FRIGID INFLICTION 2008

What do you get when you combine 5am blizzards, cross country skis, Total Eclipse of the Heart, PB&J, and three crazies with strange connections to papier mache candy-holders?

TEAM PINATA!

Since our debut at THE SAVAGE in April (I believe it is a rule that names of adventure races are written in all-caps), where we celebrated our connections to pinatas--D's unfortunate bat-to-the-teeth episode and my pinata-costume escapades, including being locked out of my dorm at 4am dressed as one--we have added a new member! Recruitment is key, and the right person is hard to find. Luckily, we found M. Children love her and she is full of sweet things, which qualifies her as a PINATA.

Important note about adventure races: some of us view them as adventures, others view them as races. TEAM PINATA is all about adventure :)

This was truly a weekend--to remember, and its ridiculousness deserves a timeline.

Thursday
10pm: I run from the bar where I've been celebrating the Ballers' win (G2, rugby, and other awesome people who are good at basketball) to pack my gear and head to Princeton. I am wearing the official Shot Caller uniform: short shorts and high socks, naturally.
11:15pm: Pack extremely quickly and "sprint" to Penn Station. Note that the word "sprint" is here used very loosely.
11:42: Caught the train--yessssss
12:58am: Watch the dinky (little train that goes to campus) leave without me. No cabs in sight. Consider walking to campus. Reconsider and find a cab with nice grad students.
1:30am: Arrive on campus and cat-nap in D's common room.

Friday
4:45am: Wake up and go meet the party van! TEAM PINATA is united! Proceed to pass out until Vermont.
afternoon: Rent cross country skis and try them out on groomed runs. Get organized. Eat as many calories as I can (I like this part). Mmm PB&J.
8pm: Lights out!

Saturday
3:45am: Alarm goes off. Put on many layers of spandex and fleece and ski gear. Eat more large amounts of PB&J. Check gear, receive map and try to figure out where checkpoints are.
5am: Snowshoe to start of race in a blizzard! The pitch dark is lit only by our bobbing headlamps
5:18am: RACE BEGINS! We run off and head up a hill to the left, where we think a checkpoint might be. Apparently we look knowledgeable because about 50 people follow us.
5:20pm: We stop to reevaluate our course. From behind us, we hear, "Wait, they don't know where they're going?!? Why did we follow them?!" Realize we just led 50 people on a wild goose chase up a mountain in a blizzard at 5am. Laugh uproariously. First rule of adventure racing: NEVER follow anyone else!
7isham: Return to start to switch into skis. One of M's has lost a binding. Return to ski shop to rent another pair.
7:30isham: Finally start XC ski section, which apparently requires us to climb a mountain in skis--aka, nothing like what we practiced. Oops. Curse vehemently and extensively at the mountain, the snow, my skis, myself, etc. Eat some snickers to feel better.
10ish?: Terrain is flatter and we can breathe. Celebrate by singing Disney songs and Total Eclipse of the Heart. Also, by eating some more PB&J. Find Checkpoint 5!
11am: Downhill, glorious downhill! Think that this is wonderful, until D wraps herself around a tree. Continue to use my alpine ski maneuvers while my teammates pioneer a new style of sliding down the hill on their butts.
noon: Ski, sing, stuff mouth with snickers. Lather, rinse, repeat. Compose thank you letter to snickers-making people.
12:45: Make it to transition point before cutoff, drop skis, and start post-holing, a glorious method of mobility in which you walk in deep snow so that your legs sink in with each step. Decide that it is miserable and head straight to the Tyrolean Traverse.
1:30pm: Tyrolean traverse, noun. 1) 100 ft of rope stretched across a ravine which you will pull yourself across. 2) Test of endurance and upper body strength. 3) Hardest physical thing I have ever done. For the last 10 ft, it felt like my shoulders were going to pop out and my whole body was screaming. Which made it that much harder to watch D and M come across like it was a piece of cake. Note to self: next year, don't try to sprint!

