Scrambling

Whenever I do one of those personality tests, it always comes back with the same stuff.

I am results driven and love competition.

This is no surprise to anyone.

I'm the person on the team who wants to have fun, but I have the most fun when I'm winning.

So, once I got out of a school environment, where there were always teams to join and games to win, I had a void left of where to channel my competitive energy.

That's when I found triathlons & half marathons. Winning to me was just finishing them, or shaving a few seconds of my time.

In a span of 4 years, I did 4 half-marathons, a couple 5k races, a sprint triathlon and the swim leg of a 70.3 Ironman relay.

And that is the story of how I ruined my knees.

Yup, I tore up my knees something fierce.

So, long distance running and high impact exercise was no longer in the cards for me.

Pretty soon there after I got pregnant and running got a lot more cumbersome and exhaustion kicked in. I had no competitive drive except for who could take the longest nap.

Now, 6 months into not being pregnant, and the competition bug has kicked back in.

I started looking into some 5k races (which my knees can handle) and stumbled across "street scrambles."

A street scramble is essentially a large scale scavenger hunt that combines running and map reading.  I'm good at running and Chris is good at map reading- it's like this was made for us!

Plus, they were holding one in our neighborhood, and it started only a few blocks from our house.

So I signed us up and recruited our friends who live on Queen Anne to join in the fun.

I knew, that since we were new to street scrambling that we would not be winning this one.  That, and our team consisted of Hunter, me, Chris & Ketchum (Team HACK).  Have you ever pushed a stroller up Queen Anne hill?  That is a handicap if I've ever heard of one.

So, I thought it would be more fun to compete against our group of friends.

Any good race has a winner's trophy, so I set out to make one.  I thought about heading to my parent's house and grabbing one of my old basketball trophies, but didn't want to mess up their shrine to all the athletic accomplishments of my youth (you're welcome mom).

Luckily, Goodwill sells plenty of gently used trophies.

All it needed was a little sprucing up.

I have a whole shed of spray paint out back that has been sorely neglected while I've been taking care of a small child, so I was more than happy to get back to a little craftiness & spray painting.

First, I disassembled the parts.

Then taped off a chevron pattern on the base (who doesn't love a chevron pattern?).

I took all the pieces outside, assessed my paint color options and went with oil rubbed bronze (ORB) & red (which is the color of the QA little leagues, so I thought it would be fitting).

Once the paint had dried (ok, almost dried-  I have NO patience for waiting for paint to dry!), I stuck some stickers on the face plate spelling out QASS (Queen Anne Street Scramble).

Then I coated that with some ORB too.  This time, I really did have to wait for it to dry because I was going to pull the stickers off and reveal red lettering underneath.

The morning of the race, we dressed in team outfits (ours was Husky gear).

 And Bunnie & Ryan's was Husky blackout (notice a theme here).

 We did some pre-race baby holding (when we really should have been planning our route).

And then all of a sudden it was time to go and we started running! 

Well, Bunnie & Ryan started running.  Chris, decided he would rather take a leisurely stroll around Queen Anne, and avoid any and all hills (good luck) and Hunter decided it was time for a nap.

There was even a photo finish (yep, they were a bit late for the 90 minute cut off).

We ended up hitting 7 spots on the map in 90 minutes, and Bunnie & Ryan hit 11, so they were the big winners.

The trophy went home with them, where I'm sure it is proudly displayed on their mantle. 

Next year, the trophy is coming back to our house.