Well, it was a fun day,
punctuated by some frustrating moments at the finish.
Imagine finishing second only to find out that the first
place team had one location incorrect (the time on the
clock could not be read by the scorer) and had to go back
out onto the course to retake the picture. We win!!!! But
wait, when they return with a good picture, another (more
senior) scorer looks at the original picture and decides
that they can indeed read the time and so the original
time stood… and now we were back to 2nd! Crap! Why,
for goodness sake, would the senior person not look at
the five top finishers (the top three get $$$) to make
sure everything was correct from the get go? Boy, were we
upset! Oh wait, that wasn’t our team. We dropped
from the top ten to somewhere in the abyss due to a
non-jump jump… but I’m getting ahead of myself.
It looked like a record crowd for an unexpectedly warm
Saturday – not sure how many, but guessing north of
300 teams packing in the Fieldhouse. The race started
very close to on-time, which is always appreciated! Nick
and I stationed ourselves by a door and once the “open
your envelopes” was hollered, we dashed out to an
open area and ripped open the envelope. We scanned the
clues and found a lot of them ranged from very easy to
obvious. Nick contacted Ryan, who was still “waking
up” and no help(!), while I called Amanda, who was
awake and alert (hoorah!). The conversation was short and
successful, which is unfortunately a bad sign – that
means that most teams would spend little time having to
figure out the clues and could probably do it without
using much support. It also turned out that the course
was very tight – another bad sign.
I think the best events are a combination of planning
– figuring out the clues with support doing research
on the Internet, solving some at-least-somewhat difficult
puzzles and mapping the course – and navigating
– figuring the best way to combine running and
transit. Easy clues and short courses favor fast runners…
isn’t that the point of 10K races?
Anyway, we decided to sweep through the Center City
clues, jump on the subway to Spring Garden and work our
way back to the finish. It was a good plan, except we got
screwed on a subway signal issue (costing us at least 20
minutes) which is part of the fun (and unfortunately
favored the runners even more!). Though we were not going
to do the tic-tac-toe clue (9 photos – get three of
them in a row) since they are usually convoluted, we
quickly ran into two of the boxes (honking a horn &
person with two or more tattoos) so that changed the
strategy. Our first stop was the Swiss Bakery on 19th,
where I got to feed Nick a cookie while photographing it.
We commandeered a costumer to take our photo. The first
shot was inside and too dark, so we moved outside to get
a better shot (and a legal shot, as we found out when
another team got screwed for not being outside, though
“in front of the store’s sign” really does
not mean “in front of the store with the sign
showing” – it means in front of any store sign
(of which there were several in the store!)).
Nick and I sprinted out of the store and around the
corner to the massage place where Nick had to put a
yellow dot on some muscle on my leg (which stayed on
until I took a shower at home), and then we were off to
get some supplies for our next destination: Project Home.
7-11 was a waste, so we picked up some combs and
washcloths at Walgreens. A 48 bus was at the bus stop, so
we jumped on and caught a breather for four blocks till
Project Home. Nick and I dropped off the stuff, got the
receipt (lots of locations with receipts or stamps,
rather than photos) and then raced around the corner in
hopes of catching a slide at Franklin Park. Success! Nick
celebrated with a slide.
After that, it was a quick run back to Game Piece Central
(next to City Hall) for a Monopoly piece photo, and then
down the stairwell to the subway. Where we waited. And
waited. And waited a long, long time until the subway
finally arrived. When we initially got there we were the
only team on the platform, but by the time the train
arrived we had lots of unwanted company. And a very
crowded car!
The ride was fast, so we jumped off at Spring Garden, and
raced down the stairs. There were dozens of teams at the
World War II statue jostling to get good shots. We needed
to match the statue’s pose and jump in the photo.
Note to anyone designing races: bad idea with digital
cameras! Most consumer cameras have a good delay between
pressing the button and snapping the photo, making
getting an in-jump photo very difficult. Some smart teams
jumped off the statue(!), but it was so crowded while we
were there that many teams were taking half-body shots of
jumpers… and getting screwed at the finish (or
not!). Anyway, we commandeered another racer to take our
photo and after three tries the photo looked good (and
turned out it really was).
