#Slackathlon

Since it was so much fun in 2013, I decided to hold Slackathlon again the next year.

I decided to change up most of the events and see if I could get the overall time down to under six hours. (A six hour athletic event hardly seems in the spirit of “slacking”). I invented some things that would keep us around the Palmer Center and eliminated the relatively long distances we had to walk the previous year and the tricky bike logistics.

I also decided to keep the events a secret in 2014 and try to make them more related to things people already do in Austin.

Looking back through my records, I apparently wanted to keep the order of events a secret from myself as well. Here’s what I can piece together from the photos and map:

BARTON SPRINGS POOL

I couldn’t possibly leave this out, but it wasn’t in the “walkable” area so I made it optional and set it pre-breakfast.

BREAKFAST TACOS AND GRACKLING

I have no recollection of what Grackling was. I assume we were making noises like grackles and stealing each others’ chips.

WARM UP CHANTS

We sat in the grass by Palmer Events and chanted our favorite words.

LABYRINTH

There’s a small brick labyrinth at Palmer. It’s easy to miss. We partnered up. One person was blindfolded. The other had to direct them through the labyrinth. Everyone played at the same time in order to create more chaos and collisions.

SAHM HILL CLIMB

We walked up Sahm Hill. (Side note: While I know the hill is named after the great Austin musician Doug Sahm, I wonder if they chose to name this Austin feature after him due to the wonderful play on words, as in “What in sam hill?” or “You can go to sam hill!”

LIVE MUSIC AND BUSKING

I had brought a bag of tambourines and other hand percussion type stuff. The idea was to setup on the pedestrian bridge, play poorly (but enthusiastically) and ask for tips.

I had no idea if my friends would actually participate and I was concerned that this would be the point where they started to remember things they were supposed to be doing at home that involved less potential for embarrassment. 

As it turns out, they were into it and we killed it. This is why I have the best friends. 

We weren’t getting any tips for some reason, so it was decided that some of us should stop playing and instead pretend to be mesmerized onlookers while setting the example of putting large amounts of money in the tip hat. We still didn’t get any tips.

PHOTOS IN WILDFLOWERS

Taking your photo in wildflowers, especially bluebonnets, is a Texas right of passage. Unfortunately there weren’t any wildflowers this time of year. That didn’t stop us from taking a lot of pictures of ourselves on the ground.

CROSSFIT YOGA

We took turns wearing a yellow jersey and using our best crossfit voice demanding that our friends do whatever pose or motion we did.

NAP 

Self-explanatory.

DISC GOLF

I have this on the map but I have no recollection of actually doing this event. Perhaps I was still napping when it happened.

KITE FLYING

As I recall there was no wind and the kites were cheap and broke.

MARGARITAS

This was the final event and we held it at Shady Grove. Everyone received this amazing award:

Lessons Learned

1) No one knows or learned how to say “Slackathlon”. Again. It is NOT “Slack-ATH-a-lon”. It is “Slack-ath-lon”, like “De-cath-lon”.

2) You may have noticed that in my attempt to make the total event time shorter I added three more events. That’s the sort of thing I do. Turns out the total time was even longer than before.

SlackATHlon has been on hiatus for quite a while. I have a new and great vision for it but not sure it’ll be returning for a while.