Great Urban Race

We did it!  My crazy racing buddy and I competed in the Great Urban Race as our race of choice for the summer of 2012.  I think we both agreed this race was much more grueling than the Warrior Dash was last year.  The WD only took and hour.  We were constantly pounding the pavement for 4 hours and 16 minutes for this race.  We finished EXHAUSTED!  But it was awesome!  We had so much fun!  Jodi was amazing with directions and I was outstandingly testy because I was starving.  I'm so lucky she puts up with me.  I thought we worked together well and had tons of fun.  Amazing Race here we come!  We also had some great help from Paul, who was our phone-a-friend.  We put his Googling prowess to work many times to help us figure out our clues.

So the way it worked was they handed us a sheet of 12 clues and we had to figure them out and figure out where each clue was sending us.  Once at the location there were things to do and we had to get pictures of us or fliers at all places as proof we were there.  We delivered some paper products to the Ronald McDonald House, did some yoga at another spot, had a homeless guy take our picture jumping in front of a big 'ol elephant statue in the Park Blocks (whatever that means), Jodi did some math with Paul's help on car stuff (read her blog for better info on that, I kinda stayed away from that one), and I ate a scorpion.  Yes!  I ate a scorpion!  We walked into a tatoo parlor and I was worried we had to get a tatoo.  Nah, just eat a scorpion.  Jodi immediately started backing up when she heard so I ate it instead.  It tasted like crunchy wheat bread.  Now in real life I would NEVER eat a scorpion but when you are in the racing mode pretty much anything goes.  I guess.

We also walked on hot coals at the Convention Center.  It was Jodi's turn to complete the task but I wanted to try it too.  You couldn't feel a thing as you crossed them.  Pretty cool!  We both did well with that one I think. 

From there we went down to Union Station, not at all the best part of town, to catch the MAX back across the river.  While we waited we were accosted by a homeless guy.  What fun!  He thought he gave us some advice that he should be compensated for, whether by money or by other favors (ask Jodi), and he was getting pretty scary before a nice group of women rescued Jodi from him.  I am soooo not a city girl!  I think we scream "country bumpkins" (no offense Jodi) just by looking at us.  That was not at all a comfortable place for us. 

We ended up completing 11 of the 12 clues, which was all that was required.  We wanted to do all 12 but we could not find the darn culinary school and we were running out of time so we finished without it.  I had an awesome time, it would be a fun race to run again because the clues will be totally different next year so its always something new.  I would prepare a little better by studying maps of the vicinity more but I was proud of us and the fact that we finshed 107th, with at least 50 teams behind us.  Go us!