Great Urban Race = Guffawesome

This weekend I was in Washington DC to visit Merritt and do the Great Urban Race. I had never heard of it until recently, but once I heard about it I knew I had to do it. It's like the tv show Amazing Race, but only for one day and in one city. How cool is that? So I jumped on the opportunity to race in Washington (one of my favorite cities) with Merritt (one of my favorite people). And since last time I went to visit her, I posted a list of things I learned, I'm doing that again.

Here's what I learned on the Great Urban Race 2010.

1.) Pick a team name that starts with punctuation -- ours was ¡Guffawesome! -- and the race staff won't know how to
alphabetize you. Apparently we're the only ones who had ever done that. (Since some of you will ask, our team name came about for 3 reasons: First, my propensity for combining words with "awesome." Second, Merritt's love of español. Third, and most importantly, one time when we were freshmen at Furman, Merritt said guffaw. Yep, that's pretty much the whole story. Rather than try to explain a decade-old inside joke that I'm not even sure *I* understand anymore, I will just ask you to trust me that it was hilarious. Merritt said guffaw. See? Hilarious. Guffawesome, even.)

2.) Bring your own map. We got all the clues at the beginning, and half (or more) of the challenge is figuring out where they all are, and in which order to do them. (This is one thing that Merritt and I totally agreed is way harder than the folks on tv. They have to think a lot less, dealing with only one clue at a time.) No matter how fancy your phone is, there's no substitute for a good paper map with circles on it so you can clearly visualize where you need to go, and plan a good route. And, the map they give you might not be as clearly marked with metro routes and lines as you could hope. So... bring your own.

3.) Elementary school teachers are the best googlers. Since our strategy was to solve all the clues right at the beginning, and plot them by neighborhood to choose the best route, we had recruited a handful of at-home googlers to help us make that happen really fast. And they were all good -- it would have taken two or three times as long without them (and we never would have finished in time). Mark helped, and his brother Nick (and his wife Barbara), and my pseudo-sister Cassi. But the awards for best googling definitely go to Liz and Erin H, who are both elementary school teachers by trade. Erin was our fastest responder (and from her husband's phone, when hers died!)... and Liz... oh Liz. When online sources conflicted on which garden we were looking for, and which plant, and whether that plant was actually a member of the family our clue sheet indicated it needed to be, she called the US Botanical Gardens to find out (who does that?).... and then sent us a picture of exactly what we were looking for, in an organized email, the likes of which only a teacher could write out in less than ten minutes. Seriously. Please remind me never to compete in one of these races against Liz. Yowza.

4.) Paddleboating is way way way way way harder than you think it is. And steering those things is a nightmare. We managed to drive into another team, and an empty (anchored) boat too. Wow.

5.) It is very possible to get blisters so big on the balls of your feet that they extend up in between your toes. I wouldn't have believed it if you told me last week. But I am living proof and I am here now to tell you it's true.

6.) Merritt is a Rule Follower who doesn't like to jaywalk. Now, her version of the story might make it sound like I am a dangerous jaywalker and she just doesn't have any faith in me (the words wait, Erin, that's a really big bus! might or might not have come out of her mouth on Saturday... more than once) but we all know that's not true because I am an excellent jaywalker. I have a jaywalking ticket from when I lived in Germany to prove it. But that's a story for another day. For now, just believe me when I tell you that Merritt is a stickler for those flashing walk signs. And that her favorite phrase -- but their light is about to turn green -- makes no sense to me at all. About to turn green = still red = cars not moving. Now RUN.

7.) The new circulator bus in DC doesn't stop at every stop in both directions. While Mark and I take full credit for coming up with this monument-area bus system several years ago (you're welcome, America), we can't endorse the levels of complication which require riders to not only know which stop they need, but also which direction the bus has to be going in order to stop there. Come on now. It's a circle. All stops in both directions. Please. (Merritt and I walked along the route for several stops before we realized there just weren't any stops in the direction we needed to go.)

8.) E Street is elusive. One of our challenges was to figure out a word based on the definiton on our clue sheet, then spell it by taking pictures of those letter street names. Merritt figured out the word was rest, and we got T, S and R streets pretty easily (since they're close together, duh). But we didn't get E. (Yes, even though there are four E Streets to choose from in DC, one in each quadrant, and we could have used any of them.) We got within several blocks, several times, in several different quadrants, and just... couldn't make it happen. It was that elusive E Street that caused our finish line penalty, since that particular clue was only 75% complete.
9.) If you just absolutely refuse to shut up, begging and pleading will eventually get you what you want. Even if what you want is for some GWU employees to temporarily abandon their posts at the front of several lines of graduates waiting for their commencement ceremony and take a picture with you, because (due to graduation day making most people be robed or otherwise fancied up) no one else is wearing GWU shirts and dangit, you need a picture with at least two people wearing GWU shirts! And for one of those said graduates to distract from her commencement day to take said picture. (Except, apparently we didn't need that picture after all, because it was a tic-tac toe of photo requirements and we had already completed that puzzle another way. Clearly our brains were fuzzy from the heat and exhaustion.) But, no matter -- the begging and pleading totally worked!!
10.) If you do this race as a nursing mom, either bring a pump or steer clear of other people's crying babies. A couple of hours into the race, Merritt and I were both so... um, full, that it was (almost) as distracting to our comfort level as our blisters. Ok, not really. But it did make it harder to run. Or maybe we just needed another excuse not to run. Seriously I don't think we would have stopped to pump. But it was funny that we both needed to. Although, neither of us leaked, so we'll call it a win. And we were both happy to get home to our babies. (Please don't ask me to explain the science behind Merritt looking so cute and together in this picture while I look like such a hot mess. She continues to defy all reason and logic on these things.) So. In summary. We pretty drastically underestimated the difficulty of this event. We thought we'd have plenty of time to finish in the allotted five hours. Yeah... we made it by two minutes. (And still took a penalty for having one clue only 75% complete. Dang you, E Street!) We're sore and tired but we had fun and we're thinking we should do the Charlotte even in late April next year. Who's in? (Liz & Jeremy? Ashley & John? Erin & Jonathan? Nick & Barbara? Kelley & Jonathan? Say yes! All of you!)

For more pictures of our day and some of the challenges we did (including Merritt boxing, other teams' crazy costumes, paddleboat scenery, and some outtakes of the two of us jumping in front of a statue), click below on the crowd gathering for the race start.

by mgoetts