High Trek Adventure Race

So the Saturday after Race Judicata, my buddy Sean and I did one of those “urban adventure” races. It was basically a giant scavenger hunt, where you get a sheet of clues to figure out and then go to that place and take your picture with it in the background. Pretty simple. There are 12 clues to locate and you can skip one. For each clue you get wrong though, you get nailed with 30 minutes tacked on to your time. However, you get to have a partner back at home that you can call up and ask for help when you need it. Before the race you take a short trivia quiz and for each question you get right, you get a minute taken off your time. As for actually going to the clue locations you can either walk/run or take public transportation. No bikes, skateboards, cars, taxis or transport. They did have a couple of those igo cars roaming around that you could flag down, but we didn’t see them.

We got there and milled around a bit before the quiz. Sean was impatient that I actually read the damage waiver. If law school taught me anything, it’s read what your signing. We were in one of the last groups to actually get started. We got there a little late and they staggered the start based on when you got there. Once we got started though, we flew. The first two clues were on North Ave. and we knocked those out fast. A quick run to the Armatidge bus and we were on our way to the next set of clues. I figure we must have pounded out the first 6 pretty fast, maybe like 45 minutes. When we got to the DePaul quad for the next 6 clues we were the first there.

The second set took us up Lincoln and were a bit harder. We were also getting a bit sluggish. We stopped for Gatorade shortly after running through a park full of girls wearing bikinis that should have been wearing burkas. After a clue up on Clark St. we ran back to the Brown Line at Belmont and went up to Lincoln Square. The last two clues were tricky, they seemed really far away, but were actually within two blocks of each other. We ended up getting a rest for a few minutes on Western Ave. waiting for the bus to take us back to Division St. The bus ride was about half an hour and Sean was antsy. For the last clue we had to run down Division towards the bar where it started. We snapped the last picture and Sean wanted to sprint, I wanted to die, but ran anyway.

As it turns out, we were also the first team back. The guy running the race seemed a little surprised that we got back so fast. We got our schwag, which consisted of; a shirt (that I’ll get in a couple days), a Goose Island 312 hat and bottle opener, some food coupons (sushi, bleh) and tada! a free pint of 312. We had lunch while we waited for the other teams to show up. It took about an hour for us to get our food and about the same time for the next team to show up. They looked a little shocked that we were there. We joked that we were “Fat Man and Lazy Guy”. The 3rd team came in about 45 minutes after the 2nd team. Sean had to go to run in the “Elvis is Alive 5k” so I waited at the bar for the results. I’m glad I didn’t sign up for that race. I was dead while I waited in the bar. I had another 312 and inadvertently took a nap. I was shot. My legs were stiff and felt like hamburger.

I was sitting, talking to this group of people when they announced the results. The 2nd place team got a pair of shoes and scowled at me when they left early. The people sitting next to me took a second and were like “holy shit, you won!” and congratulated me. It was pretty sweet winning that race. For our trouble we got roundtrip tickets on Southwest. Our final score for the race was 2 hours, 17 minutes. We got all the clues right and got 17 trivia questions right. Now we just have to figure out where to go.