Tracy Thanksgiving-Day Half-Marathon Multi Multi-Cache
glenl: Converting this WAY TO LARGE multi into a series.
Watch for it shortly...
Tracy Thanksgiving-Day Half-Marathon Multi
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From Wikipedia: The name Marathon comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger. The legend states that he was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon (in which he had just fought) which took place in August or September, 490 BC. It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming "?e?????aµe?" (Nenikékamen, 'We have won.') before collapsing and dying.
Modern Marathon races often include 10s of thousands of participants and seldom do people actually die from the run. Hopefully, you will not give up on this Half-Marathon challenge (13.1 miles) before finishing. Spaced at approximately 1 mile apart, there are 15 caches involved in this multi! One for the starting point, one for the finish line, and 13 in between for each of the mile markers.
I completed my first full marathon this year (2011) and have run 3 half marathon races in the past 2 years. I always train on the street of Tracy and this series follows one of my favorite half-marathon length routes. If you see some idiot running this route between 5am and 7am on a Saturday or Sunday, it might be me. Regardless of who it is, honk and wave to provide some encouragement!
I set the overall difficulty of this cache to 3.5 due to the total number of stages, and terrain to 2.0 because one of them may require a taller person to reach. The difficulty of each independent stage ranges from 1.0-2.0. You may run into black widow spiders in places below the ground, high hides that are hard for one person to reach, and a couple of bush hides. We don't like hanging bush hides, so they will just be sitting in the bush near or on the ground. Other than near the starting point, the rest of the roads you will need to drive will be major roads... the same ones I run on. I keep to the side walks most of the time, so as you follow the route around Tracy, a number of the caches will not be on the opposite side of the road from where you are driving. Parking may also add to the challenge for a few.
In order to ensure that you can make it around this multi without getting hung up on a stage, I'll take text messages for hints if you are having trouble or in case any of the coords are off: 856-217-0222.
Congrats to Fabricgal and ECV58 for the FTF!! Sorry for the issues on Mile 2 and 10, but we got them fixed now. Nice to meet you and hope to run into you two again on the road!
FTF Prize is a $10 Starbucks gift card and a FTF GeoCoin! We even included the coords for our favorite Starbucks store with the card. :)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Jr hfrq pnzzbrq cvyy obggyrf, ovfba ghorf, uvqr-n-xrlf, gjb fznyy zntargvpf, naq gur svany fgntr vf n ynetr nzzb obk. Gurer ner AB ANAB fvmrq pbagnvaref. Guvf vf abg n uheqyrf enpr, fb or pnershy abg gb whzc jura lbh svaq bhe yvggyr sevraq sebz na nepuvirq pnpur. Gur fgnegvat cbvag naq svavfu yvar ner jvguva 1 zvyr bs rnpu bgure, ohg lbhe ebhgr jvyy arire pebff vgfrys.
Fgnegvat Yvar: Gerr, abg ohfu.
Zvyr 9: vafvqr n pbeare bs gur bhgfvqr pbeare bs na bhgfvqr pbeare
Treasures
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