GURrrrrrr

The race started at 12 PM in Washington DC so we were up bright and early on Saturday morning to catch the train into town. The trains run every hour so we caught the 8:30 and rode and hour into DC. We grabbed some breakfast, cash, and water and were at check-in by 11:00. We had to sign a waiver when we got there and the first line of the waiver said that this race is potentially dangerous! Haha...don't worry Mom! The most dangerous part was probably all of the J-walking we did.

We then had a lot of time to kill before the race started at 12 so we people watched all the crazy costumes that people were wearing. We also figured out how to rig up my action camera to my backpack! Can you say "She's embarrassing" :)

  

Check out those ducks. We saw them everywhere we went. 

 

As you can tell from these pictures the weather was gross! Super rainy but thankfully not too cold until the end of the day (when we were soaked to the bone).

Ok...so at 12:00 they had everybody gather around and they went over rules. Then they passed out the clues! On the count of three everybody opens their clues and the race is on!!

This is where CK totally sabotaged us and it was hilarious!! Also, seriously unflattering and morphed angle of my face. It's totally gross actually but the footage was too good to keep from you.

So, you get these clue sheets that have 12 clues on them. You can do them in any order and you are allowed to skip 1. Half of the battle is figuring out the clues. The first one was in Greek and Arabic!! There were word puzzles and pictograms. All of the clues would lead you to a place in DC. Once we had a little bit of an idea of where we were going we took off to the first location.

Here's us posing with a Presidential street sign.

 

And Derrick and CK giving strangers a piggy back ride. Derrick's guy was 220 lbs!! Lift with your legs baby!

One of our first locations was this cupcake shop called Sprinkles. I later learned this is the cupcake shop of one of the judges of cupcake wars! Derrick and I had to play the newlywed game. We killed it! Psshhh...like I wouldn't know the color of his eyes!

 

We ran for most of the race. Irene was always in the lead and in full under armor gear. I felt like I had a trainer that I didn't want to let down. 

At this stop one person had to blow up a balloon and then pop without using their hands or feet.  This picture took about 5 takes...Irene was almost out of air.

Derrick's face is my favorite in this picture.

Here we are at some house. It sounded German and I think we had to solve a palindrome puzzle to get this location.

CK and Derrick had to play the lava game. They had two carpet squares and had to get both of themselves across an expanse of grass.  I think that's the challenge we heard about the most. Derrick and CK kept talking about how they could have done it better, faster, stronger. Whatever...

Next was an Italian restaurant where we had to stack 4 tomatoes and have them balance for 5 seconds. Sorry CK! He tried for a bit and then I pushed him out of the way and did it in 10 seconds.

The next stop was a bar called the Mad Hatter. Irene and I each had to wear a baseball cap that had two tea bags hanging off the bill. We had to flip our heads around until we got both tea bags on the bill of the hat. And we had to take this really flattering picture. 

Next up we found another restaurant and Irene and Derrick had to flip 3 bottle caps into a cup using a coaster. Irene flipped and Derrick caught and we were out of there in no time!

You can tell in the picture above that this was the point we were starting to get tired and cold. After this we wandered around to three different greek restaurants searching for the right one and none were right. We were cold and our feet hurt! Spirits were getting LOW.  We just needed to change the side of town we were on so we headed to China town!

 Derrick figured out where the Greek/Arabic/Lebanese clue was taking us. I don't know how he does it. That boy's a genius! When we got to the restaurant I had to swing that tray over my head three times without the water spilling. I killed it on the first try.  I knew exactly what to do because when I was 6 or 7 my babysitter put my cat in a basket and swung the cat over her head in the same way. Seriously....

Next up we hit up a pizza joint and had to spear 6 ziti noodles with a spaghetti noodle using only our mouths.  CK got it in about a minute.

Derrick had poor form. Apparently the table was too short for his tired quads. Look at Irene or CK for pointers.

We are getting close to the end and I haven't even told you all of the challenges. We were exhausted!! One of the final challenges was in a bowling alley. CK had to roll a marble through a hollow noodle and knock over a marker.  He only had 5 tries before someone else had to try. He nailed in on attempt #3!

Finally, our last challenge! It was a game of charades inside this burger restaurant. Cheeseburger in Paradise is not easy to act out!!

Here is where things really got rough! We waited for the bus for 15 minutes and it never showed so we ended up walking 2 miles to the finish line. Our legs and feet were killing us and we were soaking wet. It was pretty miserable.  The finish line was a very welcome sight!

The only downside to this race was the weather. It's hard to keep your spirits up when you are cold and wet all day. Derrick and I are already looking forward to the next one though. Nothing is on the calendar but I'm sure we'll do one again. CK and Irene were the perfect race partners and we were really happy to get to race with them and hang out for the entire weekend.