City Chase 2017

Winning a bet is pretty awesome sometimes :) My friend, Lynette, bless her good heart, lost a bet to me and she had to choose from my list of what the 'payment' was... :  City Chase. lol Years ago, I had roped her into doing it once with me, she had since then declined my invitation to do it each year, until this year when she lost a bet to me.  What a great win for me is all I've got to say haha.

Having dreaded the event since its humble beginnings, Lynette still booked the day off so that she could participate in the event; like it or not, she was going through with it.  I had repeatedly told her, however, that it wasn't that bad, but only received the not so subtle glare from her.  Alas the day of reckoning finally arrived on June 24th, the first of two city chases happening in Toronto.

Lynette arrived bright and early at my place at 8am and we walked over to the distillery district, taking our time to make pitstops at both Starbucks and Shoppers.

We arrived just in time, leaving perhaps 10 minutes to spare before the race was to commence.  There was a good crowd there, so while they were warming up, Lynette and I started to set up our bibs and our raceshirts.

Once the race started, I attempted to run and retrieve the cluesheet, but unfortunately wasn't able to get it on the first try.  All those who couldn't get the cluesheet on the first try were told to go eastward 500 meters (just around the corner) to get it.  I guess they do this to reduce congestion?  I'm not sure if it was all that effective because there were a lot of people there as well.

We got the cluesheet!  My friend and I spent perhaps about half an hour just standing where we were to figure out the locations, this way we could map out where we needed to go as well as to figure out the mandatory locations.


Finally we figured out at least 8 of the clues, the remaining we would work on as we travelled.

Taking our time, we walked to our very first stop:  It was by the Regent Park Recreation Centre.  I was a bit nervous as I saw it was one of those stations where you had to eat something.  That was never a good thing lol.

It turned out, however, the first station wasn't so bad!

#Station 1
One partner had to eat a jellybean, but the other partner had a choice of eating:  hot pepper, pickled ginger, or kimchi.

Considering that I eat all of them on a daily basis, it wasn't a real challenge for me.  I chose the kimchi lol, while my friend ate a jellybean.






After we had done this, we moved on to the next one.  Before getting there, we stopped by yonge and dundas to grab some coffee from Starbucks.  While my friend stood in line to get our iced drinks, I worked on a sudoku puzzle on the clue sheet.  By the time she had come back with the drinks, I had managed to finish it; now we had 9 locations uncovered!  As we walked towards our mapped destination (my friend is a wiz with it!  She is a walking GPS!), we again made a stop over; for a cheese tart at Uncle Tetu's.  I had never had it before, but it was really good!  Very satisfying :D  You can tell that this wasn't quite the city chase, more along the lines of a city stroll, but as long as we were having fun, that was the most important thing.


We walked for a bit, but couldn't find the next location.  Bumping into another team of city chasers, we traded information and ironically, the place were were looking for was literally in front of us; a Goodlife!

Thanking the two participants, we entered the building to meet our next challenge.

#Station 2
For this station, we had to pick a healthy food item from the board and then guess the number of calories it contained.  If we got it wrong, then we would have to do 20 jumping jacks and 20 sit-ups.  I picked a vegetable barley rice soup.... and I guessed the calories incorrectly.  Mind you, you had only a leeway of being 50 calories off.  lol so we were punished to do the exercises.


#Station 3
Feeling a bit tired after doing the exercises, we slowly made our way to our third location, this one was near OCAD.  When we arrived, I couldn't help but grin ear to ear.  It was absolutely a delight, well, for me more than for my friend.  I saw Rickshaws being pulled by other city chasers, with one partner sitting, the other one pulling it all around the block.

I had always wanted to ride in one or even pull one.  My friend, however, insisted on pulling it since she didn't have that much confidence in my strength to pull it (lol she's not wrong on that - I have been known to have notoriously weak in upper arm strength).

As we went around the block, I felt bad for my friend, but at the same time, I was loving the fact I was finally trying out a rickshaw.  I asked several times if she wanted to trade (it was a long block), but she resisted, and told me just chill, she'll pull me this time and reiterated that she was definitely stronger than me haha.  We finished the challenge, I got the hole punch on my bib and we were off to the next one.  My poor friend was exhausted.  But she was right, if I had to pull, I think it may have taken longer since I would have needed more breaks in between.

#Station 4
The next station was a difficult one - this one you had a choice to eat a worm, cricket or to wear goggles and hairnet and lie under a apparatus where crickets would cover sit on top of the goggles.   You need to remain with these crickets in close proximity for 45 seconds.

I could never imagine 45 seconds of being so close to bugs... so eating a bug was the way to go LOL.  It was pretty gross, but honestly, the act of eating it wasn't as bad as I thought.  It went down easily, though I downed a lot of water afterwards.  Like a lot. hahaha.

#Station 5
The next one we had to travel a bit for it (and we got completely lost wandering around).  When we finally found it, we took a picture with the Inukshuk at the park before going to our challenge.

The task at hand was that one partner was to shoot a (blunted) arrow and the other partner had to catch it.  My friend immediately volunteered to shoot it! hahaha She said she always wanted to shoot one, so I didn't mind doing the catching.

It took a while, lol sometimes the arrow would fly too far or not far at all.  But after perhaps 10 tries, I finally got it.  Victory!!

#Station 6
We wandered lost for a while to find this place, but it was also at an open field area.  This one we had to wear a bubble suit and score a goal against an opposing city chase team.  The loser would need to do 20 burpies!  My friend and I worked hard at this one, and I had never seen her as motivated as she was then to win.  Suffice to say, after one very good kick from me towards the opposing team's goal post, my friend did the rest.  Playing soccer could have been her second career hahaha.  We won, so no burpies for us.

