The Tough Turtle

Oh let's see...

(note, a lot of these are going to pictures that I'm not in, but were at the event.  Sara took great pics, but she was generally only in one area and had two little girls to take care of at the same time!)

We got everyone packed up and made it to the Ithaca Children's Garden at about 9:15.  The walk across the fields while I still had my sweat pants and light jacket on was COLD.  It was about 40, but the sun was NOT out and the worst of it was that the wind WAS.

About 9:20 I get my Shirt and bib. I elect to put the shirt on as a third layer over my short sleeve compression and long sleeve technical because it felt like it was going to be cold.

So about 2 minutes to go for my 9:30am heat, I was at the line, no jacket, tough turtle shirt on, shorts and rubber mad grip gloves.  There are 3 guys from a renewable energy company ahead of me with shirts I can remember.  I end up next to a lady who is also there on her own.  Maybe she'll end up helping?

Nope, apparently I run faster.
First up?  Walls.  There were three maybe 4 or 5 foot walls to go over.  Having never done this, I just kinda throw myself at them.  This works, but is definitely not the best method.  I have bruises on my shins from it.  But I went over them without problem, and in between the walls were ropes to go under.  The last wall was maybe six to eight foot tall, but  there was a 2x4 a couple feet up for a step so it was actually easier.  But I did waste some time here as I thought people had stopped and I saw a girl sitting to the side so I didn't want to jump over and kill anyone.  Apparently it was fine though and I was over and sped up to catch back up to the guys ahead of me.

Next up was some elevated ropes on the ground to high step through. No problem.

Then some snow fence on the ground to crawl under. No problem, I was waiting for the guy ahead of me.(hey, I'm actually in this picture about to go in!)

Then a big pile of tires in a line to go over/through.  No problem. Slight holdup for people ahead of me.

Then a favorite, the polar plunge. I had wondered about this one before going and heard a comment from one of the New England Spahtens that they would be surprised that a local 5K race would get people wet at 40 degrees.  Yep.  It was waist deep.  And not only that but there were tires hooked together under the muddy water, so unless you went VERY slowly, you were almost guaranteed to end up pretty much soaked.  I made it about half way before falling forward and going in up to my shoulders.  FUN!  I remember going into freezing water before, but I guess it is a bit different between just going to be IN the water and attempting to cross it. That shock to your system does hit you a bit while you're trying to get something done! (:

The Rescue run.  I guess with a team you carry a human weighted mannequin on a stretcher out to a cone and back.  Being alone they told me to grab the guy on the chair.  I was expecting something towards human weight, but no he turned out to be like 10lbs of stuffing.  Pfft.

The tire flip. This was the one where I started to feel the lack of upper body endurance.  Still no problem, but it was maybe 6 flips of the tire I picked, maybe 5' tall out to the cone and then back again and I could feel some muscles tiring there!

Physical push.  Thankfully this was just 10 pushups, then 10 box jumps and then a bear crawl on hands and feet to the next cone.  Not bad at all.

Then the balance beams...  Yeah this was probably my biggest fail depending on how you want to look at it.  They were 2x4's on edge and while I didn't think the balance beam would be that bad, that little 1 and 3/4" board is pretty narrow to walk on!  Oh, did I mention they had a low power fire hose out there and that I took the beam closest to the board?  Yeah that meant the creek crossing had nothing on this.  I was completely soaked to the point where I couldn't even SEE the beams at one point!  I did my best to make my way down them, but I was off and back on like every couple feet.(I don't know why these guys just seem to be running straight through the middle of them!)

Next was a hill.  Not a bad hill at all.  I was able to keep some speed up it, but it mattered not as when I neared the end, I could see the next obstacle was the slide and there were several girls standing there waiting.
Oh, Hi there, I'm about to go up a hill! (:

Look, I'm going up a hill!

The slide: Yep, that was pretty fun.  It was I dunno 50 foot or more maybe?  Pretty long and pretty steep, think they had soapy water they were putting on it, either way you went down FAST.  At the bottom?  A huge pile of very fresh black compost!  YUM!  Thankfully I twisted my butt into it so I didn't end up eating any of it.  It was vaguely reminiscent of manure, but I don't think near that bad.  (:
Look, I'm squatting at the top, waiting for the girls to get out of the compost at the bottom so I don't kill them! (:

This is someone else, but probably about how I looked. (:

The gorge crossing...  Uhh yeah, this was like take two steps down and jump across the creek.  Kinda weak.

Next was kinda fun for a different reason.  You had to pick up a log and carry it out a bit of a distance to a cone and back.  I just grabbed the first one, it was maybe 5' long, 6" around.  Not wet though, so really didn't seem that heavy.  I threw it up on my shoulder and started jogging with it.  I got a couple of nice comments from a couple groups of girls that were all holding one and walking going "woah, muscles!"  Ha, not really, but I guess maybe I'm not that bad!  (:  It was nice to hear. (:

I may have looked something like this:

Then zombies in the forest.  I just ran around them, though one of them threw some straw or something on me.  (:

Cargo net wall.  Uhh, maybe 15 feet tall?  Easy.  Just had to make sure I didn't kick the girl behind me in the face as I went over the top.  (:

Not specifically an obstacle, but before and after the cargo net was some pretty soppy ground that we were plodding through!
Actually, I think that was about where this picture was taken:

Straw bale tower.  This one took a try.  They had a couple round bales piled up vertically, a square one wedged in there to help, but it still took a couple tries.  I was more wondering if I was for sure heading off in the right direction as I came down which was a bit confusing as there was some crazy guy yelling "you got this!" the entire time right in my face, even after I was down the other side, but he wouldn't tell me if I was going the right way!