2pm: Decide that instead of looking for more checkpoints, we should just finish on time. Stuff myself with more snickers to fuel up for the long slog up the side of the road--it's faster than the woods.
2:30pm: Running low on energy. Wonder why? More snickers.
3pm: Find a trail with the sign "1/4 mile to lodge". Would jump for joy if we weren't so tired. Instead, sing Bon Jovi as we snowshoe in.
3:10pm: FINISH!!!!! aaaaaah! We made it!!! Eat last 2 snickers, just for good measure.
4pm: hot tub & shower...mmm. Change into my sexy post-race outfit:

5pm. FOOD, awards (we came 2nd in the 3F teams--congrats to our friends team tundra terror for winning!), and an incredible massage.
night: drive to camp Pok-O where we stay in the cabins and try to hang out, but are too tired and fall asleep

Sunday:
8am: breakfast in the mess hall
9am: walk through the snow around the camp and out onto the frozen lake. Shenanigans ensue--shadow pictures, snowball throwing, snow tackling. Never want to leave.
10:30am: Have to leave. Feel very sad as there is less and less snow on the side of the road and the mountains slowly become flats. Realize that adventure races are the embodiment of Type 2 Fun: sometimes not so fun while you're doing it, but extremely fun to talk about later!

And then we were back and the winter wonderland was at an end. It is no longer appropriate to dress entirely in fleece, spandex and goretex, and subsist entirely on snickers & pb&j. But it was a wonderful escape from the real world and an incredible adventure. Here's to TEAM PINATA and many more adventures in its future!

Race results & photos can be found at these links. Thanks to everyone at GMARA & can't wait to be back for next year!

It's Poppin'

Apparently I did something wrong on shoulder day of my Colgan workout last week, because all weekend my back felt like hell and I spent half of Monday on the floor under my desk, rolling on a tennis ball to try to get the knot out. This is also how I watched the Superbowl...except that on that floor, I got to play with a bunny too! So Tuesday morning was spent with Dr B and her magic hands. She manipulated my spine back in line and it was poppin' like Lil Mama's lip gloss (I am totally addicted to that song). For serious, it sounded like a bag of microwave popcorn was going off somewhere between my shoulder blades! So now I'm relying on ice, anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants to get the muscle spasm to relax...my favourite threesome :)

As Dr B pointed out, alcohol is a marvelous muscle relaxant, which was probably why I felt fine at our rugby banquet on Friday night. It was so much fun to hang out with the club and see people I hadn't seen since our team meeting in December or the new year's day football game! Karaoke-ing till 3:30am was pretty ridiculous too; KB and I decided to act as backup singers & dancers for many many people and were totally shocked when the lights went on and the music was turned off--apparently it was time to go home? It was definitely a night I won't forget for so many reasons, but especially because I was so honoured to be named rookie of the year. I've never gotten any award for rugby (aside from those of the paper-plate variety), and to receive one from this incredible team means so much to me. I got teary, and I am not normally a crier. This team is so welcoming and I'm so happy to be a part of it. I can't wait for the spring season to start so I can see everyone more often!

Saturday night Alyssa hosted a "High School Party" where we all dressed in what we wore in high school and rocked out to 90s/high school classics. Full disclosure: I do have a boy band station on pandora :) It was hilarious to sing the songs & artists that were huge during those years...remember "the boy is mine," "say my name," kc & jojo, savage garden, "no scrubs," and britney back in the good old days? I rocked the messy pigtail buns (complete with the two little face-framing strands of hair in front, naturally) and tons of glitter. Remember glitter? Glitter was great...

And now it's mid-week and Lent has started. I was lame and stayed at home on my couch on Mardi Gras for the first time, but I had a bag of frozen corn ace-wrapped to my back so I think it was the right choice! This year I decided to get control of my sweet tooth. It's really been getting out of control--the top drawer of my desk is full of nothing but candy & chocolate. So I'm not going to eat those things, or ice cream, cake, etc, for the duration of lent. It will be hard, especially with valentine's day coming (how I love those little hearts!) but I will do it.

It was actually inspired by something my best friend 80 and I did when we were about 14; we stopped eating all food we deemed "junk" for an entire year. Candy, pop, cake, pie, ice cream, chips, all the good stuff--we just quit cold turkey. It was difficult at first, but soon became much easier than I had thought. I think the only thing we caved on was eating cake on our birthdays; some things you just can't turn down! Some of it even became a longer-term habit--I didn't start drinking pop again until I started needing mixers ;) So we'll see how I fare this time...

Idiotarod 2008

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!

