update: citychase official results

team strangely asian finished 97th in the citychase...again! we landed in the same exact place as last year even though our time was a few seconds slower.

however, there were about 250 more teams than last year, and it looks we were one of only 111 teams out of 750 total to finish all 10 chase points in 6 hours. and it seems that almost 2/3 didn't finish. so based on those numbers, i'm feeling pretty good about what we did.

yay, team strangely asian!

citychase chicago 2008

team strangely asian does it again! sb and i geared up and successfully finished our second citychase race. while this year's race seemed tougher (and sometimes more annoying) than last year, we still had a great time. we haven't gotten the official results yet, but we did hit 10 chase points in somewhere around 5 hours and 57 minutes.

our goals were all pretty much the same as last year, but the order of importance changed slightly:

1) finish all 10 chase points in the allotted 6 hours
2) don't get injured (this got bumped down a spot because we're not training for anything)
3) don't break up
4) have fun.

now, on to the race itself:
getting the clue sheet
last year, they had us do a scavenger hunt to get our clue sheet. this year, they simply decided to give us two different locations, and we had to run to get them. this turned out to be a logistical nightmare because people were shoving and yelling trying to get a sheet. cs and tw did the race, too, and apparently cs got knocked down during this debacle.

chase point #1 - michael phelps' swimming domination will not be threatened by our sorry asses.
after about 20 minutes of trying to figure out as many clues as possible, we decided to take off for chinatown. however, while we were on the train, we decided that it would be better to head to the university of illinois chicago campus instead, and it turns out we made a really good choice. From what we heard, the lines down in chinatown took forever. anyway, once we got to UIC, our challenge was to find the olympic pool and each swim 100 m. i'd like to think i'm in decent shape, but shit. i was dying during the second lap. sb isn't much better either - he always recounts the story of how he never made it past the apples group in his swimming class. nonetheless, neither of us drowned, and we got our first point.

chase points #2 and 3 - what do michelle wie and i have in common? we're both asian. that's it.
this year, they decided to give us a couple of chase points that we could complete ahead of time. one of them was to gather a bunch of business cards fitting certain categories. with the help of my boss ck, i was able to get this one done, and what was even better was that we could complete that chase point at the same place as another point. so i handed in our cards to complete point #2, and then a few steps over we did #3, which was a putting course. we had to roll a die three times, and that would be our par for the course. first time, we rolled a 10 and failed miserably. we were down to two strokes left for the last hole, and i choked. so we went to the back of the line, rolled another 10, and this time, we managed to complete the task with one stroke left over.

chase point #4 - daley is really trying his damnest to get the olympics to chicago in 2016
we had planned to hit up a couple of points in the river north area, and on our way there, we stumbled upon what would be our fourth point. it was an olympics-inspired point hosted by chicago's olympics 2016 committee. i did the shot put, sb shot a bow and arrow, we both played wheelchair basketball and went 250 m on a rowing machine. our final task was to sprint 50 m in under 9 seconds. and the big catch? one of us had to be blind-folded, and we had to be tethered together by a string. so sb took one for the team, put on the blindfold, and i dragged him across the finish line in just under 9 seconds.

chase point #5 - always listen to your pop
our next point was a quick one. we showed up at haray caray's restaurant downtown, and next to the building was a huge cow. fitting, right? our challenge was to milk the cow and fill the bottom of a small dixie cup. luckily, sb's pop grew up on a farm and showed him how to milk a cow. he was so good at it that i didn't even have enough time to get my camera out to snap a picture of him doing it. so all i have is this picture of bessie.

chase point #6 - i might be a rageaholic
after sb dried off his hands, we took off for crunch gym on grand and wabash. there, we found out we'd get to spar with an olympic boxer. the thing was, only one of us could get in the ring. sb, being the nice guy he is, let me be the one. so we warmed up by doing some exercises and punching drills, and then i got a pair of gloves and headgear and jumped in the ring. apparently the guys watching told sb i hit hard and was doing a nice job throwing out some combos and that he should "watch out for me." it's not good for your boyfriend to be scared of you...right? yeah...