Then it was just the last obstacle which was nigh impossible without a team mate.  Get a car tire on or off a pole like 10-12' high.  I could throw the tire up that high, but NOT get it to go sideways at the top...  So then they said "oh, go help these two people over here!"  Sure, that should be easy.  Umm no, the girl was on the guy's shoulders but couldn't quite get it over.  The volunteer was like "help them!"  Umm yeah, would if I could lady, but I can only push about 3 inches more on this tire from the other side, I can NOT reach 10 feet from the ground!  It got worse after that as something happened and the guy was yelling at her to get off and then she was down but he was still yelling and swearing about his neck for a few minutes.  But then finally managed to let me give him a hand to stand on to get up and someone else helped and we somehow managed to get the tire off.
Here's an awesome pic Sara caught of me mid throw just for kicks.  It worked about as well as I expected.  I got the tire up high enough to clear the pole, but just how exactly do you get it to go sideways mid-air!  Yes, that is the tire mid-air, NOT hanging on the pole.

Were it not for that last obstacle, I think I would have been the fastest in my heat, as I had passed the guys that started out ahead of me, but at the end they were already done.

Here I am on my way to the finish line.  This sums a lot of it up.  (:

Time was about an hour.

Got a cool mason-jar-like glass with the tough turtle logo on it for water.

I guess I was a bit muddy/composty/wet!


Then I figured we better head over to the JR version for MaKenzie pretty quickly before I started freezing to death!  (:

I absolutely LOVE this picture.  (:

Kenzie did roughly as well as I was expecting.  She went through it, but needed some coaxing to keep moving.  She was more interesting in getting out of the course and going on a swing, etc.  OR at the end you were supposed to go on the balance beam to stay out of the water and she was upset that she couldn't just go play IN the water!  In all, she didn't NOT enjoy it, but I don't know that she was terribly excited about it.  It was fun though.

Do you want to go through there?

No, and I'm not sure I want to go over either, but ok.

I don't understand why we're climbing on this bale, we could just go around(this from miss I want to climb everything!)

Yep, she's still in there!

Balance beam!

Dad, I don't know what you're talking about, you're missing the entire point, I want to go IN the water, not over it!  It's not fair that you got to play in the water and I didn't!

This was back from while I was out running.

O.M.G....  Just going through the pics Sara took...  She was only in a couple areas, but she takes to many and they are...  1)Revealing to me as I see just what I look like...  Surprising.  Still getting reacquainted with this new version...  and 2) just emotional/beautiful to see with MaKenzie, etc...

The trouble is what to pick to show others!

I don't know that I get a runners high.  But I'm pretty sure I get a racer's high.  And it is ALL the better with family there to share it with!

Run for the Wild Half Marathon

Ahh, my first Half Marathon!

How was it... In a couple words? Very Good!

In more words? Let me recount: 

As usual, left the house a bit frazzled, but thought I had everything and would make it shortly before packet pickup ended. Thankfully that was true.  

Got my bib and headed into the office for a few minutes, before this mandatory meeting at 8:35.  

That meeting turned out to be 8:45 and didn't have any new info.  

Back in the office at 8:50, took off the sweatpants, went with shorts. put on my spibelt with bib and honey in the pocket, Had compression short sleeve, and 2 long sleeve technicals on and the gloves, put my phone in the armband. Headphones around my neck, not in my ears. Tomtom on one arm for pace (set to a graph with a 10 minute mile baseline), Pebble on my other arm for starting Runkeeper and to control music.  

Out the door and to the startline, literally about 1 minute before we took off. Amazing what a NICE 32 degrees is compared to a windy 40 I had the week before. Or maybe it's just cause it's race day... Didn't need the gloves. Left them on for a mile, then they just got stuffed in my short pockets.  

Of course at the start I still have no clue how fast I'm going. I started out and was like "I feel fine", look at my watch and I'm running like 8's... "Uhh, is this gonna feel fine in another 10 miles?" So I slowed myself back a bit, but was still under 10 minutes. (Remember that it was just about 11 minute miles for my last training, so logically, this sounds really questionably fast to me...)  

Interesting to see down one of our city's main Streets as the race started out. I'd later find out there was only about 60 people for the Half. But, there was a large group in front of me, and I just kinda held as the last one in that pack. But after a few miles, I wasn't sure how many people were behind me(probably about 10), but they disappeared. "Did I miss something, am I last? No, they said there would be a Trooper driving behind the last one and he's not back there either."  

Basically just looked at my watch and the water stops, if it was about 20 minutes, I took a hit of honey right before the water stop and then grabbed a water. That is one heck of a pro-tip about squeezing the top of the cup so that you can drink on the run!  

I had also been walking for like 30 seconds on each of my 20 minute breaks for training. The most I slowed down was to pick up water which did seem difficult to grab the cup, but I kept moving! Didn't need a bathroom break either!  

Thankfully the return trip was downhill(minimal hills either direction), but I was feeling it more after around the 10 mile mark. But kept going.  

Around 10 miles was also where I was going to put my headphones on and get some music to push me faster, but something happened at about that point as well because the headphones just shut off and my phone started yelling out the runkeeper announcement of miles, pace, etc. So I turned down the volume on the phone, gave up on the headphones and for periods where I was alone, I played some music from the phone speaker.  

Also took off my top shirt around mile 11. Not bad if I do say so myself to not stop running, but get it untucked from two watches, take off my armband, get the shirt off, armband back on and tie the shirt around me!  

Passed another person in the last couple miles, and pulled out a speedier more like 9 minute mile at the end!

Ohh, I made it to the front page of the paper! (barely!)