Race Walking Relays: Cascade Lakes vs. Portland to Coast

The Fit2B team took diastasis recti awareness to some race walking relay races this summer, and I have such fun pictures to share with you. We wrote core abdominal info all over the vans, played loud music, wore funny wigs and gnarly teeth, so – needless to say – I’m not looking as polished after several sleepless nights as I do in my professionally filmed workouts, but it was fun and that’s what matters! So here’s an inside peek at our adventures on the Cascade Lakes Relay and Portland to Coast {hood to coast} relay. We were grateful for additional sponsorship from Tupler and MomBodFitness and TheTummyTeam!

The two events to which we took our “no more crunches” message are radically different: CLR is smaller and in the remote dessert areas of southern Oregon. PTC is much larger, combined with the mother of all relays Hood to Coast, with thousands of participants passing their baton through the busy proper of downtown Portland to Seaside, Oregon on the Pacific coast. My PTC team Toe Jammin‘ is competitive and placed 9th in womens open this year, while my CLR team Rockin’ Walkers wasn’t competitive yet still placed 13th in our division. Rockin’ Walkers had 12 people split between two vehicles with half the team being able to rest at a lodge between their two leg portions. Toe Jammin’ had 9 ladies in one van that went straight through with most of us doing 3 legs. Both events are grueling yet fun in their own way.

Race walking is hard. The form required to officially race-walk is not “natural” walking. I spend 10 months of my year walking “right” and 2 months walking faster 😉 It’s fun for me to see how moving my body slightly different at the hip, or pushing off harder with my toes, or driving my elbows back further can make me go faster with such little additional effort.

These races get fun for me when I get to be silly and encouraging and helpful all at once. My biz partner, Chris, would get a banana peel and make a big show of placing it in the path of an oncoming walker from another team. He’d be sure they saw it but also act sneaky, and they always played along! They’d act like they didn’t see it and pretend to trip or pretend to get mad at us. Also, we had a couple pairs of fake teeth that may or may not have been used to startle other walkers as well. And the cowbells, oh the cowbells!

As the person in charge of finding sponsors, of course I went after like-minded businesses whose messages are the same as Fit2B Studio’s: I’ve never minded sharing the limelight… especially if they give my team gas money 😉 But seriously, the world is full of people who need to understand and heal their cores. My teaching style isn’t for everyone, so I enjoy networking with other experts like Kelly Dean with her online core rehab program, Celeste with her FitSplint, and Tupler who I see as the pioneer of diastasis awareness. It was an honor to put Fit2b up alongside them on our rigs that were seen all over Oregon.

“How do you spell die-ass-tuh-whatever that thing is again, Beth?” Okay I admit, I did most of the writing on the vans and all the adorable stick figures. My peeps support me to the bitter end, even if they can’t spell what I do 😉 I resorted to big magnets for the PTC teams that we sponsored.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how it would go with having my husband along for the CLR race. Up until then, I had raced without him. However, with grandma and grandpa on the hook to watch the kids, and the potential of much laughter with two of my favorite couples, he joined up. As you can see, it was quite bonding. I’ve never been kissed at the end of a leg before 😉 He really rang my bell LOL!

Stronger bodies. Stronger marriages. Stronger team. Stronger friendships. That’s what I got out of being on those two teams this past summer. I’ve heard about teams fighting and falling apart on the race, and I can’t imagine that! My teams are focused on fun and silliness and finishing the race!

As promised, I simply must give our sponsors one more shout out! Click the graphics for more info on the outstanding work we all do to prevent and help treat broken bellies. Scroll down for more photos of the races, me and my team…

Another funny moment during PTC happened when I offered to roll out some sore muscles for a limping teammate who had just finished a long uphill leg. We stopped traffic, not because people are perverts, but because 3 other team vans saw what I was doing and asked to get in line to learn how! LOL! Needless to say, future rolling was done on the backside of the van. Hehe!

One way that PTC will continue to one-up CLR is the finish line. As fun as it is to have the option of floating down the Deschutes River as a team, there is just something about finishing at the ocean shore. This year, I took off my shoes and just wore socks as I walked on the sand, and it totally erased all my foot cramps and sore spots! Literally, I could feel the natural, uneven pressures of the beach passively releasing pressures from my feet up through my whole body! And this sight never gets old!

Here’s to 2014 and being sans makeup or shower with these lovely people in a stinky, crowded van for 36 hours again! Oh how I love fitness!