Oyster Adventure Mystery Race

I’ve got some pretty neat-o friends down here in ‘Cello. We do a lot of things together. Like meet at 6am every morning for a run/mountain bike/weight lift/party get together. We celebrate each other’s bdays together doing some of the most silly things. Heck, a lot of us even work together in the O.R.!

Jenna is kind of our ringleader. She is a FOMO. That stands for Fear of Missing Out. So when she got a team of 9 of us together way back in April to do an Adventure Race in Colorado Springs, I knew we would be friends for life. Adventure is my middle name after all!

Well, remember how Colorado Springs pretty much burned down this summer? We had to make a Plan B. Plan B became the Merrell Oyster Adventure Mystery Race in Denver.

And here’s the recap:

All we were told was to bring our bike and running shoes and that we were going to go 20 - 30 miles. The rest? ...a mystery. Sooooo fun!

TEAM NAMES: Take State!, !!, !!!
We divided into teams of 3 to compete. 6 from ‘Cello, 3 from Colorado. Amy ( who moved from ‘Cello to Colo. Springs forev ago but still keeps her ties with these rockin’ gals) hooked up with us for the ultimate "Yeah Us!" adventure. And she brought her 2 besties Pippi and Heather. Pippi totally exemplified a Colorado-ian named Pippi. She is outdoorsy and a green lover all the way. We all fell in love with her instantly. I told her I was ecstatic to have met a real live girl named Pippi! More on Heather momentarily…

But here we are in all our Take State glory:

Jenna, Tammy, me, Koryn, Sherrill, Di, Amy, Heather & Pippi

TEAM OUTFIT: Every inch of that shirt has meaning. It's like a paragraph to explain. Pretty much it's all an inside joke and you probably wont giggle as much as we do about it. Jenna designed them to look like football jerseys with our name and # of kids. "Take State!" is what Katy always yells at us when we are running to encourage us though the misery. G.W.X.C. is a mockery of ourselves NOT of the home school college, George Wythe (that doesn't exist anymore), who we so mockingly named ourselves as their cross country team. And since their never completed campus is on the mountain where we run, we felt it totally appropriate. Then there's the little M.A.M.A. aka Monticello Athletic Mom's Association. The outfit wouldn't be complete without the striped arm socks and Statue of Liberty crown.

TEAM CROWN: This part makes me tear up every time. For the first time, we raced for a cause - to help Gracie say thanx to Make A Wish for sending her to the Statue of Liberty after she got leukemia. Gracies mom, Heather, was one of our cool Colorado teammates. The crowns were the best thing ever - not only did they look cool, but we could totally find each other in a crowd. They even fit around our bike helmet! And all the other teams/race coordinators loved them. We had people from Merrell, Bellco Bank and the Denver Post as to take our team picture for their FB page, or next week’s issue, whatev.

COVER GIRL SHOT! This pix made it into the official Oyster email blast page to all the Oyster participants

THE RACE:
Oh. My. Good. Ness!
What a fun race this was. It was just like the Amazing Race on TV. We totally had to rely on the iPhones and were at their mercy to look EVERYTHING up for us. Each "passport" we got had to be figured out by clues. We completed 5 passports. So we started at the transition area, ran out and did the passport challenges, then came back and got our next passport challenge.

PASSPORT #1 - Travel ON FOOT to downtown Denver, complete 8 of 10 challenges. MILES: 3

We really weren't ready to start - they just blew a whistle and told us to run and find a clue dangling from the bridge. We had to scan a barcode to find out the challenges and off we ran to downtown Denver! The 8 challenges we completed were:

#1 Chipotle veggie quiz - that totally stumped us, so we finally just started guessing answers til the worker felt sorry for us and gave us a clue. We had to match the plant to the description on the quiz at the Chipotle restaurant. Like, what is used in our Baracoa sauce...
#2 Find an American Flag and take a pix next to it

#3 Go to the bank and complete the math story problem. This would have set us back at least 40 minutes, but THANK GOODNESS, Amy got some donations and got the clue early at check-in so we had the night to figure it out.
#4 Tennis Shoe Launch - we had to launch our tennis shoes about 30 yds to our teammate who had to catch it in a bucket. This was hilarious! Jenna would be so proud to know that this photo of her awesome catapult stance made it to the blog!

#5 Video yourself singing "Call Me Maybe" – seriously rockstars in the making! Write a Haiku poem – Jenna did this because of all her cheerleading background. First line has 5 syllables, second line has 7, third line has 5. Nothing has to rhyme. So while we were running from one place to another, she wrote 3 Haiku's on a scratch piece of paper. Here's some of them:

Oyster Oyster YAH!

pom poms, arm socks, leg socks too

Yah you, yah you, YOU!

