The Marathon Rely and Juggling Joe

My friend Stephanie talked me into running the Marathon Relay with her while we were doing a pleasant pub run this summer. All we needed was a couple of other girlfriends to join in.  I conned my friends Amanda and Marcy into running, signed us all up and then we didn't think about the run the rest of the summer.

If you recall, following the Bike MS event I got together with these ladies and we went for a run, chose our legs that we would be running for the marathon, and went for some ice cream.  We got together again for the Marathon Expo and Packet Pick Up this Saturday, texted each other good luck at 5:45 and 6am this morning and headed to join our respected spots along the marathon trail.

I had the first leg and was pleasantly surprised that it was nice and warm out so early in the morning in the fall. My warm up was the 1/2 mile walk to the start line. I was surprised that there wasn't a ton of people starting. Only about 600 marathon runners and 148 marathon teams. We all started first and then 15min. later over 2,000 half marathon runners began.

I ended up running pretty awesomely (is that an official word or a Casey word).   I finished my 6.5 leg in about 51 minutes.  My team did really well considering my one friend was nursing an injury.  We finished 89 out of 148 teams and better in the women's category.  It was a wacky weather day with nice weather, then it would downpour and you'd freeze, then it would stop become windy and cool, then sunny and humid. It was like this all day and that was a bit frustrating but hey I remember when Amanda and I volunteered to help at the marathon last year and it was 4 hours of freezing outside and being miserable while trying to be cheerful to the runners.

Anyway, I'm glad I did the relay. I was proud of my team and inspired by so many marathon runners. Oh, and I think I actually got a shirt from a race that actually fits me!

Then after the marathon my friend Marcy and I ran over to the Xerox Auditorium and watched another Fringe Fest show by Joe Showers the Juggler.  It was an entertaining hour but seemed a somewhat mediocre performance.  He had a lot of technical issues with his music and dropping a lot of tricks. This wouldn't have been so bad because many times he was able to make it seem like the errors were part of the show but many other times he kept saying oops or clearly looking frustrating. Therefore the show had great potential but fell a little short.  However, I was still very impressed with his skills. I could only ever juggle the scarves in gym class...so juggling is impressive to me.

The Fringe Fest Begins

The 3rd Annual Fringe Fest in Rochester got started this Friday. My friend and I headed down after a long week of work to enjoy some free music and entertainment.  We saw a the Sister's of Murphy band in which I know many of the band members. In case you haven't guessed they perform Irish music. And I love Irish music.

Following the music came the highly anticipated Circus Orange show, http://www.circusorange.com. It was an interesting performance. They then try to entertain the crowd by creating a promonade where everyone was encouraged to walk around this huge tricycle that was on fire and had weird characters all around and on it. Oh, and I'm pretty sure the performance was in French or it wasn't then I couldn't understand it at all. Oh, wait I couldn't understand French either.  Anyway it was somewhat fun for the first part because we were at the beginning and saw the performance up close. Not so fun once people are pushing through the crowds walking and you are short like my friend and I. Then you don't really see anything but armpits and have to watch flying elbows and get a whiff of everyone that didn't use deoderant that day.

We followed around for a while and then cut out and walked around downtown until we made it to Java's, a cool coffee shop. I got a hot chocolate (it was a crispy fall night) and a PMS cookie (delicious). We listened to some African Drum performers for a little bit and then headed down to the Speigal Garden. There they had large size Jenga and Chess going on, some food trucks and heated lamps/fires going. While there a dance performance started by FuturPoint Dance, http://www.futurpointe.org.  This was an interesting reggae contemporary dance style and the outfits were very colorful. After some dancing they then started stripping down, where they painted and then a photographer using a white screen photographed them in dancer sculpture poses.  Unfortunately, the announcer invited people to move close up at that time and it became way to crowded and blocked the view.  At this point my and friend and I said we were over it and left for the evening.

This was a really good evening because I got to get out and check out some new arts and performances. Plus with parking, a cookie, and hot chocolate the entire night only cost $10 bucks!