Drew and I signed up to do the Great Urban Race together as our anniversary present to each other this year. It was awesome!! So much fun, I would encourage anyone to do it. It was like a mini version of the Amazing Race with clues and obstacles you had to do and you could only use your own 2 feet and public buses. At each stop you had to take a pic with all team members to prove you were both there. The above pic is the challenge we has to do with the new Chevy cars which involved a lot of math. The next pic is at Uptown Acupuncture where Drew had to participate and the 3rd pic was at the Ronald McDonald house where we donated some items and took a pic with Ronald. There were 12 challenges/stops and you could skip one. I would now like to tell you things that I learned.
1. Just because it is an obstacle course doesn't mean that it ain't a race! Drew and I logged somewhere around 12 miles of running that day!I didn't know I was signing up for
an almost half marathon. That being said, it was still super fun.
2. Downtown Denver is soooooooo much bigger than you think it is. See above comment.
3. I am not better than the people on Amazing Race. I am an avid watcher of the show but I always thought it was silly when the teams fought. Didn't they know it was only a game? Well, Drew and I being rookies at the race decided to run around like chickens with our heads cut off for the first 45 min. We saw that the first clue was on 11th street and decided that surely the streets would go, 16th 15th 14th 13th 12th and then 11th. They do not FYI. So after much running and no clues and feeling very frustrated I did what came naturally. I got mad at Drew for not knowing where we were and for not having a better smart phone (great anniversary idea huh!). He gladly informed me that this race was my idea to which I responded that maybe we should just quit then since my idea was so dumb. It sounds silly but in a stressful situation it is easy to get upset at the one person who is on your side in the race. Lesson learned was that we took the next 10 min to just sit down and make a plan. We called my sister (not against the rules) and mapped out a route. From there we were on fire. We really pulled together and worked as a team (anniversary saved!)
4. When you are in a hurry it really is easy to miss details. On the show people get penalized all the time for misreading clues and they look so stupid. Well.....we got a 30 min penalty for missing a detail on one of the clues! And I swear we read it! hehehe.
5. And the cheesy lesson was in the end, it doesn't matter who wins (especially since it wasn't us) what matters are the relationships you make. Drew really is my best friend and despite my flare up it strengthened our marriage and helped us remember just how fun it is to be together!!! (and next year, we are bringing a map, a better phone, much more water, and we are gonna win that darn race!!!!!!)
