Urban Dare Columbus race report, and other musings

Life has kept me a little busy lately, in good ways, so this is going to be uncharacteristically short (as in -- here's what I can write while inhaling a hummus sandwich on my lunch break).

First up -- the Urban Dare Saturday. This was a fun event -- though it was more scavenger hunt, less dare. I did it with my buddy Jason. We had no idea what to expect when we got there, we were handed blue shirts to wear and told to await further instructions. There were about 80 teams.


First instruction: Run to the statue 20 feet away. That was easy. We got our other instructions -- all clues of places to go around downtown Columbus. In Columbus, I know where the statehouse is. And Einstein's bagels across from the statehouse. And... that's it.

Thanks to a glorious invention called the smartphone (I'm not cool enough for one, but Jason was) we got online and deciphered the clues, and plugged them into the GPS. They were all statues, restaurants and landmarks.

We got turned around a couple times, and almost ran 3 miles out of our way. We ended up having to run a mile back because we missed a landmark. We also had to stop a couple total strangers on the street and ask them to recreate this photo:

Beyond this, though, the "dares" were pretty pathetic. At most landmarks we just had to take a picture to prove we were there. At one we had to do a 3-legged race. At another we had to jump rope. Far from the rock climbing walls and stuff the event advertised! It was still a good day though.

The event was billed as 5-7 miles. I decided to be crazy and I went to MIT that morning and did 6 with Kim, and my hamstrings were screaming from Crossfit two days before. Thanks in part to my superior navigating skills, we ended up covering 9.3 (with lots of stops in between!). Our official time was 3:32 (there were many stops). Total was 15.3 miles for the day, giving me a 27 mile week, my highest since Cleveland.

I'll update later with some more links and stuff. In the meantime, a few other random musings:

• I'm not really sure what to expect at the Worthington Hills Firecracker 5K tomorrow. I'd really like to beat my PR of 24:27. I know nothing about the course but am assuming that, because of the locale, there will be some hills involved, so I'm not expecting to much from myself (given that I also have to run 9 Saturday!)

• Speaking of hills, I've been trying to tackle them more to get ready for the Hocking Hills Indian Run in September. Here's last year's race report. Karl H. and I roughed it up Byrn Du hill in Granville Wednesday morning, it was brutal, but coming down was a breeze. 

Wednesday's elevation chart

• To further torment the string beans that dangle from my hips my legs I'm trying to strength train three times a week. I've been doing a combination of Crossfit, the New Rules of Lifting for Women program, and the Tough Mudder training program. Prior to this it's been awhile since I've done any kind of lifting, so it's taken some getting used to.

• I'm starting a new blogging project for my professional life. Stay tuned :)

• And a teaser for the next post that will be forthcoming soon: So far this year I've run 626 miles!