Another race for Dave - Men's Heath Urbanathlon

This weekend Dave is heading to Chicago to run in the Men's Health Urbanathlon. He will be running with his usual racing partner Andrew, and a few friends from high school, Andrew and Tim. (I know, two Andrew's will make this confusing, so High School friend Andrew will now be referred to as Andy).
Dave and Andrew are flying up to Chicago tonight to check in and meet up with the other guys. Tonight is the welcome party and registration.
The race starts tomorrow at 7:45am and the participants will go off in waves according to their age group. There are over 6,000 people registered for the race this year! Dave, Andrew, Andy and Tim are all in the same age group so they will be starting together. This race is a little different than the other races Dave and Andrew have run, as they are running individually instead of as a group. However, they will be sporting their Olympic Couch Riders shirts and I am sure they will all try to stay together. This race also has 9 miles of running in addition to the obstacles, which include running stairs at Soldier Field (check out the video for the stair running, it's crazy!), and other obstacles at Navy Pier, DuSable Harbor, & McCormick Place.
I'll let you know how Dave does later on Saturday or Sunday and hopefully we'll have pictures up early next week!
Have a great weekend!

The Race

The moment you have all been waiting for...no, not the results of Dave's beer tasting. The race results, Dave and Andrew (the Olympic Couch Riders) came in 16th in the North Chick Greenway Challenge! They are both a little disappointed in their finish, they started out really strong and did well throughout the entire race, but ran an extra mile or so due to a part of the course not being very clearly marked. That and some canoeing "issues" put them behind. They had a great time running the race and said that this one was harder than the Knoxville Urban Wilderness Challenge since there wasn't any downtime in this race. In the KUWC they had to wait to repel and for a few other challenges so they had time to catch their breath, that didn't happen in the North Chick Challenge. Nina and I (and all the kids) were able to see Dave and Andrew (and Bob and James) as they went through the transition area 3 times which was exciting. We were able to watch them do the frisbee golf, bow and arrow and then at the finish. This race was a combination of running, biking, challenges, canoeing, and swimming.
The kids had fun running around the huge open space and playing with the new kickball's we got them at Wal-Mart while we waited for Dave and Andrew and Bob and James to finish.
After the race Nina and I took the kids to the Tennessee Aquarium. We all had a great time petting the sting rays, looking at sharks, turtles, jelly fish and other fish. The aquarium is in two buildings, the Ocean Adventure and River Adventure. Both are huge and have a ton to see, they are also very kid friendly. I didn't have to lift Dylan up too much to be able to see into the tanks and there were a few animal interactions that all the boys really liked. We would definitely go again.

What we are doing this weekend...

imATHLETE Greenway Challenge Hixson, Tennessee, USA May 08, 2010

Or more so what Dave is doing on Saturday, running (and biking and kayaking) in another adventure race. This one is in Chattanooga, we are heading down there the night before with Dave's race partner, Andrew and his family. This race actually publishes the map ahead of time so Dylan and I, and Andrew's wife Nina and kids can hopefully watch at a few points.
The last race that Dave and Andrew (and our friend Jesse) ran was the Knoxville Urban Wilderness Challenge in March. They all had a great time and finished 15th out of 45 teams, not bad for their first race. While they all thought the race was tough they had a great time and immediately started looking for other adventure races to particpate in. Which has brought us to the North Chick Greenway Challenge 2010.
We haven't been to Chattanooga before and we are staying in the Hamilton Place area which is fairly close to the aquarium and other attractions so it should be a lot of fun. The winners of last years race finished in a little under 2 hours so hopefully we will have time to visit the aquarium before we head back to Knoxville on Saturday night.
I'll let you all know how the race goes and hopefully get some good photos to post!