We raced around the corner to some tea shop and
identified three mystery grounds (given two options on
each) and collected yet another stamp. Then it was down
to the Painted Bride for to use Scrabble pieces to spell
three of six random words (and all had to be touching).
Quick and painless for another stamp. And then it was a
few more blocks to the Betsy Ross house to design our
team flag on a sheet of paper with crayons. Nick created
a quick one, while some teams seemed to be really working
hard on theirs. An odd location…
Two to go! We headed to some bookstore near 2nd and
Market for the ol’ logical murder mystery. The clues
listed the suspect with different descriptions (suspect
was wearing tan shoes, Bob has a yellow car, etc.) that
you needed to use to solve the murder. Or you could just
look around and hear someone tell the answer to the
official. Simple! Amazingly, when we read the clue at the
start, Nick said it had to be (spoiler alert!) Danny
Bonaduce… and it was! Another stamp and off to the
last location at Washington Square. We had skipped the
Inquirer (top of the) building clock clue (the clock face
in the photo had to be on the hour, :20 or :40) when we
missed it by about 5 minutes and did not want to wait
around for another 15 minutes. Maybe should have waited…
at Washington Square we had do several sets of
Marine-style exercises (jumping jacks, walkouts, etc.)
that proved to be amazingly painful after about two hours
of running (and in the heat). And of course there was no
bus on Market Street when we arrived there, so we hoofed
it up to the finish.
Nick and I zipped into the Fieldhouse and saw just a few
teams there (though sadly, more than three – oh
well). We went to the scoring table – they had about
seven scorers (!) and showed our stuff. Everything was
going good until she got to the jump photo – she
couldn’t see our feet, so couldn’t decide if we
were jumping. I walked her through the sequence, but no
luck – so she got up to ask the senior folks (she
was a volunteer). I asked the team next to me if they
showed their feet – their volunteer scorer said that
the two photos were sort of close, so she allowed it…
what!?! By the time the senior official came back with
the official bad news, the other team had left and
another team was with the easy official… who had
already approved their jump photo. I said “let’s
see theirs” and sure enough no proof of jumping, so
the senior official disallowed their score too. Sorry! As
it turned out, some scorers were allowing it and some
were not. The man who took our photo there showed up and
confirmed that we had indeed jumped. Sorry! Oh, did I
mention it’s a 30 minute penalty! So, we were
screwed and plummeted into the scoring depths, as did
apparently many, many teams (also with the Swiss Bakery
one). I even tried to go back out where we could have
easily snapped the Inky clock photo, but we weren’t
allowed (though the first place team was allowed –
but apparently wasn’t supposed to be… might
want to go over the rules with your scorers before the
event!). Anyway, if you look at our photo full-size you
can clearly see Nick’s (and mine somewhat) sleeve
pulled out to indicate he was landing (which he was), so
we were in the end (of our own minds!) vindicated.
So, that made the whole day pretty aggravating. I think
they had two weak questions, given standard digital
cameras: the jump one (you really need to be back about
30 feet (it’s a tall statue) and it’s
impossible to see your team if there are 20+ teams there
too) and the clock one (the camera’s resolution is
only so good – good luck if you used a small camera
phone!). Challenge Nation had a clock clue, but it was
inside the Reading Terminal Market where the clock is six
feet behind you… not on top of some building. I also
think the Swiss Bakery clue was needlessly ambiguous (and
incorrectly interpreted by the officials). I did like the
challenges at the locations (as opposed to just taking a
photo) which is a plus for the race, but the Great Urban
Race clues keep getting easier year after year, and the
course is shrinking. I think it’s now the easiest
(to solve) and navigate, making it tough to win unless
you are very fast.
On a good note, I met a bunch of cool new folks, who will
hopefully enter the other Philly Urban Adventures, as
well as some Club Ed stuff. Till next time!
|