How Did You Spend Your Weekend: Memorial Day

Matt and I spent the weekend in the Cape. We had an amazing time with wonderful friends. Lots of kayaking, sunsets, cooking, drinking, and laughing. One of the best weekends I've had in a long time.

I would love to hear how you spent your long weekend. I thinks my friends Amy and Miguel win the award for best weekend. They got engaged! Congrats!

Song of the Day

For some unknown reason we listed to Justin Beiber's Baby Baby Baby a lot this weekend. But I'm not going to lie, it is pretty catchy.

101 Things In 1001 Days: #49

I've written before about loosening up on the literalness of the items on my 101 list. Item #49 was written as "Run 10 consecutive miles" but I figure running 17 miles in 36 hours is good enough. The point of that item was to challenge myself physically, and the race most certainly did.

I am unbelievably proud of myself and my teammates.


The race medal doubles as a bottle opener. Bad ass.

Song of the Day
I'm very excited for Memorial Day weekend. I hope you have fabulous plans. Matt and I have been listening to Vampire Weekend's Holiday to get us pumped up.

The Big Race: Better Than 37 Pieces of Flair

If I do say so myself, us Sexy Biatches had the best flair of the race. Kelly outfitted us all in bright, striped leg warms (ok, sock with the feet cut off). They made it super easy to spot each other on the road. And well, they were just plain awesome.

Song of the Day

Today's song is Jackson Browne's Running on Empty.

The Big Race: Pec Tat

Pec Tat gets his own post because he was our most beloved character of the race.

There was one team that we were neck and neck with throughout the event. Team Wegmans, made up of staff from the grocery store chain. Team Wegmans was nice and supportive and we wholeheartedly cheered for each other. When we were running in the dark it was great to see Team Wegman, because they would assure you that our van was just up the road.

But by far the best part of their team was a dude we nicknamed Pec Tat. Now Pec Tat, named for the tattoo on his pectoral muscle, didn’t wear a shirt the whole race. This got reeeeeal old reeeeeal fast. He also insisted on doing the point-flex move a lot. For those of you who don’t know, the classic point-flex is when you point in a direction and also flex at the same time. Pec Tat did this a lot and not as a joke. This of course slayed us and led our team to point-flex at about everything we saw for the rest of the race.

We also worked in a few bicep kisses as we believe this is what Pec Tat was doing when no one was watching.

Song of the Day

Everyone has a song that gets them pumped up and you just know I'm Too Sexy is Pec Tat's.

The Big Race: Sexy Biatches? Really? REALLY!?

There was a lot more going on during the race then just running and driving. For instance our team name. Our team name was GOING ON!

When we arrived at the start line, we were unpleasantly surprised to see that our team name, “Sexy Biatches”, was not only printed on our race numbers, but that the race officials would be calling us that the entire time. We thought “Sexy Biatches” was our team captain’s not-so-sweet pet name for us, not our registered team name!

Not only were we embarrassed by the non-feminist nature of our name, but it wasn’t even creative! There were tons of great names. Our favorites were “WTF! I Thought This Was a 5K," “Butts, Sweat, and Beers” and “My Boss Made Me Do This” (that was a corporate team).

But as the race wore on, the name grew on us. Other teams thought it was hilarious and we got lots of extra cheers because of it, which when you are running 200 miles in 36 hours is a huge help. Two guys from another team sheepishly approached us just to double check that it was ok for them to refer to us as “sexy” and “biatches.” It was very sweet. Some bodies mama raised them right!

Song of the Day

No surprise here! Today's song is Sexy Bitch.

The Big Race: Running Cowboys

Our second set of legs started around 5 PM. Race rules stipulate you have a wear a reflector vest, a head lamp, a butt lamp and carry a flash light. So cars will be able to spot you on the dark roads. Also, if there is a spelunking accident, we can be of assistance.

We didn’t get any pictures of us running in the dark because by that point we were too exhausted and needed to focus on tracking our runners which became much more difficult at night. I was the last runner on my team and ran my second leg around 9 PM. It was pitch black and quiet an experience. Because your only light is the head lamp, you feel like you are running in a different world. You can’t tell how steep the hills are, how fast you are going, or how far you have gone. I was never so happy to see my team as I was during that run. Their words of encouragement every two miles were the only markers I had to know how far I had come.

