Catch-Up Post #2 - BRUAR

Baton Rouge Urban Adventure Race
July 25, 2009

At the end of last season, I vowed to not participate in any more urban adventure races. I'm pretty miserable the entire time in the urban races because my teammates are faster than me on the run, so it takes everything I have just to keep up. I now know that if I have to race for that long with that amount of intensity, then I'm probably not having much fun. So, no more urban races for me, right. I kept my vow through exactly one race...Mobile Urban AR.

My dad expressed some interest in trying out adventure racing at the end of last season and we all thought it was a great idea. So, we encouraged him to start training. After 6 months of training and hard work, he was ready to give it a go. I thought it was best he attempted an urban race first, which means I had to break my own vow. I was pretty confident, however, that there would be no sprinting involved. We need a third person...my sister. Well, that was the plan, but she was having some knee troubles in the week leading up to the race. So she decided to not race rather than risk further injury. In the end, it was the just the two of us...father and son...58 and 32...Team Meringue with a "Z".

That morning, my dad was obviously a little nervous because he wasn't talking nearly as much as usual. My mom (the nurse) was probably the most nervous. I assured her he would be fine because I knew he had trainined appropriately. The race started with a running section. We hung towards the back so all of the srinters could get out of our way. We arrived at CP1 where there were still a ton of teams confused over whether or not it was CP1 (mislabeled). We just punched it and headed to CP2 near the Quad. Shortly after punching CP2, Hefner Bunny Pie (eventual winners) came running by. We were amazed...could it be? Yes, we were ahead of HBP through 2 check points! We made it back to the TA and transitioned to the bikes. Surprisingly (to me), my dad was able to run the entire first leg of the race! His training was obviously paying off.

The 2nd leg of the race was a bike leg. We way would ride our bikes from LSU to dowtown Baton Rouge collecting CP's along the way. Once again, my dad was quite impressive...faster than I expected. In fact, I had to hold him back a little on the bikes because I knew there was still a lot of race left. We got all the CP's without any trouble and made it to the bike drop. Leg 3 was a run around downtown to the YMCA, USS Kidd, fountains, and Arsenal Museum. Here's a picture of us doing the mystery challenge at the YMCA. My dad ran most of this leg as well...wow!

Leg 4 was a bike back to LSU and the TA with a few more checkpoints along the way. My dad was equally as strong on this bike leg as the first. We then had to run (with intermittent walking...the heat was starting to take it's toll) to BR Beach to the canoe put-in. We ran into HBP along the way and they snapped this picture.

The canoe was also quite impressive on my dad's part (common theme). We collected the 3 CP's and even passed a couple of teams on the water. We ran back toward the TA on our way to CP18 where we were faced with a mystery challenge. We basically had to climb up, over, and through a huge spider web (working on getting pictures of this). Anyway, once again, and to the amazement of onlookers (sister, mom, HBP, etc.) my dad had no trouble with the web. We hustled back to the finish line. I was a little overcome with pride and gave my dad a big hug and told him how great he did. Man was I proud, and still am! He's already talking about his next race!