Dirty Du

It has been a quiet blog lately. My excuse (besides the fact that life becomes a bit more mundane when you aren't traveling) is that I've sequestered myself in order to finish my GTA report. It's half done! And really long...

But enough about me. Yesterday I grabbed my camera for an opportunity to practice "action shots" while my husband and some friends competed in the Dirty Duathlon at Rocky Hill Ranch. It was a 3-mile trail run, 12-mile bike, 3-mile run. Everyone did great!

I learned that my little camera isn't really suited to action shots. Sometimes it focused on the subject, sometimes on the background. And the delay between pressing the button and getting the shot is hard to work with. But it was fun to play around while imagining getting a better camera someday. Besides, it was really easy to run through the woods with.

John running with his helmet on, a style only he could pull off:

Yay John!

At the start of the bike course:

Our adventure racing friend Tina:

Jason did a relay with his step-dad Mike. It was Mike's first trail run! He did awesome. Jason also kicked some butt as he passed a bunch of people on the bike:

Later on the bike course:

"How much further???"

New headwear for John:

Mike on his second run:

Whee!

Lots of finger-pointing going around...

...including at John's bloody knee (he fell off the bike trying to get his foot out of the cage):

Jason with his Mom:

Mark and 1-year old daughter:

Three warriors:

The BEST age group award ever - lightweight and burnable:

Video from the GTA

John captured various bits of footage using the GoPro camera during the GTA in August. The following is a set of clips, complete with background laughter and completely lacking in professional editing or music:

GUR Vegas race report

Slightly more timely than my upcoming GTA race report:

http://www.kipley.com/uc/gur2008vegas.html

Beyond Vegas

After the Las Vegas GUR race, several of us hung around for a couple extra days. This gave us a chance to explore places outside the city.

First stop, Red Rock Canyon. We have to go back and do some long runs and mountain biking in that area next time! Very beautiful.


Hiking up Ice Box Canyon:




Next stop - Trader Joes!

But how will we get all this on the plane??

Monday we drove out to Boulder City to take a tour of the Hoover Dam. A marvel of engineering! We enjoyed exploring the dam, and I enjoyed taking this photo:

The generator room:

The view from INSIDE the dam (well worth the extra money for the full tour):

Even better was the time spent fooling around in the tunnel - someone else in my group has more awesome photos I'm sure (send them to me!):

View from the top of the dam:

Ronda pregnant with a hard hat:

The new bridge (under construction) plus the leaning towers:

Getting hopped up on chocolate before our flight home!

It was a super-fun trip with super-fun friends!

Great Urban Race - National Championships

Well, the time had finally come to race for 10 grand - after many weeks of prepping and fretting, it was down to this...

I'm working on a more detailed race report to follow soon, but here's the summary:

In the super-fast morning race, our Austin Mob qualified 5 out of 6 of our teams in the Elite Eight finals race! That was a huge accomplishment, and it set the stage for a fun afternoon.

The finals race started with a blindfolded bus ride (we were blindfolded, not the bus) out to the middle of nowhere (Bum-F***-Egypt, according to John). Everyone started with a jigsaw puzzle, then ran miles and miles and miles to get back to the Strip. The first half ended with an AWESOME roller coaster ride at New York, New York, then we did a set of logic problems in a conference room. The final set of clues went extremely fast, all our teams were zig-zagging back and forth in one small area, our ground support seemed to be everywhere at once, then it was every team for itself trying to get back to the Rio as fast as possible.

Kip and Dave (Team Vignette-KD) got back first, but missed one required photo. John and I were next to finish, and we had all the right pics and stuff, so we won! WOW! What a weekend! I have to say, our "mob" of Texas racers and nationwide support crew is an urban racing force. Occasionally we do slip up, but (mostly) not this time. We were on top of our game, and it was good timing, because we took home a big prize. And had a bunch of fun in the process!

More photos to come in the race report, but because I can't help bragging about our scouting, here are a few CP pics:





Plus my favorite shot from the whole day: 20 or more people with us in front of the MGM Grand lion (You'll have to trust me on the lion part - apparently it was good enough for Joe the race director!):

Vegas, baby!

Last week we went to Las Vegas to compete in the Great Urban Race national championships, with a chance to win $10,000. We take these things pretty seriously (if it weren't for the prize $, you could almost say "way too seriously"), so we spent several days roaming around town pre-race.

Here are some of my favorite scouting shots: