XRACE Family Fun!

This is the first year we’ve entered the ‘XRACE‘ and really enjoyed the experience. My hubby teamed up with our youngest, 8 year old Alice, whilst I teamed up with our 12 year old, Sophie. All we knew about the race was that we’d be covering nearly 4km of ground with 10 challenges to complete – and were told to be prepared to get wet (this didn’t eventuate in our race – but we did get covered in face paint!). Oh, and we had to prepare a secret handshake prior to the event – that had at least 5 moves and lasted for at least 5 seconds.

We gathered at McEwan Park on the Petone foreshore on a gorgeous Sunday morning and waited for our ‘wave’ to start (groups of around 10 people started every minute, with the first group setting out at 10.00am and the last at 10.50am). We were in wave ’45’.

After a brief sprint of some 300 metres we were faced with a construction challenge (this took Sophie and I a little while longer than Dan and Alice – they set off a good few minutes ahead of us). We didn’t see them again until the finish line – even though we crossed the finish line some 10 minutes ahead of them (but there were so many challenges that involved lots of people – that we were quite focused and didn’t really stop to look around us!).

The next challenge was a test of memory and teamwork. We had to run down to a board on the beach and memorise around 10 items. We then had to run back to our partner and try to a complete a crossword puzzle using the items we had (or hadn’t!) remembered. Adults had a separate board to memorise and their own crossword. Only one team member could run down to the board at a time.

With our cross-word puzzle complete we ran along the beach and teamed up with a couple of other teams to compete in a Tug of War challenge! The winning team got to run on to the next challenge – the losing team had to stay and keep tugging till they won! Thankfully both of our family teams were in first time winning teams, so we got to run along the beach to the next challenge.

The fourth challenge was a three legged run along the beach – which was great fun and quite challenging on the sand! Along the way we had to look out for boards with various car models on them – and record them. If we recorded them all then we were free to ditch our three legged ties and run on to the fifth challenge.

This was a fun challenge that involved teaming up with another team. We had to pair with the other child or adult and get across a section of land using just 2 mats and not stand on the grass.

Then we had a hoop challenge – where we had to link arms with another two teams – making up a group of six people and glide a hula-hoop over our arms and bodies in one continuous chain.

Then there was a face-painting challenge – where we painted each others faces with tiger streaks and a blind folded challenge – with the child leading the adult with only their voices.

Near the end there was a painting challenge – where we had to create a Kiwiana type piece artwork and take seven minutes to do this (we weren’t allowed to stop till the stop watch told us) – this was really lovely and nice to enjoy the moment painting together without racing to complete a challenge in as fast a time as possible).

There was a fiddly challenge of threading beads to make a keychain – we had to use vowels to make a word of at least 5 letters and colours. Poor Dan and Alice couldn’t find a decent piece of thread, that wasn’t frayed at the ends, so it took them a while to thread their beads.

At the very end, before we crossed the finish line, we had to do our secret handshakes – which was a lot of fun and then – we raced over the finish line! Whoo hoo! Great fun!

To finish we were presented with our medals, which we placed over each others necks in celebration. Fantastic fun and such a wonderful family atmosphere, celebrating parent and child working together as a team.

2018 NZHL XRACE from Brand New Day on Vimeo.