Mappy Run

So yesterday on Sunday, we did something quite unusual for our family. We woke up before 7am to go to Japanese/Chinese garden for a 5km "Amazing Race". The Japanese garden is next to the Chinese garden and they are connected by a bridge over water.

This is our race pack - a kiddy looking map, a useless compass and something you wear on your finger to clock in at the check points. For our race, we have a total of 12 checkpoints and they are all over the garden.

Right off the start, we had no idea where to go. It was hard to orientate ourselves with the map. I am really bad at directions so I let hubs to all the navigating.

This is pretty much what we did most of the time. We ran when we knew where to run to. Otherwise we wait for hubs to figure out which direction to go.

This is the only good photo of me - I'm not kidding. I wore my Zara t-shirt (favourite t-shirt) and a very old pair of $5 shorts which has lasted me more a decade.

This is what a checkpoint looks like. On top is a number e.g. 34 and you have to look at your map to see if it is the right checkpoint. We have to clock in 12 times in sequence and 1 could be 44 and 2 could be 35. So that means we could be running back and forth.

One checkpoint was really hard to find. We totally went looking in the wrong direction. We wasted a lot of time. And we almost stepped on really stinky dog poo. I mean like fresh.

There was one very long stretch along the lake we had towards the end. By then I was exhausted. Stopping, running and stopping just made everything harder.

Plus, it was very, very hot. Then we wasted time walking the wrong way. We were going the right way but we went back thinking we could use a short cut. But it turned out our short cut was a swim across the late. So we walked the way we were going in the beginning. I can't tell you how exhausting that was.

When we clocked in at the finishing line, we were told we were 2nd. But the race hadn't ended yet for the other groups so we decided to wait till 10am for the results. 

Sadly, we lost to 3rd place by 7 minutes. It was disappointing but we drank our fill of the free cold Milo.