I just added a few photos from the Bend, Or trip here.

Summer has arrived- it's 90 degrees here today. Not quite as hot as Moab, Utah, where several of our teammates and friends are participating in the Eco Primal Quest. PQ is a 10 day non-stop expedition race, approximately 400 miles and is absolutely brutal. We wish them the best of luck!

Last weekend we went to Bend, OR with Jerry and Stacy. We had an AWESOME weekend. I'll post pictures later tonight.

Tuesday night training resumes tomorrow with a hike up to Poo Poo point, around the back of Tiger and down the NW Timber trail. Meet at 6:30 in the lower Tiger lot off exit 20. Come prepared for the heat!

We're still in recovery mode after last week's race. It's funny, after doing such a big international event we're not too excited about any other races this summer. Wah. Call us spoiled if you want- we like doing races with helicopters and tv crews and tons of international racers :)

Neither of us have written up a race report, but here are a few tidbits to tide you over:
-Race was approx 270K (approx 167 miles), over 36 hours.
-We lost a teammate 24 hours before we were slated to leave Seattle, but found a replacement just a few hours later.
-We canoed a class 3 river...in an inflatable boat. And yes, we did fall out once. It all happened so fast and we were a little shaken up afterwards. However,we did manage to finish that 8 mile section and Eric did a great job of steering through the rest of the rapids. Woo hoo! We had a perma-grin for the rest of the day.
-We did a 900 ft rappel. It was awesome.
-We passed up 4 teams on the last canoe section to finish 23rd. The top 20 teams were all pretty much sponsored pro teams, so we're really happy with our finish.

-Karyn

Some race photos have been posted! click here for our personal ones.

Also, there are some shots of us on www.sleepmonsters.com:

-Race Start. Click on the photo that says Missing Link under it for a larger image. Click here to see it.

-Inline Skate. Click on the photo that says Mergeo.com (it's really us). I'm towing Eric with my fleece coat. Click here to see it.

-Whitewater canoe section. Click on the Missing Link photo for a larger image. Click here to see it.

We're back from the Raid! Too exhausted to do a race report- check back tomorrow or Wednesday. Here's a shot of the team at race check-in:

Check out this neat site- you can translate any webpage into one of several different languages...
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

I probably won't be posting again till next weekend; we're busy getting ready for the Raid. Our most current (and somewhat last minute) project is making a sail to use on the flatwater paddling section. We hope to test it out on Tuesday.

We'll post a race report once we get back in town.

Last night Jerry set up a short bike orienteering course for us at Taylor Mountain. It was fun but involved a lot of bushwhacking through thorn bushes (thanks Jerry). Eric, Richard and I teamed up, here are some pics:

Running through the underbrush:

Richard:


Getting a CP on top of a boulder:

This is our team for the Raid (L-R: Me, Steve, Eric and Richard). I can't believe the race is less than 2 weeks away!

We had a soggy but fun weekend. In true Pacific Northwest style, our Memorial Day weekend included a lot of rain and snow. So much for barbeques, beaches and swimming!

Robin had set up a training weekend down in Oregon. After work on Friday Eric and I swung by Robin's house, loaded his gear in the Rover and then drove to Seatac to pick up Jodie, who flew in from Salt Lake City. We would be joined by Shannon the next morning. The four of us spent the night at Scott's(who by the way summitted Mt. Everest last year!), and woke early the next morning for our ropes lesson at Lewis and Clark State Park. We met our instructor around 8:30 and hiked up to the rock face where we'd be ascending and rappeling. Unfortunately with six of us we really only got in one turn on the ropes each. That's OK though, most of all I wanted to learn rapelling with a figure 8 and a shunt- it was much easier than using an ATC. I think now I'll be pretty comfortable with whatever the Raid organizers throw at us in Idaho. Ascending was suprisingly easy to do but it sure wore out my forearms! You can see some pictures here.After the lesson and lunch we started our drive up to Mt. Adams in search of a campsite for the night. After the tents were set up Scott, Shannon and Robin went off for a mountain bike ride while Jodie and I built an awesome fire. This was quite a feat because everything was sopping wet from the steady rainfall. Kudos to us!

On Saturday morning we packed up our gear for the Mt. Adams climb. Our packs were pretty full as we carried crampons, ice axes and snowshoes in addition to food, water and extra clothing. We had to hike a few miles up the road just to get to the trailhead; low snow levels had left the main road impassable. By the time we hit the trailhead we were pretty much soaked! Ugh. We put on the snowhoes just a little while later and that make trekking through the snow so much easier. Much to our suprise the sun even paid us a short visit (just long enough to give us a sunburn), then made a hasty retreat behind snow-laden clouds. The snow was falling hard enough to cause some safety concerns, so we turned back after a few hours. By the time we reached camp all we could think about was hot food and a hot shower, neither of which we could get at our primitive campsite. So...we cleaned up as best we could, found a great Mexican restaurant for dinner, and then rode our bikes for a couple hours. That night we crashed at Scott's house again because no one wanted to sleep in a cold, wet tent. We stayed up pretty late yakking, looking at Scott's Everest pictures, and trying to figure out exactly how many Longaberger baskets were in his house (like 200??). This morning we slept in, had a great breakfast and drove back up to Seattle.

Yeah, the weather was crummy but we made the best of it and had a great time. I think next year's Memorial Day outing should be in Moab though!

We hardly took any pictures because our camera battery only had like 8 minutes left on it :( Click here to see them.

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! Turning 28 is no fun (my dad says wait till I turn 60...). Eric had planned a nice dinner downtown, but since it was a weeknight we couldn't stay out very late. I took a rain check for an upcoming weekend and instead we went on a hike with the team. Near the end Eric produced a Hostess cupcake with a birthday candle in it. It was a fun alternative to a traditional cake.

So, we just received an update for the X-Adventure race we're doing in June. These updates include the addition of snowshoes as mandatory gear on the trekking section, and basically a warning about the canoe section. It sounds like the rivers are high and fast right now due to melting snow. The race management is advising teams to skip that section if they're not extremely confident in technical whitewater paddling (class 3 rapids). Now, I think we're a strong bunch but definitely not well versed in reading rivers; we'll have to make that call once we get to the race. Last year's "whitewater" section was totally flat water, so we'll see.

We had a pretty good weekend. It sure was nice to sleep in for once :) Some highlights:
-I'm happy to report that the rain held off until just now (8pm on Sunday). I was supposed to rain both days.
-We saw The DaVinci Code on Friday night. It was OK...I thought the movie left out a lot of details and the casting kind of sucked. Tom Hanks definitely wouldn't be my first pick for Robert Langdon's character.
-On Saturday we putzed around, did a little hike and had Jerry and Stacy over later than evening.
-Today I did a 25-30 mile ride on the Iron Horse (not exactly sure how far I went), then joined Eric and Roger for a 2-hour paddle on Lake Sammamish.

All good things must come to an end, which unfortunately is the case with our nice sunny weather. I guess in a way it's good because our plants could really use the water. I'm sure the nice weather will return...in a month or two.

Tonight we're watching The DaVinci Code with Jerry and Stacy, but the rest of the weekend is up in the air. I'm hoping the rain holds off so I can do another mountain bike ride at Tiger. Last Tuesday's singletrack ride was awesome!!

We just got back from the Big Muddy rogaine in the Oregon "desert" (Yes, Oregon has something that resembles a desert). For those of you who don't know what a rogaine is, take a parcel of land and put X number of checkpoints on it, then teams try to get as many of those checkpoints in X number of hours. Jerry, Eric and myself signed up for the 24-hour course. Robin was a last-minute addition as his own teammates dropped out unexpectedly.

We left Issaquah around 5pm, stopped in Yakima for a Miner's burger (note to self- don't try to eat a salad in the car), and finally arrived at the race venue around 11:30pm. Man, it was COLD out! I don't think any of us slept well that night due to snoring, cold temps or those birds chirping at 3am. The next morning we woke up at our leisure (the event didn't start till 11am) and slowly assembled our race packs after a light breakfast. The race start was the most anti-climatic one I've ever experienced- it was not chaotic like an adventure race. This race was so long that people just kind of meandered to their first CP. The whole scene was kind of funny.

Both the terrain and weather were very unforgiving- temps were in the mid 80's with no clouds during the day, and hovered around freezing at night. The terrain consisted of lava rocks, more lava rocks and even more lava rocks. You really had to watch your footing on the hillsides to avoid slipping.

All in all we spent about 19-20 hours out on the course. Some points of interest:
-The scenery was really neat. Yeah, it was mostly dry and brown, but it was sure nice to see something other than evergreens.
-All of those off-camber hillside traverses were tough to navigate, but it was really cool and somewhat fun at the same time.
-Watching the harvest moon rise.
-Eric and I totally freaking out over...running water. Around 3am Eric thought he heard "something" and panicked, causing me to panic as well. Robin and Jerry thought we were crazy.
-Eric propping me up when I fell asleep...while walking down the trail. 'Nuf said.
-Spending an hour or so trying to find one of the easiest CP's on the course. Doh! If only we had stopped gabbing and concentrated on the course...
-Great teamates- Jerry, Robin and Eric were a blast to race with.

