Adam and I were all set to go camping at Governor Dodge State Park in June when Hannah emailed me saying she had a coupon to get a half price registration for the Great Urban Race. Naturally, since Adam and I are huge fans of the Amazing Race, we sold our camping reservation and signed up for the race that same day! We had talked about applying for the Amazing Race but somehow never got around to making a video. Fortunately, the Great Urban Race requires nothing but your race fee. Once we knew we were racing, we developed our game plan: buy an all-day bus pass, wear comfortable running clothes, and carry as little as possible besides a camelback, bus map, camera, and SmartPhone. On the day of the race we arrived at The Essen Haus which is where the race started. There were about 300 teams of two. The race encourages coordinated costumes, but we decided that was too much work and would potentially hold us back so we settled for wearing green shirts and calling ourselves the Salad Spinners (plus we'd been eating a LOT of lettuce from our garden so salad was on our minds anyway).
At precisely noon, the race officials passed out clue envelopes and the race was on. The race consisted of 12 clues that you could complete in any order. We plotted out the location of each clue on our bus map and planned our route. Our initial plan was to take the bus down to Wingra Boats, but the bus did not appear so we ran down to State Street first.
Adam tossed some pizza dough at Ian's, we watched a video clip at Sconnie Nation, and finished up that area by juggling with a circus troupe on Library Mall. Then we headed to Wando's where we climbed to the third floor and had to throw a pingpong ball into a fish bowl. Fortunately, I threw things into bowls/baskets/eggcartons every birthday from about 8 years on so I got it on the first throw. After that we once again tried to catch a bus, but we would have had to wait a long time so we decided to hoof it down to Wingra Boats. Our only transportation options were bus or foot and we have since learned how infrequently buses run in Madison on Saturdays! Thus, we ran all the way down to Wingra Boats where we paddled around a buoy. Then we were about to eat a cheesecake eggroll at Bluephies when we saw the elusive bus! We jettisoned the Bluephies plan (we were allowed to skip 1 clue) and caught the bus which took us all the way to Atwood St. Adam had to eat a jalapeno pepper (including seeds!) at Tex Tubbs and we donated some dog treats at a pet store.
Then we trotted over to Tenney park where we did improv comedy and ran bases. That was our last clue. We jogged back to The Essen Haus and the finish line. Total time: just over 3 hours. Place: 35th out of around 300. Total estimated run: 6.5 miles. All in all not a bad showing. It was a very hot day and we downed water like there was no tomorrow at the finish line. We're already planning our strategy for next year which includes training in order to be able to run 8 miles if needed - Adam's idea, not necessarily mine :)
