It didn’t involve jumping over fire or crawling through mud — and all we got was a lousy T-shirt and not a Viking helmet — but my wife and I ran our own little adventure race on Saturday. We took part in Urban Dare, an Amazing Race-style dash through the city during which you have to use clues to find various checkpoints and complete “dares.” It was a repeat visit for Urban Dare, which is one of a couple outfits I know of that puts on these kinds of events in cities across the country.
It was the first time to take the challenge for my wife and me. We finished a respectable 18th (out of 125 teams). The course began at the Ginger Man, and the clues required us to complete 12 tasks at locations that stretched from Pinkberry at West Village in the north to the park across from Dallas Morning News HQ to the south. We covered about eight miles, seven of those on foot. (We were allowed to use public transportation only—no taxis.) We finished in 3 hours flat. The winning couple (second from the right in this photo) finished in 1 hour, 45 minutes.
The clues to the locations we had to visit were a cinch to someone familiar with Dallas — especially with a smartphone at the ready. I’d like to say that we ran a clean race, but I made a stupid assumption about one of the clues that cost us about 10 minutes when we had to double back. If you’d like to see if you’re smarter than me, take the jump.
Here’s the only clue that temporarily tricked us:
Get your picture with a plaque where the (CCXIV Times IX) Republic Bank once stood.
Where did we have to go?
7 comments
The Davis Building
Jason – We were first timers for the event as well. We finished in 3rd with a time of 2:15 (my wife and I are the couple on the far left of the picture). The winners finsihed 30 min ahead of us. That clue challenged us as well…we couldn’t get Times 10 Cellars out of our heads for some reason. It was a lot of fun and something we’d enjoy doing again.
Tish: Congrats. I see from the results e-mail that the organizers just sent out that you finished in 2 hours and 10 minutes. I’m feeling winded just thinking about how fast you must have been traveling.
By the way…running through the immigration protest and finding ourselves in a pot legalization rally was a highlight of the race. Surprisingly we couldn’t get any of the Mary Jane crowd to do a 6-person pyramid for us.
And it looks like we were misinformed of our finishing place on race day. The official results they just sent out to participants via e-mail put my wife and me in 21st. I’ve contacted the authorities to demand an investigation.
We went to the wrong building too, but it cost us pretty much an hour because we missed the trolley headed back to uptown in order to get the right pic.
Good times though! Well be back next time!
The Davis Bldg ?