Great Urban Race in Chicago

July 23 in CHICAGO
Similar to the TV show The Amazing Race, The Great Urban Race is where teams of 2 race around a city trying to complete 12 clues/challenges. I went with Karrie, her mom, and her sister.
We printed off a bunch of maps like this. Although we didn't really use them, mostly we used the GPS on our phones.

Also we got a 24 hour bus and train pass, which we did use a lot.

Along with the pass and maps we each had a back pack with lots of water and some other random stuff.

When the race started we were each given the "clue" sheet. We had looked online at previous races to get an idea of what type of clues they asked. This time it seemed like there wasn't really anything to solve on the sheets. The questions were like "go here" or "find this statue." Previous races had things like riddles or math problems you had to solve to know where you were suppose to go.

I emailed some people a week before the race and asked if they'd help. My friends Jill and Adam did. So right after the race started i took a picture of the clue sheet and emailed it to them. They would email me back with answers and addresses. We called Jill a bunch of times and she sent us a google map with all of the points on it and what was the quickest route to take. That was our biggest problem. Since we didn't know the city, even if we had all the answers we didn't really what order or where to go.

Jill's map she sent us.

Front - questions 1-5

Back - questions 6-12

Everyone was suppose to dress up so we were Sherlock Holmes.

You needed to bring a camera with you to document everything you did. After the race one of the workers went through the questions and you had to show them the picture. Here's a few of them.

Get a picture with someone eating a hot dog.

Picture in front of the Ghirardelli store.

In front of the Roscoe Bike store you had to solve 3 number questions and use those numbers to open up a padlock. Then get a picture under the sign.

Picture of you and two others doing the YMCA

9 person conga line.

The first place team finished in 2 hours and 28 minutes. We finished in 118th place out of 396 teams with 4 hours and 22 minutes. It was a LOT of running.

The next day we were very sore but decided to go walk around the downtown.

Here's the view of the city from the Daman train stop.

My favorite sculpture in the entire world is The Bean. (actually called Cloud Gate) It was raining and thunder storming in the morning so no one was suppose to go near it because it might get struck by lightning.




Then we walked all the way to Navy Pier, stayed there for an hour or so and went up the ferris wheel.

We took a taxi back to the city, stopped a clothes store, then stopped back at the Bean which was now crowded with people.