After 2 weeks of ship-building and organizing, the Dirty Ethel Roberts took to the high seas of Brooklyn! It was mass chaos and ridiculously fun. The organizers switched up the starting points 3 times via text messages so we wound up in Chinatown and began the race by sprinting over the Manhattan Bridge before criss-crossing various neighbourhoods in BK. There were checkpoints with games (dizzy bat, jumping rope, tug o war, etc) and lots of opportunities to bribe the judges. The awards ceremony at the end was really fun, and we actually won an award for "best redirection of a team name". When we arrived, the judges told us that pirates were no longer allowed, so we answered, "well that's ok, cause we're Angry Whores!" And the prize???? A Muppets towel. Pretty sweet, I know, you're all jealous :)

Important takeaway lessons:
1. 7 miles is a long long way when you are pulling a shopping cart. Next year our cart will be lighter!
2. Buy sketchy things (like our blow-up doll figurehead, Judy) on Sunday mornings--the reaction I got was "A nice girl like you, skipping church on Sunday morning to come buy this? Here, you can have it for 50% off!" (note: I did NOT tell him I was skipping church, he just came up with it himself)
3. The manhattan bridge is really long too.
4. Ketchup smells really, really bad after you've been wearing it for several hours. The food throwing was the only real downside to the day.
5. Nothing tops a great support team! Learned it from OA and it was so true in this case--our advance bike scout and crack team of saboteurs/GPS trackers helped us find checkpoints and helped us recover when we were lost in some random part of BK.
6. We're not the only ones who go to all these crazy events--we found my friend Wonder Woman Santa at Idiotarod too!

Rachel has a sweet slideshow and summary of the day in numbers here, as well as links to other coverage. I'll have more pictures when I develop my disposable camera--I didn't trust myself with the digital that day :)

"Life's pretty good, and why wouldn't it be? I'm a pirate, after all."--Johnny Depp

When's the next event??

Marathon Week continues...

If Saturday was Marathon Day (complete with night-before hydration and resting up), then this is Marathon Week! I love the holiday season and all its parties and dinners...

On Monday we celebrated my coworker Kevin's birthday by taking him to a very classy dinner at--where else?--Hooters :) He was just a little red when the waitresses circled him to sing their birthday song. Side note: if you are ever at Hooters and don't feel like wings, the grilled cheese is amazing! After dinner I went over to the east side to see my friends from college, Tara & Lauren, at their Hannukah latke party--mmmmmm....latkes hold a special place in my heart ever since I first had them at age 8 or so and decided to convert to Judaism. No joke, I went home from school and told my parents I didn't need Christmas presents that year as I would be giving up Santa and all that and becoming Jewish so I could have latkes! My parents eventually convinced me that we could just cook latkes instead of pancakes on Christmas morning, and that seemed like an ok compromise to me...ok, I was a weird kid :) but Tara & Lauren are awesome and I haven't been able to see them much since we've been in the city, so it was great to hang out.

Last night was the NYRC holiday party and despite being over an hour late (the LIRR and I are not friends), I had a blast. I mean, I learned from Cap that me + open bar is generally a good equation, but adding in the team ups the awesome factor considerably! We hung out at the bar for a good long time and then all of a sudden there were only a few of us left, so we moved the party to the bar where Sabrina hosts karaoke. Truehart and I had fun picking songs for each other and for the rest of the guys to sing--his rendition of the Divinyls' I Touch Myself was excellent, and Murphy did a hilarious performance of The Gambler despite claiming he'd never heard it before. I may or may not have decided it would be a good idea to sing the Bad Touch. Yes, the discovery channel song...so it's a guilty pleasure :) And all of a sudden it was 2:30am! Needless to say I slept the whole train ride in the morning and have not accomplished much in the way of work...

Next on the list:
Wednesday: dinner with Casey & the NYC hot hot seniors before Case moves to Hong Kong (!!!), Liz gets swallowed back up by med school, and Tree & Haemi disappear back into their i-banking caves
Thursday: dinner with Rodney, who I love and don't see enough
Friday: housewarming party at Andy's, birthday night out for Kevin
Saturday: SLEEP!!! with breaks for shopping with Mira and the gym.

Let the marathon continue--I love it!

Also, I'm very excited because I just committed to giving blood on Sunday! I've never done it before because I don't particularly like needles (it was hard enough for me to have blood drawn for a mono test!), but I am finally going to man up and do it. Even if I have to get Mira to hold my hand...