Epic race, epic contest, epic lack of sleep
Randall and Jeremy rolled in Friday night around 7:30 pm. They were both staying the weekend to both help with the Run for the Paws and compete in the first annual 300 challenge on Saturday afternoon.
Since Jeremy was not interested in sharing the king size bed in the guest room with Randall we set him up in the fitness/hobby room. I moved the treadmill over to make room. Last time Jeremy was over I set up the air mattress for him. He told me he really didn’t like sleeping on an air mattress and would be fine on just the carpet. Well we tried to soften things up a bit by folding over three comforters and laying them down. Jeremy said it worked out fine, go figure.
We had to get up at an ungodly 3:30 am for the race. Well Randall, Ali and I were up that early. Jeremy didn’t wake up till 6:45 and that was only because I accidentally called him. We got on the race site around 5am and dug into preparations. Everything went more or less smoothly. We had 537 people signed up prior to the race. We hoped to eclipse the 645 total registrations we had last year. Surprisingly our day of turn out was on the light side despite the much better weather conditions compared to last years race. We wound up with something like 607 entries, still great but not a record.
This race we also were trying something different with attaching the chips. We have been using a single long zip tie that could only be threaded one way. We have tried to make things as simple as possible for runners but we still found scores of people that are dumbfounded by how to thread something under their shoelace and through the chip. Using the zip tie also meant the runners had to revisit the chip table to grab a cutters to cut off the extra tie that was hanging out.
We decided in this race to try using the “official” Ipico recommendation for chip attachment, twist ties. 
I ordered a few thousand twist ties and found this simple handout to give to runners so there could be absolutely NO confusion on how to attach the chip. You loosen your laces if necessary, slide the ties under the laces, thread them through the chip and twist. It’s simple, if you can’t do this I would assume you stick to velcro for your sneakers as well. The twist ties also did not require you to find something to cut off the extra material.
We made sure that one of these handouts was in every race packet as well as being available the day of the race for anyone that had a question. Well I saw tons of runners still having volunteers attach the chip for them. WTF? I went over to the chip table and watched what was going on. The people handing out the chips were basically telling everyone that picked up a chip that if they could go to a different area and someone would attach the chip for them. I told the volunteers that the entire point of making the handouts was so runners learned how to attach their own timing chip. If we immediately offer to do it for them people will never learn to do it themselves.
It really is an amazing thing to me. How something as simple as attaching a chip to your laces can be viewed as a complicated task that is best left to professionals? Both Ali and I have seen some very clear patterns in human behavior since we became involved in timing and organizing races. It just makes you shake your head at times.
So anyway the race itself went very well from our standpoint. If there is one weakness of the race it is the geography of the layout. The starting line was probably close to a 1/2 mile from the registration area. Although in all of the race material it stresses the importance of arriving early, I passed at least 100 people still heading to the start as I was walking back to the registration area after the start.
As always having all of the dogs at the event multiplies the fun quotient considerably. We saw all different types of dogs that all seemed happy to be out there with all of their fellow canines and owners. The first dog finisher had a huge lead on all other human dog/teams. We kept the finish line up and running for almost 90 minutes to capture the late arrivals that walked the entire distance. The timing process again went very smoothly, there were no issues that I was aware of.
The clean up process took awhile. Since Ali was the race director, we had to stick around till the last box was packed and put away. After clean up we stopped up at the brand new building the Humane Society just finished building to house the animals. It is awesome. The old dog kennels resembled jail cells. The area also was deafening when you entered as the echos of the dogs barking for attention would create incredible levels of noise which could not have been good for the dogs. The new kennels are much bigger, cleaner, modern and MUCH quieter. It was like night and day.
There were so many cute dogs there. The cutest of all were 4 small black lab mixes that were sitting together on their hammock. Randall went in the kennel and picked one up to hold it. As he was petting the puppy the other 3 were at his feet begging for equal affection. Jeremy got a picture of one of the puppies pulling at Randall’s shorts trying to get his attention. As an animal lover you just want to adopt all of the animals but of course reality dictates differently. It was reassuring however to see the money that the race generates being put to such nice accommodations for the animals.
Once we got home and got all of the stuff back inside Ali ate lunch and then retreated to take a nap before her drive across the state for the Miami half marathon Sunday morning. The three males went to Subway for lunch. Jeremy and Randall opted for foot long subs, I went for the more conservative 6 inch variety since I wasn’t competing in the 300 challenge, just hosting it.
