A Three-Hour Walk

Yesterday, my wife and I went for a three-hour walk. Ostensibly, it was to participate in the Seattle Night and Day Challenge. In reality, it was to get me some exercise.

This game was fun. It starts out with the race officials giving you a map and a list of waypoints that each has a particular point value. You then get up to 90 minutes to plot a route to get as many points in the allotted time as possible. The race comes in three time lengths: three hours, seven hours, and sixteen hours (hence the name, Night and Day). There are categories for men, women, and mixed. And you're divvied out based on whether you're walking, running, or on wheels.

The most interesting part for me (aside from the three hours of chatting with my wife) was the strategy for getting the most points. I drew concentric circles on the map, then separated them into quadrants, then added up the points in each quadrant, then figured out how long it would take us to walk... Lots of interesting strategy. There was this one waypoint worth 100 points that was about three miles from the starting route, so we decided to head down to it.

Of course, if I'd had a laptop, I probably could have coded up something that would have proven that I was heading in totally the wrong direction.

But it was fun. And there were free cookies at the end of the race.