Click here for the pictures!

I just uploaded some pics from the past week's outdoor pursuits. Click here to see them. They're labeled 5/4 and 5/6.

Just got back from a 3-hour hike with Jerry and Robin. Here's a group shot from the top of Tiger 2:



Click on the photo for a better view.

Who wants to hike/run tomorrow (Thursday)?

I was thinking of hiking up to Poo Poo point, over on the railroad grade to Tiger 3, then down the Tiger mountain trail. We can cover 10-15 miles depending on the route.

Let's meet at the Exit 20 lower parking lot around 6:15. Don't forget the lights.

I can't believe that tomorrow is May 1st already. It sure seems like the year is flying by, doesn't it? I totally forgot that I'm going to be 28 this month...yuck.

Moving on...

We're really wiped out from the weekend. On Friday we met up with Robin to go on a hike and ride. At 10pm. Duncan let us park at his place and from there we rode up the Iron Horse trail for an hour or two. We stopped at a fire road and stashed the bikes in some underbrush, then did a 2 hour hike up the trail. The hike was pretty uneventful but slightly challenging due to the heavier-than-normal packs we were all carrying. Call me a chicken, but I'm not very fond of being out in the dark and tried to walk in between Eric and Robin whenever I got the chance. Anyway, by the time we got back it was about 3am. We had a pretty good time. I think Robin has a 12-hour training session planned for next weekend! If we don't do the ropes class then we'll probably join him. I'll make sure I bring more of "the best brownies ever" for that outing.

After about 3 hours of sleep (my internal alarm clock goes off at 6:30 regardless of the day) we crawled out of bed and loaded the kayak on the car- we were taking crazy Tony Catanzaro for his first paddle ever. He and Eric teamed up in a tandem (just in case kayaking wasn't his thing) and I used Eric's boat. I almost always paddle with Eric in a tandem and it's hard to tell exactly how much I contribute to the overall speed. Well, I must not contribute much because I was moving glacially slow. Looks like I've got some work to do before the Mountains to Sound race, which has a 12-mile kayak section. I have finally mastered the rudder though and I'm pretty happy about that. We tooled around Union Bay, watched some sea planes take off and then had an awesome lunch at the Jolly Roger in Ballard.

Later that night was Jerry's birthday party. Most of the Missing Link team had assembled to eat Mexican food, play poker and laugh our butts off.


Today we just played catch up by doing laundry, grocery shopping and hanging out with the birds.

I think we just had one of our busiest weekends to date. Eric, Jerry and Stacy manned our "yard sale" on Saturday. Since we don't live on a street garage sales aren't really a possiblity for us. Eric rose to the challenge and snagged a patch of grass right on the main road...and we made a couple hundred dollars, probably due to the great location :) While all this ruckus was going on I teamed up with Robin to do the Street Scramble around the U-District. We rode the 3-hour course on mountain bikes and it was a lot of fun.

Today Eric woke at 5:30 to support Jerry at his 50K race. He basically rode alongside him for the entire 50K, passing him water, GU packets, and words of encouragement as necessary. I also rode about 25 miles of the trail and met them at the finish line. On the way home I stopped to walk a friend's dog that I was pet-sitting and then Eric and I headed out for a 2 hour hike. Of course after that there's always a ton of errands like grocery shopping and 2 loads of workout-related laundry. Now it's about 10pm and I'm SO ready for bed!

Oh, I forgot to mention that it was 70 degrees today! Eric actually got sunburned and I have a head-start on my weird tan lines for the summer (lines from gloves, shorts, socks and sleeves). The weather is supposed to stick around for another week or so- perfect for training :) I've logged 14 hours in the past 7 days and I'd like to do at least that many this week.

Have a great week everyone!

Last night we hiked up to Poo Poo point (yes, that's really the name) in hopes of watching the paragliders take off. Unfortunately the sun had just set when we reached the top and all the gliders had landed already. Doh! Eric really wants to try paragliding but I don't think I could get up the nerve to do it! At one point a large Barred owl landed in front of us and started hooting. We should've asked him how many licks it took to reach the center of a Tootsie pop.

We've going to be really busy the next few days:
-Thursday- Kayaking with Robin
-Friday- Mariners vs.Detroit Tigers ball game
-Saturday- Garage sale, bike orienteering course(?)
-Sunday- Support crew for Jerry's ultra

It's officially that time of year...when the rest of the country is warming up and we're still in the 40's. Yuck.

We didn't do a whole lot this weekend. We went bowling on Saturday with some friends and then canoed on Sunday. My ankle is really hurting so I tried to keep off it as much as possible, but I hope to get running again later this week.