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Easter Egg Hunt Ride and Tie

Looking for something more exciting than a traditional Easter egg hunt?  I have a super fun fitness Easter egg hunt to share with you.
 
Easter of 1985 I was a professional triathlete living in Encinitas California. Bob Babbit, found of the Competitor Magazine, put on an epic “Ride and Tie” Easter Egg hunt. It was a Who’s Who of Triathlon at this event and the field was better than the Ironman World Championships.
 
Let me explain this epic Easter Egg Hunt:
1) There were 15 teams with two people on each team, and each team had one bike.  We did not have mt bikes back then.  

2) When the race started one person on the team would head out on the bike, pedaling flat out and drop the bike a ways down the course then start running.  The other person on the team would start out running and when the runner got to the bike their teammate left he or she would pick up the bike, ride past their running teammate and drop the bike even further down the course.  The idea is to leap frog each other with the bike for about 15 miles.
 
Simple enough, BUT there was a catch:
1) Bob put out plastic Easter Eggs and inside each egg was not candy but a note subtracting time from your team’s final time; anywhere from 5 seconds off your time all the way up to 10 min off your time.  So the goal was to run/ride and collect as many eggs as possible.
2) Bob also made crazy aid stations and if you ate the marshmellow-anchovies appetizer you would also get time off. I remember Mark Montgomery ate the most because he had a stomach of steel.
3) Bob also put blow up bunnies in the trees which were worth the most time off.  Scott Tinley, (Ironman champion) found the biggest one and had to run and ride with this bunny for like 10 miles, but his team got 15 min off their time and I think his team ended up winning.
So it did not really matter who actually crossed the finish line first but WHO had the most eggs.
4) One final note: You could always rob your fellow competitor of their eggs. So it was legal to tackle your friends and take their eggs. (This created mayhem!!)
 
This was the hardest race I think I had ever done. Mainly because you had to run and bike, laugh, cry, carry eggs and blow up bunnies, all while protecting yourself from other egg thieves. This became a Southern California tradition every Easter.  Since that time I have hosted MANY Easter Egg hunts just like this wherever I’ve lived.  
 
If you have kids you can make it a fun athletic event.  One Easter I was at my best friends house for Easter so I set up an Easter Egg hunt with plastic eggs for her children Thomas and Emily. This time inside the eggs I put clues to a scavenger hunt around the yard. They had to do physical exercise, word puzzles and write a poem. They still talk about it. So you don’t always have to put candy in your eggs. You can put little games for the kids to participate in and make this an even more special day for everyone.