chase point #7 - there's a reason why sb never enlisted.
there were a few mandatory chase points we had to hit, and we thought we had this next one figured out. last year, one of our points was bulldog bootcamp at north ave. beach, which we joined this summer. well, there was a bootcamp there again, but this time it was hosted by real marines, and boy were they serious about their jobs. it's all really a painful blur, but what i do remember is that the sand burned the shit out of my feet, i got yelled at a lot, and i dropped sb while i was trying to carry him across the sand. it sucked...hard.

chase points #8 and 9 - 2 people + 4 academic degrees between us (5 come june 2009) = failure
i wasn't quite sure i was going to be able to finish the race at this point because both of my legs started cramping up really badly. however, after writhing on the ground for about 5 minutes and scaring the life out of sb, i got up, and we kept trucking. our next two points were doubled up at the same spot like the golf one. we went to the kaplan testing center at century city mall and turned in our donation receipt for the special olympics to get point #8. then for #9, we had to take an SAT-like test and pass with a score of 71%. let's just say we had to try 3 or 4 times before we passed. sadness.

chase point #10 - the technicality
our last point couldn't have been in a better spot (or so we thought at the time). we were to go to moe's cantina up in wrigleyville, which was perfect because we could then hop on the red line and head straight to the finish line. well, we got to moe's, and one of the volunteers told us they had run out of materials and they shut down the point early. however, they said that because it was their fault and since we were able to find them, they would give us the point anyway. not the way i really wanted to get our 10th, but we really had no choice.

the finish
by the time we took off for the red line, it was about 3:15-3:30, and we needed to get to the finish before 4. the odds were clearly stacked against us. the cubs game had just let out, and the streets and the red line station were packed. once we finally got on a train, we figured out that it had been re-routed due to construction and that we were going to have to run about 6-7 blocks to get to the finish line. we got off the train at around 3:50 and took off running. sure enough, we made it with a few minutes to spare again this year and crossed the finish line hand-in-hand.

a HUGE thank you goes out to sg for taking all of our frantic calls and figuring out clues and directions for us.

this was another great race filled with excitement, frustration, pain, but most of all, fun. i can't wait for 2009!

3.67 miles

soooo, yeah. sb and i skipped bootcamp today. i just felt like running, and sb gave in and came with me. we've tried running longer distances on our own, but we just couldn't pace ourselves well enough to go any longer than like 1.5 - 2 miles.

today, however, was different. we set out hoping to do between 3 to 4 miles, and we actually did it. the pace was really comfortable - we talked most of the way - and i never felt like i was dying (like most of our previous runs).

we came home and after doing 30 push-ups and 50 sit-ups, i mapped our route, and it turns out we did 3.67 miles at 11:21 pace (41:40 minutes of running total).

i'm pretty pleased with that actually. it makes me feel a bit better as we get closer and closer to this year's citychase. t - 16 days! woohoo!

(the pic is one i took during a nice walk sb and i took about a month ago in lincoln park.)

a little behind

whoops. i haven't been very good about posting apparently. no, i haven't been out of commission this whole time due to the ankle injury. i didn't actually take any time off at all. it seems to have healed - it's still pretty stiff, and it hurts when i turn it certain ways, but i don't usually notice it at all when i'm working out at bootcamp.

speaking of, in addition to all the workouts i haven't posted about, we also did our third and final assessment. so here's how it went down:

• push-ups: 29 (21 or 23 in the first, 23 in the second)
• sit-ups: 40 (36 in the first, 35 in the second)
• 1-mile run: 8:54 (10:06 in the first, 8:48 in the second)
  

so the 1-mile run wasn't so great, but i'm happy with the push-ups and sit-ups.

we're winding down to the end of our 12 weeks. i can't say that i've enjoyed all of it (mainly because a lot of hurt pretty badly), but i can say that i feel a lot stronger. now i just need to use this as a base to keep getting stronger and build up my endurance.