block your way. Which was fine, but with the foam you couldn’t see the holes and my friend almost sprained her ankle falling into one.

And being the only people running a fun run…well that just leads to lines and waiting around as much as running.

We get to the Foam Drop of Death…and that was fun! You got to climb up this big ass slide and at the end, slide down into a big pill of foam.

Besides that I think the only other obstacle that we enjoyed was the one at the end, where you dove into this tunnel and came out into a bath of foam.

There was one part of the race, where you had to crawl under electric wire.  I didn’t realize until half way through that it was electrified. I kept wondering what the heck that was.

Sadly, the mud pit was not very muddy and unless you seriously got down and groveled in it you came out pretty much clean.

Overall this race wasn’t challenging and didn’t really bring anything new to the table. You did get a medal at the end, so I guess you can say this race you would do for the bling.

Either way, we did have fun. My next race is a timed one. The Miami Zoo 5K! It will be my second year doing it so I am hoping to beat last year’s time!

Superhero Scramble NIGHT WAVE 2013

I was ready for this race and pumped a week out. I have never done a night run before and a night trail run sounded challenging and fun. But I know me…I know how much of a klutz I am and I have been having nightmares about getting lost or hurt in the trails and having to be carried back to civilization. Common fears…right.

 But as it got closer and closer…one friend after another bailed on me…all the way up to race day.

I pulled into the parking lot (grass lot) at Amelia Earhart Park and text the last of my friends set to race…see where she wanted to meet up and ask if she was here yet, and surprise…I didn’t even get a text back, she had bailed as well.  So it was the 2^nd race of 2013 and the 2^nd race of 2013 that I would be doing alone. I did have a co-worker that I knew was going to be there with some of his friends…so at least I would be 100% alone if I got lost or hurt in the woods. :)

The Night Wave started at 7:30 PM and boy was it dark! YES you did need to have a headlamp to run, and you needed it. We are all so use to living in the city (or some type of civilization) where there are street lights and traffic lights and store lights…but in the middle of the park…where none of that is visible, it got dark!

So I set off to do the race…alone. I have a feeling that doing runs alone is going to be something trending this year for me, but as long as I get to my 24 I don’t care!

The trail was backwards from the ways I had done it in the past (with the Down to Earth races) and this trail took me to different parts that I had never seen before (or I had but didn’t recognize because it was so dark).

At every obstacle, they had attendants there with lights to help you if anything happened, which was really great and because it was the night wave there were not many people so none of the obstacles had any lines (I was also at the beginning of the pack, so I can’t say 100% that the lines didn’t form later). Some of the obstacles were closed for the Night Wave for safety reasons, but we still got to take the leap of faith, climb over walls, run through tires, carry buckets of water, do the military mile (which was my favorite – lungs, burpees, push-ups…I beat all the guys!!), jump over fire, dive into freezing water, slide down the MASSIVE slime slide and much more! It was 4 miles of fun! I really did enjoy it! My GPS went out about 1.5 miles in so I am not sure what the exact result is.

**hopefully my water logged GPS starts to work again soon!**

My co-worker btw totally smoked it and I watched as he slowly vanished leaving his friends and me in his wake (boy is FAST!)

So while alone, stumbling through the trails (we – at the front of the group – were pretty much spread apart now that no one was right in front or behind me) I ran into a new person. I meet this guy Mike from South Miami area. He had already run the race in the morning and had gone off to do the Jungle Obstacle Race down south and come back for the night wave of the Superhero Scramble. Talk about a BEAST! But at least it tired him out to run along with me so that if I did get attacked by a Florida Panther or a Water Moccasin someone would be around to call for help and drag my dying and bleeding body back to civilization. Plus he had a very nice and bright headlamp (mine was dim and crappy) so it was nice to be able to see the roots popping out of the ground trying to drag me down instead of falling over all of them.

As I am sure you other runners/racers do…I had been keeping my eyes out to see how many people were in front of me and how many females passes me and about halfway through the race…I was pretty sure I was in first place.

By the time I crossed the finish line I was hyped with adrenaline and ready to know what my time was!

Well I may have been disappointed with myself for race #1 of 2013 but I CRUSHED race #2!!

1st place overall female

1st place in female age group (19 – 29)

10th overall night wave

My time was 1 hr and 9 min, but I was totally proud with that considering it was trails…at night…with obstacles! BOOYAH!

The guy I ran it with Mike, also did really well, but my co-worker did amazing coming in at something like 3 overall for the night wave!

That is right I am one kickass lady! So even though I did this race let’s see if I can keep this momentum up for 2013!!  

My next race (3^rd of 2013) is the MIAMI ING!! WHOOHOO! I am doing the half, not the full J 13.1 is enough for me…for now. This will be my 2^nd Half Marathon and 1^st time participating in a race of this size. I am nervous and have NO idea what to expect, but either way, I plan to do my best and have fun!