Once I finished that leg, we had another 5 hour break. We were beyond tired, so we drove to the next check point, a high school, to get some sleep. Jess, Stef and I just grabbed our sleeping bags and slept on the ground on the lawn of the school. It was 40 degrees. That was another amazing experience; to sleep out under the stars, in the cold, in a strange place. We were too tired to be scared. We felt like cowboys.

Song of the Day

Bon Jovi and I both felt like cowboys. Today's song is Wanted Dead or Alive

The Big Race: Henchman with Maracas

I'm still excited about finishing the big race, so I’ll spend this week telling you all about it. I'll make will feel like you are there! Minus the smell.

We had to leave the house at 5:30 AM on Saturday. Mandy was ecstatic that we were ready 15 minutes early. I was not!

We met up with the rest of our van, those awesome girls I was telling you about. Kelly, Stef, Heather, Jess and Mandy. I played soccer with all of them in high school. It was so great to spend the weekend with them and get to compete together again. GO GRIZZLIES!
Our heat started at 7:30 AM. I positioned myself right at the start line to get a great picture of our lead runner, Kelly. However, my plans for a Sports-Illustrated-quality shot were dashed when the starting gun startled me, causing me to bobble the camera. I also had it set on a sports setting which takes a million pictures right in a row, which I forgot about, causing me to bobble my camera more. So I threw my camera in the air like one of the Three Stooges, got a crappy picture of Kelly’s back and a lovely picture of that other girl.

So the race got under way! One of us would run, and the other 5 would ride in the van about 2 miles down the road. There we would wait like henchman with maracas.
Actually we would would wait with Gatorade and water and use the maracas to cheer like crazy when our teammate ran into sight.
We would give them fluids, make sure they were ok, then peel out and drive another 2 more miles down the road to wait again.

That’s how it went. You were either running, driving the van, passing along Gatorade or shaking a maraca. After all 6 of us ran, we got about a 5 hour break while the rest of our team ran. During our break, we found some nice port-a-potties and set up camp.
More tomorrow!

Song of the Day

I can't get this song out of my head! Love VV Brown's Shark in the Water.

Funny and Talented

That's my momma! Funny and talented. This is her self portrait entitled "Occupational Hazard." Some will cut off their ear for their art. My mom will jam a paint brush in her eye for 12 hours.

Happy Mother's Day to my mom and all you other awesome moms out there.

Song of the Day

I thought I'm Every Woman Would be a good song for today.

HOLY SHIT! IT IS IN THE HOUSE!!!

Anna and Matt are in bed on Saturday morning. Awake much too early for a weekend.
Matt: Did that bird wake you up?
Anna: Ugh. Yes. It is so loud. Sounds like it is in the house.
Anna gets out of bed and shuffles to the bathroom.
Anna: HOLY SHIT! IT IS IN THE HOUSE!!!
The bird is trapped in the bathroom. Anna runs around the apartment like a crazy person while Matt calmly opens the bathroom window hoping the bird will fly out.

Anna sits on the couch typing on her blog, waiting for the bird to be done with the bathroom so she can pee.

Yikes! What an eventful morning. Hey bird, I really do have to pee.

Song of the Day
Today's song is Bob Marley's Three Little Birds.

We Survived!

I am proud to report that we survived the race. And "survive" is the appropriate word. The Cape Relay is a 200 mile run from Quincy, MA to Provincetown in Cape Cod. The teams are made up of 12 people, each running three legs totaling between 16 and 20 miles. The race is both physically and mentally challenging. However, not only did we survive the race, we crushed it. Our team finished in 30 hours, averaging 9 minute miles. I'm very proud of all of us.

As difficult as the race was, it was also one of the best experiences of my life. The physical triumph seems like an added bonus to the great time we had. Each team of 12 is split into two vans of 6. I had the pleasure of teaming up with 6 of the most athletic, supportive and hilarious girls on earth. That' right ON EARTH. You would have to be pretty athletic, supportive and hilarious to come out on the far end of a 30 hour race still being able to walk, laugh and want to talk to each other.

Before: The girls trying not to have anxiety attacks over what we are about to do

After: A little tougher, much closer, and a lot stinkier

Song of the Day

Rusted Root's Send Me On My Way was blasted a few times in the van and will always remind me of this experience.