Saturday April 9th, the Phoenix Oyster Urban Adventure! The Oyster race was 20-30 miles of running and biking with a twist! It was more or less a scavenger hunt, you are given clues to find your next destination! It was super fun minus the rain... and a few other things... (Interested in doing an Osyter Race? Check it out HERE! They have a bunch of other locations!)
3:30am: Wake-up because the rain is soooo loud...
5:30am: Wake-up to get ready for the race. (Still raining!)
6:00am: Friends arrive at the house, we pack up, load up, and head downtown. (Still raining!)
6:45am: Arrive downtown to set up our transition area. (Still raining!)
6:45-8:00am: Wait in the pouring rain for the race to start!
8:00am: The race begins, I am separated from my group on a bus.
8:15-9:00am: Meet back up with my team and run around crazy trying to find two sculptures, we had no idea where they were! (Still raining!)
9:00-10:45am: Ride our bikes 14 miles to the Phoenix Zoo and back. While at the zoo we had to find animals and do a math problem. (Still raining) This leg of the trip was a fiasco to say the least. We were all soaking wet and miserable already. To make things worse, one of our bikes broke and Tim had to take it back to the transition ares to fix it. On our way back from the zoo, some gangster in a Hyundai reaches under his seat and threatens to shoot us because we were riding our bikes in the road. (I was scared for my life... in the rain!)
10:45-11:15am: We had a two part challenge. First we had to run to the Civic Space Park and do the slip and slide challenge in the rain... as if we weren't wet enough! Next we had to run and find the farmers market to collect vegetables that spelled out CHIPOLTE.
11:15-12:00pm: Challenge 4 was to find a local news paper with the Oyster add in it to find our next destination which was The Duce. Only a few hang ups on this one... First was a flat tire! When we did finally find the local paper, someone had ripped all the Oyster adds out of them and hid the rest in another bin.... RUDE! After we figured out it was The Duce, we headed that way. Once there Amber and I had to identify 10 of the 15 movie clips playing while Neil did a boxing challenge and Tim made fun of him. The only good thing was that it had finally stopped raining!
12:00-12:45pm: Another two-part challenge. Using dead presidents birthdays we had to found out our next two locations. On foot we had to trek a few city bocks to find a bowling alley were we had to bowl a strike. Then we ran to the next location (Golds Gym) where I had to "spin" while my teammates identified 10 song clips playing.
12:45-1:10pm: Finally we got our last Challenge of the day. Using the clues from all the challenge cards we found we had to make our way to Coach & Willies Bar on bike to play beer pong. (I made it on my second throw!) Finally we were done and we headed to the finish line!
I am not sure exactly what time we finished but it was close to that.... We ate our free Chipolte burrito and headed home. We were all cold, wet and tired!
It was a good race minus the rain, gangsters, broken bikes, and flat tires! Will I do an adventure race again?? Absolutely!!!
Happy Running!!
-Kristal
