Recap by Jen
So we got into Vegas Thursday night and stayed with my brother, Christopher. He then took us to Mead Lake and the Hoover dam on Friday. We had a great lunch and the Boulder City Brewery and then it was off to packet pick up Friday night.
So we got into Vegas Thursday night and stayed with my brother, Christopher. He then took us to Mead Lake and the Hoover dam on Friday. We had a great lunch and the Boulder City Brewery and then it was off to packet pick up Friday night.
We met up with Andy and Josh from the Nads as well as the Agents who were both teams from Denver, and John and Eric from Seattle for dinner. It was great company and game talk trying to guess what Kevin had in store for the race tomorrow. Of course none of us gave any hint of what we thought or tips we had we were all guessing what kind of challenge he would start us with.
On Saturday morning, we all met up at the start, the Tropicana, Club Nikki and waited and waited to get the go ahead. Christopher was our GPS help, my sister Angela and Will’s sister Annette were both ready on their computers, we were all set. Chris commented on how there were a lot of fast guys warming up and stretching out. He guessed that one guy could bust out a 15 minute 5K. I replied with I know the there always is a few of those. Will commented that he bet that guy was sizing him up commenting on how he could throw back the food so impressively. That is our secret weapon, his eating skills.
So we were all set to go and Kevin rolled out a multiple-choice question with the answers being different locations to get our clues. The correct answer was the capital of Florida. I knew that without hesitation, Tallahassee, thank you Mr. Ahre, my 5th grade teacher. We were off.
We got our clues and sat down to send them to our computer help and start solving them, they seemed pretty difficult to us and took us longer than usual to get them solved. One was a mini hunt that said that you had to get 3 of 6 but we didn’t read the directions close enough so we figured out all 6. Once we had most of them we started heading down the strip first to Excalibur looking for a purple dragon (mini hunt), but it was not there, they said they were removed 2 yrs ago, that was only the first error by the race director that led to many racers having errors at the end of the qualifying race. So we snapped a photo where they used to be and moved on to NY, NY.
There we had to take a pic of us eating a piece of NY pie (pizza). It was 9 am and they were not open yet. The door was closed but I thought that I would try to open it anyway. It was unlocked so I went in and begged the girl inside to sell me a piece. I pleaded with her, and said I would take a piece off the floor, one that was burned, one left over from yesterday. She finally gave in and sold me a fresh piece, 1st clue of the mini hunt done.
Then it was outside to take a pic in front of the tugboat, another clue done. On our way out we saw a working lady with a very mini miniskirt on. Ooh, that was a bonus clue, she was happy to take a picture with us, 10 min bonus!
Next, we headed down the strip to City Center for another mini hunt, then on to the Bellagio, and Caesar’s Palace for 2 more mini hunt clues, and there was another regular clue at Caesar’s so we got that one too. Next, we had one more on the strip at the Mirage and then we started down toward Maryland Parkway and toward UNLV Campus. We had all but one mini hunt clues done, (all 6 even though we only needed 3, oops reading those directions could of saved us some time).
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| Bellagio |
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| City Center |
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| Caesar's Palace |
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| Mirage |
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| Caesar's Palace |
So next we went to the Terrible's off the strip and then to the Atomic Bomb Museum.
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| Terrible's |
On our way out of the museum, I was holding the clue sheets, pens, water bottle and trying to call Angela to get confirmation on another clue and totally missed a speed bump, and did my best Pete Rose impression and slid head first on the pavement, I totally laid out phone sliding about 30 yds and I slid a couple feet on the pavement. Nice, I got up and had road rash on my elbow and a contusion on my hip; my shirt was black down the front and a little bloody. I hope there is an award for biggest wipe out because I know I would be in the running. I picked myself up and on we went.
Next to the comic store, on our way there we dug out our dollar bills and had to find 5 ones that had the date 11-5-11 in the serial numbers. We rounded them up and then on to the comedy club where we had to tell joke and make the judge laugh. Thanks Angela and Patty for the jokes!
Then it was back to the Tropicana for our final challenge at the pool. We had to corn hole! Will loves this. So he did it quickly and then to the finish!
They checked our photos and we came out clean, no penalties and 1 bonus. Now to wait to see if we made it into the top 10. After what seemed like forever, we found out that we placed 7th! Into the elite race, it would be our first time running with the big boys! Bad part, we had already run about 6-7 miles and now we only got about 45 minutes to prepare before we had to race again!
We really didn’t think we would make the elite race so we didn’t bring any food like the other teams. So we had to go to Starbucks and get a yogurt and cookie to hold us over until after the second race. Oh yeah, we both also had a gel.
A HUGE THANKS TO OUR SUPPORT TEAM OF ANGELA, CHRISTOPHER AND ANNETTE!
A HUGE THANKS TO OUR SUPPORT TEAM OF ANGELA, CHRISTOPHER AND ANNETTE!
