The Great Urban Race - Part 1

What a fun experience the Great Urban Race was! It involved three of my favorite things: Trivia, Running and being with Brian. I knew I was in for a good time. The race would start and end at Sliders restaurant in downtown Phoenix.

At 12 noon, all the 166 teams of two were given sealed envelopes with the clue. At the signal, we all opened the envelopes together. The first thing we did was sit down in the shade of Chase Stadium, call our phone-a-friend, Allen, for help on the clues and try, without a decent map, to map out our course for the day.

We decided on the closest task below.

Clue 8. Take a photograph of both teammates posing in front of the statue shown.

After just describing the image to Allen, he was able to find out that the location for this sculpture by John Henry Wadell was in front of the Herberger Theater Center, a half mile away. I think I picked the right phone-a-friend! My sister Meliza was also on standby, but I called her later that we should be good.



From the Herberger Theater we decided to run the 0.6 miles to the Phoenix Market.

Clue 12. Find Doug Atkins in the Phoenix Market. Return to the finish with a drawing from this artist. This challenge is only available from 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm! Strategize accordingly.

We were 5th in line for the artist when we got there. He was taking a very long time to sketch a picture for each team, that by the time we were done, there may have been more than 10 teams behind us. He drew us a daisy and we headed to the Phoenix light rail stop at Roosevelt. This was less than a quarter mile away and we can see the train about a quarter mile south of us. We had to sprint just to make it to the stop in time. It was a close one.

We got off the train at the Encanto/Central stop in order to go to the Heard Museum (clue 10), but accidentally ended up following other racers 1/2 mile north to Clue 6.

Clue 6. Find Honey Bears BBQ on Central Avenue. There will be an ear of corn waiting for you in the dining area. Take a picture of all teammates with a completely eaten and bare corn cob. The bare corn cob must be clearly visible in the picture.

We decided to double back to the Heard Museum clue.

Clue 10. It exists today because of Maie, but to go in here you'll have to pay. It'll educate you on peoples of the Southwest. For places like this, it's considered one of the best.
Take a picture of all teammates in front of the abstract stone "person" on this property.

We noticed other racers coming out of a street from behind the Heard Museum and knew another clue must be back there somewhere. We ran the 1/2 mile to Monterey Park for Clue 11.

Clue 11. Find the GUR volunteers at Monterey Park. You must complete the challenging Horse Shoe Puzzle. You must get this clue sheet stamped twice, once when removing the ring and another after the puzzle is returned to its original form. Note: A phone-a-friend may be helpful for this clue!

We didn't think of calling our phone-a-friend for this. But I was able to solve this with about 5 minutes of frustration. When BT asked me how I did it, I joked to him saying "engineering".

We didn’t check the time at all, but so far, we had finished 4 clues and have run 2.8 miles and we still had 7 more clues to go!