Summer also means - Polo!

Chris has been busy working in the garage on weekend mornings, so we headed to Polo, which is on a weekend evening!

 

 We all enjoy it :)

 Perfect day

Summer concerts!

Free summer concerts all over!  Bristol has them every evening for 15 days - until the 4th of July.  We've been to 3 so far, and hoping to make it to many more.

 

 Lots of people enjoying summer!

 Padanaram has them every Wed evening:  June - September.  We usually race our sailboat on Wed evening, so we won't make it to very many.  This evening, we felt like relaxing, so skipped the sailboat race :)

 We met up with some friends - which made the evening even better!

Photos from race

Here are some photos from our obstacle race.

Race photos by Spartan, Inc

 

Chris in the river crossing - passing everyone :)

Sand Bag carry

 Close to the finish - after the dunk tank

 Fire pit jump - wow, he got high!

Some of Steph


Climbing the last muddy hill ; and the sand bag carry.  My bag was pretty light

 Dunk tank ; and river crossing

 Fire pit leap.  I walked up to it; jumped over it; and walked across the finish line, I was done in every sense of the word ;)

Spartan Race!

Well, we tried something new - obstacle racing!  Whew, it was hard!!

This group - Spartan - puts on quite a show - a huge expo area

 

 Here we are before the race.  We signed up for a sprint, which is 3-5 miles, and approx. 20 obstacles

 It wasn't pretty - but we finished!  We stayed together for a while, but Chris was killing it, so I told him to go ahead.  I couldn't do a lot of the upper body obstacles, and had to do 'burpees' instead (a jump up; lay down; jump back up exercise, which kicks your butt!)  Chris was flying through the upper body obstacles, and it would take a while to do the burpees - so we went our separate ways.  He finished about 15 minutes ahead of me, so I'm glad I told him to go ahead.  We both actually finished in the top 10 of our age group, which was surprising.  Our exercise routine has been pretty lacking since Ironman Texas.  But these races are very challenging.  Ours ended up being 5 miles (through slick muddy trails, through rivers -crazy)  and over 23 obstacles (like 7 or 8 wall jumps (of which the easy ones were 7 feet high!); rope climbs; javelin throws; barb wire crawls...)

 They give you a free drink after (yay), and one option was beer, which was greatly appreciated!

 Athletes recovering after

 This was one of the obtacles - a very easy one, fortunately.  The only scary part was crossing the top, since it was slated - so any fear of heights would cause issues.

 The course map - I'm glad I didn't look at this before....
Chris did really well, and is ready to sign up for another.  They have longer distance ones - like 10-13 miles; and even some up to 30 miles!  I think I need to practice a lot more before I go back!  The part I disliked were the muddy trails.  I don't mind getting dirty, but these trails were so bad, my shoes kept slipping and a few times, the sticky mud kept my shoe and I took the next step in my sock.  Yuk. 
So I think another sprint distance would be good to do again.  It is nice to do different things, and boy, you really can feel how your body is trained for certain activities.  We've been training our bodies for endurance for years now.  During this race, my body was telling me I was not in shape for these 5 miles, and it would rather be doing an Ironman!

 Medals!

More drag racing - this time in MA!

Orange Dragstrip Reunion!

We drove the red pickup again, since it was a drizzly morning at our house

 

 Didn't deter any spectators - the place was packed with hot rods!

 and there were a lot of vehicles lined up to race too

 a lot of the initial racing was like this:  one way out front, and one way in the back - no contest

 This was a better matched race

 as was this one

We only stayed until 1:30, so we missed the finals - as I was raced out - from watching it two weekends in a row :)

More sailboat racing - in good weather finally!

Ahh, finally some nice weather & we are so lucky that we can spend some of our time on the water with friends!  This was from last week's race:

 

 We are definitely in the mix this year during our Wed night racing.  This was a little too close for comfort

 Lots of boats racing - so beautiful when the sun starts to set

 Last night, we had some more wind, so it was a little cooler on the water, but still a beautiful night!

 It's nice that we are competitive and in the mix.  It makes the racing much more exciting!

TROG 2017!

We headed back to Wildwood, NJ for The Race of Gentlemen. It never disappoints!

Lots of cool bikes & hot rods hanging around Friday

 

 The beaches are pretty amazing here too

 They are HUGE!

 Friday night party

 and we also took a walk along one of the many boardwalks

 Saturday - beautiful - warm & sunny!  We drove our red pick up - for comfort :)

 race time!

 There were so many people here - now that they moved it to June - it was hard to see a lot of the racing - definitely no close ups

 But we had pit passes, so were able to talk to some of the drivers - like our friend Jon from England.  Chris was hoping to race; but didn't get his red coupe finished in time (too many other things that we do that keep him from the garage, he always reminds me when we get to these events, oops :))

 Some of the cars needed a push to get through the deep sand.  Fortunately, most of it was pretty hard packed & there were only a couple spots like this

 75 cars and 75 motorcycles racing on Sat & Sun

 More vendors in June than October too

 So Many People - wow!

 I saw this 'tweet' late, so he was already gone.  But Nascar fans - Kurt & Kyle Busch's father was racing at TROG this year.  Pretty cool!

 They raced from 9 to 4:45.  Long day in the sun

 We mainly hung out with our RB friends.

 The gang

 18 people at dinner - not easy to find a restaurant or room big enough, but we did it!

 Sunday morning walk on the beach!  We headed home & didn't stay for Sunday racing - which had the eliminations.  Next year, we'll take more time.  As usual, we have too many other obligations requiring time off from work, so we couldn't make it more than a 3 day weekend.