April 25, 2009: Crazylegs Classic - Madison, WI

No Geocaching this weekend, but I did get in some walking. My sister has wanted to enter in the Crazylegs Classic 2 mile walk, and talked me into doing it because she did not want to try alone. Watched the forecast for a week, and the weather news got worse each day leading up to this Saturday. It would up being rainy with waves of heavy storms, temperature dropping all day long, and a cold wind. It was a misery shared by 18,451 other paticipants however.

Forgive the foggy-looking photos, those were taken with my pocket camera sealed inside of a ziploc bag because of the wet conditions. I only took it out of the bag when under shelter. Bad pictures are better than none at all.

Getting cued up at for the start on the Capitol Square, at State Street.











As we were not quite sure if we should try to line up with the "speed walkers" in the first wave or in the "casual walkers" in the second wave, we stood near the front of the "casual walkers" group and waited for our start 2 minutes after the first wave. We quickly broke into the clearing between the 2 waves going down State Street and began overtaking the stragglers in the back of the first wave pretty fast. The rain and cold were motivators to go fast and get to the end. I believe we managed to pass by at least 1/3 of the field in that first wave of "speed walkers" by the time we made it to Camp Randall Stadium.



My sister celebrating crossing the finish line



We made a beeline to the stands and got under the cover of the upper deck of the stadium. There was free beer for all the participants to be consumed. The official time was 36 minutes and some odd seconds, subtracting 2 minutes for starting in the 2nd wave, and we covered 2 miles in 34+ minutes.






Add in the round-trip walk from the parking lot to the start, then back from the finish and it was over 4 miles covered. My feet were cold and wet as my shoes, socks and pants were completely soaked-through from the rain. I had on a rain jacket, so about the only dry part of me was my upper-body. It was all great fun though.