#Station 7
This one was interesting, where we had to fill an 1 litre sodapop container half way with water and then use a bike pump to shoot it up through the air.  One partner would do the pumping of the air, and the other would catch it.  After we finished this station we went off to find the location of the "longitude and lattitude" coordinates.  This one I had no idea where we were headed and it was only by inference that it was a coordinate... and it turned out we were right!

#Station 8
We arrived at the designated coordinates and there were these two elder ladies there and a bunch of items on the ground.  There was a spinning wheel where we were told to spin and then whatever it landed on, we had to guess the price of it - Marshall's price.  My friend spun it, and it landed on a pair of shoes.  Right off the bat, my friend called it for $50, and it was right on the dot.  The ladies were shocked, as I was too, but I shouldn't have been.  Lynette was a pro when it came to shopping hahaha.  With that station done, we only had 2 more to go!

#Station 9
This location was interesting, one partner had to be an anchor while the other partner fetched five balls from a circle about 3 meters away, in order to form the colours of the rainbow.  The two partners were attached with a rubber band that allowed some leeway to stretch.  The funny thing about this challenge was that only one of us had to do it, but we didn't realize it, and we both did the challenge lol.  Oh well, more calories burned!

#Station 10
This location was our last one, and it was probably the easiest one, but it was fun still.  Each partner dressed up in a gladiator suit and knocked the hat off of the other partner and vice versa.  Once my friend and I finished this, we made our way back to the distillery district to the finish line.

Afterwards, we walked again, and this time all the way to Little India to have indian food :D  We did about 45,000 steps that day :) We deserved good food!

After finishing our food, we parted ways, exhaustedly, but thoroughly entertained.  Lynette admitted it was pretty fun, but she still said she wouldn't do it again, haha, simply because it wasn't her type of thing to do for enjoyment.  I understood her viewpoint, but I told her, yeah, no more bets.  Because if she loses another one, this city chase was back on the table :D











Mmmmm good food after a long day!

Sporting Life 10K 2017

Wow, time flies!  It's already past mid 2017 already!  The past year had been a true trial for me, very difficult and with lots of anxiety, fear, and sleepless nights.  But its over now, and I am feeling blessed that everything has blown over.

Because of all the craziness and stress going on with my the past year, I hadn't done much training or many events.  So I'd have to say, most of 2016 was a blur for me, but things did slow down to a good pace, and by May, I saw light at the end of a very dark tunnel :) Thusly, with renewed energy, I was able to yet again participate in my annual Sporting Life 10K run.

First race of the season is the annual Sporting Life 10K run.

Day before Race
I met up with my friend Susan in the morning to hangout, and perhaps toss in a practice 3k run with her to prep for the race the next day.  The run didn't happen lol, but we did hangout around the beaches / Leslieville neighbourhood. We wandered a bit before deciding to go for brunch in the area, but on the way to the restaurant, we were led away from it by the delicious smell of bacon.  It took us to a place called "Rashers".  Goodness if there was ever a good BLT sandwich, this is the place to have it!  After ordering our respective BLTs, mine was the plain one and my friend a specialty one, we set out to eat it on some stools within the place.  The sandwiches were fantastic :)

After having our fill of high quality BLT sandwiches, we headed uptown to my friend's place, picked up a few items to cook.  Mind you, the cooking didn't seem like such a great feat, but somehow we ended up cooking for a long time....  so what leisure time we had intended to have was pretty much taken up by the cooking.  Still, the food was fantastic - Roast Chicken, Shish Kabob, Cobb Salad, and Lemon Zest Spaghetti.

After eating and cleaning up, we had perhaps an hour to unwind; so we ended up watching buzzfeed videos about food - i.e. $2 egg vs $95 egg.  It was quite fun and a great way to just relax.

Race Day

We woke up, my friend did the pickup rounds with everyone, her boyfriend and her younger brother and we headed down to the startline of the race.  It wasn't all that smooth as we had thought, when we arrived and had parked, I'd not looked up to when the baggage check was done.... so appearantly it was over by the time we had arrived.  I had to go back to the car, drop off the stuff and then go back to the startline.  It was a stressful time, the running back and forth, but finally we stood ready at the startline, although we were one or two waves behind what we had intended.

Our wave started, and zoom, we all went at our own pace :) The race went as I expected, and I averaged around the same time as I usually did - lol not the Flash by any means, but it was a solid finish, no injuries or mishaps.  After the race, I met up with Susan and the others and we took our time getting free samples and just chilling in the area as we ate our complimentary banana and bagel. We texted to two other friends who hadn't travelled with us to the startline (they were at a different wave), and discovered that they had gone home! lol  We had started too late, and they had finished much too early, perhaps about 2 hours before us.  It was too cold and tiring for them to wait around, so they had dispersed and gone home.

As for us, since we had finished the race, we were also quite famished.  My friend's boyfriend looked up some potential restaurants, and we decided to try a place called "The Beast".  It wasn't too far of a walk from where we were, so the decision was easily made.  When we arrived, there was a 30min wait, but it was worth it!   The food that we ordered tasted marvellous :)

After a delicious meal, I bid farewell to my friends, as I needed to be somewhere later in the afternoon.  I skipped off first to Goodlife to freshen up before meeting up with another friend for dinner.  It wasn't until a full 5 hours later until I got home.

Dinner!

Once I got home, I rested perhaps for half an hour before going over to another friend's place to check up on her cat. lol.  I was the designated cat sitter for her while she was away on vacation.

Meow!

The cat was happy to see me, her food had run out!  So it was good that I had come to see her.  I filled her food bowl, replaced her water, cleaned her litter, and played with her; I didn't leave until an hour later. Overall, it was a very packed but fun day :) Am looking forward to next years race already.