Woodstalkers in the news

For those of you who might have missed my post-a-link fest yesterday, my race recap is on the NYDaily News blog Running Dialogue.

On Thursday morning in between frenzied packing and last minute shopping for van supplies, I was trash talking with @linnaf on twitter. I was letting her hear all about how her team @doubleknots was going to get Woodstalked. Lauren from @NYDNrunning piped in and asked if either one of us wanted to write something for her blog.

I let her suffer for about a minute and a half before I jumped in and volunteered to send her pictures and write something.

What I didn't realize at the time is that I'd be trying to do this from a moving van. I haven't reached that skill level with my phone swiping. Plus, my phone was also the van's official safety phone and it had to stay in the van and be accesible to everyone in the van in case the organizers needed to contact us. (If any of you got any weird messages this weekend, it wasn't me. Must have been the woodstalk.) My phone was also being used for GPS navigation. Between picture taking, tweeting, assisting with GSP and being available for emergencies, my poor phone ended up even more exhausted than the runners and needed frequent charging.

I managed to send a couple of brief dispatches, but the bulk of the reporting ended up taking place as a recap, back in Brooklyn on Sunday night before the work week swallowed me.

Read the recap here!

But don't worry, I'll write some more about it later. I haven't told you yet about our interactions with the police.

Woodstalking, again

The Wodstalkers ran Ragnar New York again. Last year we ended up winning the prestigious Nom de Plume award with "I'm Woodstalking your Girlfriend." This year we dug deep and decided to question ourselves and others. We went with "Is That a Woodstalk in your Pocket?"

Ragnar tried to veto our name because of morality concerns. We went with the Dr. Seuss defense. Plus, with such a cute logo who could really object? (Thanks again, John!)

Pre-race drama included an injury flare up on one of our runners who didn't know if he'd be able to run at all, another runner dropping out the day before and last minute relay leg and van redistribution. After sorting all that out we managed to gather up - a full team of twelve - and set out to the real start of our race: team dinner.

The team in Williamsburg, ready to head upstate.

Pasta dinner and a few hours of sleep later, Van 1 showed up at the start line ready to go. Everybody quieted down for the safety briefing: to please follow all rules and don't get run over. Once that was done we got back to the music, the freebies, the costumes, the decorated vans, and the port-a-potties.

Van 1: Big Pappa and his ladies.

Something else that was fun about the start line, I discovered the whereabouts of Seal Team 6. They weren't going by that name and I'm not sure I got to see them of course, but I'm pretty sure it was them.



Race recap coming soon, both here and on the NYDaily News blog Running Dialogue. Yes! How cool is that? I was the NYDaily News Ragnar correspondent this weekend.