March 12athon: 12 Challenges! (RWB)

I've been wanting to do a really crazy combination of challenges but just didn't have the time during the last couple of months. This month, though, I had a whole weekend free right before the 12th to prepare and then several free days afterward to recover if needed. I'd been kicking a bunch of different ideas around my head for a few weeks and I finally decided that I might as well just try to do them all! I ended up with 12 challenges on the list:


Baker's Diet Dozen - After 13 full-sized cupcakes back in January, this definitely seemed doable. I thought about making sourdough crackers for a savory baked good but eventually decided against it because of the amount of prep time involved. In the end, I settled on Buckeyes:



Beet Goes On - This one was easy since I'd made some pickled beets a few months ago and all I had to do was pour some of the juice out of the jar.



Chicken Eatza - As luck would have it, I had 3 whole chickens in my freezer when this challenge was created. I cut the wings off and made a spicy buffalo sauce based on this one - I added a bunch of Melinda's XXXXtra Hot Habanero hot sauce for more heat and a little bit of salt. If you find yourself in need of some wing sauce, I highly recommend making this one!



Diabolic Dozen - I really like eggs. The only reason I don't usually eat six whole eggs in a day is that the good ones can be a bit pricy. I used Emeril's recipe (using his mustard recipe, Julia Child's mayonnaise, and chipotle Tabasco for the hot sauce) because it didn't involve any ingredients I didn't already have on hand. They were seriously awesome. It was really hard to only eat one half at a time.



Dirty Dozen - I was out of town for almost the whole month of February and I don't have a washer/dryer hookup in my apartment, so at the moment nearly everything I own is dirty. An overnight low temperature of about 63 sounded a little warm for layering, but I figured I could tough it out if I only had to do one mile at a time.



Imelda Marcos - A couple of days ago, I finally got the pair of cheap tennis shoes I've been needing for a while. That brought me up to 12 pairs that are comfortable enough for running or at least walking a mile.

VFFs don't take up much room, either, so all 12 pairs of shoes fit comfortably in my old high school backpack.



Kriss-Kross - As long as I was doing as many other challenges as possible, wearing my three shirts, two pairs of pants, and shorts backwards didn't seem like it would pose a problem. I did write myself a note to remember to do jumping jacks every mile because I thought I might forget, though.



Masquerade - I thought about dressing up for St. Patrick's Day, but I don't have much green or anything with four-leaf clovers on it. A Google search revealed that March 12 is Plant a Flower Day, so I picked up a plant and some gardening supplies. (The mint isn't currently flowering, but this is apparently not a requirement for celebrating Plant a Flower Day and it'll flower eventually.)


After carrying the plant around with me for 12 miles, I put it in its new home in my window box. Hopefully mint plants aren't terribly susceptible to shock.



RUI: Double Fister - I was going to make daiquiris, but this is the plant I ended up picking out for Masquerade:


I didn't have any bourbon on hand, but that was easy enough to fix.

TK can totally hold his liquor.

Sisyphus - I was initially going to do this one some month at a track at a nearby park, but when I drove by said park a couple of weeks ago they were in the middle of renovating it and there were several bulldozers parked where the track used to be. It turns out that the block across the street from me is a quarter-mile around, though.

I like how the GPS satellites seem to think
I took a shortcut through a row of houses
for a couple of the laps.

Slacker's 12-Hour Race - This seemed like the best way to successfully ingest all the food from the various other challenges without feeling sick. I thought I'd have a lot of downtime between miles, but by the time I'd recorded my hourly video update, done the run and the jumping jacks, and eaten all the food, there was actually hardly any time left. I did manage to take a nap for half an hour somewhere around 8am, though.



Sunrise - I think I would've had to try harder to avoid this one than to do it since I was running every hour from midnight to noon anyway. It was a cloudy morning, though, so while the sky got noticeably lighter around 7:02, it wasn't the most scenic view I've ever seen.


I took another picture about 14 minutes later after I'd finished that hour's run and jumping jacks, but the view hadn't changed much.




Numbers:
Miles run: 12.02. Apparently setting the watch for a 12-mile 'simple workout' only works if it's done continuously. I was expecting a beep at 12 and didn't get one.
Laps run: 48!
Average pace: 15:23. I walked the two miles with the flip-flops and after staying up all night I just wasn't moving very quickly in general.
Run time: 3:06:27
Total elapsed time: 11:45:49 (12:14am - 12:00pm!)
Jumping jacks: 144