Oyster Oyster WHAT?

If we eat you we'll throw up

Oyster Oyster WHAT?

(oyster meaning, rocky mountain oyster)

#7 Take a pix with someone on your back and post it to Facebook - that poor old woman. She had to do it 3 times.

#8 Take a photo of a teammate sitting in the river.

PASSPORT #2 - Travel by BIKE to 2 mystery locations after you solve the puzzle. MILES: 5

Di and I worked hard and fast to solve this puzzle that told us where our next destination would be. I just adore Di. We are co-workers, work together in cub scouts and I visit teach her! And we call her the ‘Navajo Ninja.’ So really, what is there not to love about Di?!

Except she will poke you in the eye with her Lady Liberty crown if you’re not careful…

There was a lot of map reading. We took the river trail most of the way until we got lost and ended up in the homeless district. eeek! We were literally dodging bodies lying on the sidewalk. I know why they made these "mystery" locations - because both of them were in these crazy warehouse, hidden, back woods places where you hide dead bodies!

At the first location, someone had to sit in a bucket of water while the other person played a minute to win it game. They couldn't get out of the bucket until the screws were stacked on top of each other. At the second location, there were hundreds of rubber ducks in this pool and we had to find the duck that had a specific # written on it.

My teammate, Sherrill (the middle one) had to sit in this freezing cold water until I could stack all the bolts with a chopstick…

I was deemed the official photographer for the weekend. I was in love with the bum bag Jenna lent me to keep the camera and other essentials in.

 

Sherrill proved to be a valuable teammate – she found our rubber duck right off the bat! It helped make up for some of that time we spent encouraging her to make that blasted layup…

 

PASSPORT #3 - travel ON FOOT to the Denver Nuggets Pepsi Center. MILES: 2

This was a basketball challenge. We had to make a layup, 3pt shot, and a free throw. What we didn't realize was that once you made a shot, you were out and your other teammates had to complete it. So Koryn and Jenna charge in there, made the first 2 shots, leaving the 3 pointer for teeny little Di who hates basketball. After some amazing underdogs - she got it! It took Sherrill like 600 attempts to make a layup. Oh the mockery that she got from us! They wouldn't let us take cameras in. Booo

A Merrell photographer captured Jenna and I running into Transition Area victoriously -

PASSPORT #4 - travel by BIKE to a lake and an amusement park. MILES: 8

Once we got to the lake we were instructed in a paddleboard obstacle. I was already practiced up cause Kyle and I recently had gone paddle boarding with some friends at Jordanelle Res in Park City.

Di accidentally stole someone else's shoes instead of grabbing Koryn's after her leg of the obstacle. So we had to bike back to Koryn's launch site to get the right shoes before we could go to the amusement park. Once there we had to play a carnival game of hitting objects down with balls, then they gave you tickets for.... NO, NOT a roller coaster, but for the mirror maze. We were soooo bummed about not having a challenge that involved a rollercoaster.

PASSPORT #5 - travel by BIKE to the Denver Bouldering Club. MILES: 5.2

This was a beautiful ride along the river trail again, until we got sandblasted by gnats. In the eyes, down the throat. yum. At the Bouldering Club, we had to complete a rock wall climb, a rope swing, and balancing beam. Koryn frogger'd up the rock wall and Dianna attempted the rope swing, but her legs were too little to kick the cow bell to complete the challenge. So, Jenna and jer know-it-all long legs decided to give it a try. Instead of the Olympic rope flying ballerina she said she pictured in her head, she instantly slid down the rope, unable to hold up her body weight and then plopped on the ground. In an effort to still look amazing, she did a backwards roll to try and kick the bell illegally. Once again, she failed miserably at looking amazing. Jenna walked away shamed and did the slack line challenge instead. This has become one of the most repeated hilarious moments of our race.

This was my favorite challenge by far. I love rock climbing and bouldering. It was so fun to be able to shimmy up that wall and ‘kick the cowbell!’

This is where Koryn coined the moved ‘the Frogger.’ We still refer to it to this day!

Jenna’s infamous rope swing attempt…

Denver skyline

Denver Bronco's stadium

THE END: it took us 6 hours to complete the race. We stayed for a little dance party and a photo shoot afterwards (which landed us a pix on the Oyster email page). After showers, we went back to downtown to the Cheesecake Factory for some delish food! Very fun race with THE GIRLS.

 

 

It was a pretty awesome day to put it mildly. I started to really wind down quick when we got to the hotel.

I quickly went from using the sports stick for muscle massaging…

 

…To THIS in a matter of minutes.

We are soooo doing this next year. Anyone interested let me know… We are always happy to initiate someone new into the group.

TAKE STATE!, !!, !!!