Team Cray

In my never ending quest to find fun and active things to do with our kids, I’d been looking for a Fun Run of some sort to sign us all up for.   I’d decided running a whole 5K might be a little much for my gang.  

We’ve walked them before.  And everyone lived to tell the tale.  We’ve done one 2 years in a row now on Thanksgiving morning and the excitement in the air is fun for everyone.  

We also tried one that involved food tastings every half mile.  Not gonna lie.  I’d probably throw up if I ate a mini burrito while attempting to run a 5K.  But while strolling with my children, it wasn’t half bad. 

They had giant strawberries, some lemonade and a sopapilla.  They also had giant chocolate chip cookies.  And who in their right mind doesn't enjoy a giant chocolate chip cookie.  Some lady brought her dog to walk with her.  I’d like it noted that I am not a rocket scientist but even I can figure out that my dog should not come to a food related 5K because he’s going to want to try to eat all the food everyone drops along the way.  And I'm not just saying that because my dog is Honey Wheat.

So anyway, we mostly walked and ate and I'm pretty okay with both of those activities.  Then the wrecking crew started throwing glasses of water at each other creating a full on spectacle at the water stations and we fist pumped across the finish line.  All in a day's work.

Soaked shirts.  And I don't mean sweat.

Several months later and we decided to try a scavenger hunt type race through Challenge Nation.  They give you a list of 12 clues and you go locate 11 of them and take your team’s picture with whatever the answer is.  They check your photos at the finish line. 

My daughter once won the overall medal at field day at her school for hula hooping.   That kid got every drop of the hula hooping talent in our family.  The rest of us were winging it.  No one more so than the Italian Stallion trying to hula hoop with his neck.

You go roughly the distance of a 5K in tracking the stuff down.  Some are landmarks in the vicinity and some are just random stuff to find.  Like one said to find an old school blue mailbox and you’d be amazed how many of those there aren’t.  Another said to look for someone wearing an article of clothing from a different state but the clothing couldn’t be for a sports team. 

Rocking out.

My husband and I did most of the work on the operation and we didn’t do half bad finishing in the top 50 out of over 200.  And we didn’t run any of it.  We decided before even getting there that it wasn't about running or winning so we'd just walk and enjoy the afternoon together.  My husband is Magellan and knew where some stuff was without looking at a map.  We also followed a few crowds of people charging off for the next location.  

Bright orange and on the move.

I’d say my husband was the All Star on our team except he successfully left his brand spanking new iPhone 5C in a store while we were looking for a post card (part of the scavenger hunt).   He didn't realize his mistake until we were 5 blocks away.  I ran the five blocks back to get it while he fed our dead weight offspring a snack and hosed them down.  They were sucking down Slurpees by the time I got back.  They also found time to toss my snack in a trashcan because it was taking up too much space in the backpack.   Naturally, none of their snacks were cramping anyone's style so we still had Funyuns to look forward to on the car ride home. 

That's "Team Cray" as in Team Cray-Cray.  As in Insane in the Membrane.

If we do the race again next year, I’d give my daughter one of the clue sheets and let her be in charge of reading them to us and checking them off as we go.   I’d also put my son in charge of something.  I’d pretend I’d let him hold my phone and be in charge of getting the camera ready to take our picture but I’d like my phone in one piece and not lost three blocks away when it’s time to take a picture.  I’ll think of something for him though.

But it was fun. The kids liked wearing matching handicrafted bright orange shirts.  My husband liked knowing which direction we needed to go.  And I liked that we that we represented at the finish line straight up gangster.  Cuz that’s how we roll, yo.