The Pentadecathlon

Lake Tahoe – the lake immersion competition

Mini golf competition, pre-injury

Occasionally, my group of friends from college gets together.  Usually it’s a ski weekend or a bachelor party.  But this year, we got together somewhat on a whim, and rented a house on Lake Tahoe.

The idea was to stage a weekend of Olympic-like competition.  After significant email banter, we agreed to try and complete 15 individual events.  The technical name for a 15-event competition is a pentadecathlon, hence the name of the weekend, the inaugural PentaDeca.

The winner of each event would be awarded points (3 for first, 2 for second, etc.), and the overall winner would get bragging rights and possibly a trophy.

EVENTS COMPLETED

- Long toss (football, baseball, frisbee, basketball)

- 50m sprint

- Lake immersion (who can stay fully immersed in Lake Tahoe the longest)

- Mini golf

- 2-person kayak race in Lake Tahoe

- Gambling (everyone starts in a casino with $50 and has one hour to make as much money as possible)

- Beer pong

- Single beer chug for speed (single elimination tournament)

EVENTS ABANDONED

- 3 on 3 basketball

- Ultimate frisbee

- 4x50m team sprint relay

- Beer boot chug

- Rock paper scissors

- Asshole (card game)

- Who can get the most random high-fives from strangers in a day

- Arcade basketball (pop-a-shot)

All in all, the competition went very well.  We completed way more events than anyone initially expected.  And besides a few pulled muscles, the only real injury of the trip occurred when Ben shanked a hole in mini-golf, threw his putter in disgust, jumped in the air, landed funny, and sprained his ankle.  An old lady then proceeded to make fun of him for injuring himself at mini golf.

Oh, and against all odds Johnny won.  He gloated a lot less than usual though.  Maybe he’s becoming an adult.