We had talked about starting the event around 3:30. I encouraged Randall and Jeremy to take naps before the event. They each snagged maybe 70-90 minutes of shut eye. I remained awake, working on post race duties. 3:30 came and went without any activity from their bedrooms. I left things go until about 3:40.
I then pulled out the bullhorn to wake up the contestants from their slumber. The competition didn’t get started until a little after 4pm. I did not anticipate that we would be finishing up in total darkness.
Going into the event I already had assumed that neither participant would actually complete the full 300 reps. Jeremy had procrastinated to the point where he didn’t begin training until a week prior. Randall was fighting a number on the scale that makes any body weight exercise very challenging.
Jeremy lost the coin toss and had to go first. Early on in the competition there was lots of joking around going on. Sometime around the middle of the floor wipers the humor turned more into concern. Jeremy was so tired that several times he was either down on all fours or laying on the ground from exhaustion. I was genuinely concerned for his health and even suggested to him it may be a good idea to stop.
Jeremy was determined to finish the event, no matter how long it took. Jeremy completed his final pull up at just under the 75 minute mark. I was impressed that he grinded out the reps, he obviously went through a lot of physical and mental anguish to get there.
Randall was up next. It became obvious that we were going to run out of daylight so I brought out some of my portable spotlights to illuminate the equipment. Randall’s worst event of all are the pull ups. Pulling up 222 pounds is no small feat. Randall tried to utilize his former life as a gymnast to kip during the motion to assist. Even with kipping the vast majority of his reps did not have the chin clearing the bar. However both Jeremy and I were ok with not strictly interpreting the rules as there were a few reps during Jeremy’s stint that were less than perfect.
Randall used a very fast pace early on with much shorter rest periods than Jeremy utilized between sets. As a result later on he had much more free time to recuperate without jeopardizing a victory. His biggest struggles were the pull ups and the push ups. His best events were the dead lifts and floor wipers. His compact powerful frame served him well in those events.
Randall completed the circuit in approximately 58:30, besting Jeremy by around 16-17 minutes. The event was finished in total darkness. Randall was more or less gracious in his victory. My pull up and jumping station both held up well for the event. Both competitors agreed that I did a good job in their construction quality.
Although I had been up since 3:30 am there was no time to rest. I bought dinner for the mighty challengers, it was the least I could do. They decided upon stuffed pizza. I had two pieces of the stuff and felt ill. I can only imagine the nutritional info on that monstrosity.
There was more competition to take place, the electronic variety. I fired up the Wii and the battles begun. We stayed within the Wii Sports Resort title the entire time. We competed in ping pong, sword fighting, basketball and a full 18 holes of golf. I won the golf event. Randall fell of the edge and scored an unbelievably bad +30. I finished -1 or -2. Randall quickly got up to speed in ping pong. After some early losses he managed to squeak out a couple wins against me late. Jeremy won nothing.
We were playing until an unbelievable 1am, made more amazing because by that point I had been up for nearly 22 hours straight. I “slept in” the next morning to 8am as a result.
Sunday morning all three of us reviewed the footage of the event. There were many golden moments as well as much dead time to be edited out. I got a call from Ali saying she completed the half marathon. She said she was exhausted, but happy to be done. It sounded like a rough event.
Randall and Jeremy stuck around till late morning. They both said they had a good time and I thanked them again for all of their help with Ali’s race. Once they left I dug into getting the house back in order. There was stuff strewn around both inside and outside. As I was finishing up Ali got back home. It wasn’t long at all before she retreated to the bedroom to take a 3-4 hour nap. Evidently she had a very poor night of sleep Saturday night.
After I finished cleaning up I dug into editing the 300 video. I spent HOURS on the process, it’s very time consuming. Somewhere around 9pm I had a finished product which I started the upload to YouTube before heading to bed.
The complete video is over 90 minutes long. I uploaded it in it’s entirety. I also hope to chop it into smaller, more digestible segments. I have two such segments up there now on my youtube channel.
If you would like to see the whole deal go here. If you want to see the smaller segments look at my channel on youtube here.
Once my second surgery is done and I am recovered I plan to buy a barbell and two 45 pound plates so I can do a continuous shot 300 in the backyard. The integrity of my workouts has been repeatedly challenged by both Jeremy and Randall. I plan to put any and all skepticism to rest.
What a crazy, fun weekend.