The Great Urban Race, Phoenix - Part Doh!

What an amazing day! We were able to see and learn so much about Phoenix on this Great Urban Race adventure. We had 7 clues to go…

Since we doubled back to the Heard Museum earlier, we needed to go 1 mile back to N. Central and Thomas Rd. for Clue 3.

Clue 3. The following clue was written in code and had to be solved by decoding the symbols. The answer was: "Take a photograph of all teammates in front of a fourteen foot Navajo sculpture by Doug Hyde."

The bus stop was just across the street. It was crowded with racers in their costumes. Luckily, it was one of the double long buses, and we were all able to fit in. The ride took us to 15th and Thomas near Encanto Park. We still had to run about 1/4 mile to the next two tasks inside the park.

Clue 7. Find the GUR staff in the park that's been called "the crown jewel of City of Phoenix parks'. Once there, complete the gunny sack race with your teammate(s). When you're finished, get this clue sheet stamped.

Clue 1. Find the large inflatable obstacle course in this 222-acre park and have all teammates complete the entire obstacle course. Upon completing it, you must get this sheet stamped.

Luckily, we ran instead of walked to Encanto Park, because we beat the rush and didn't have to wait in any lines to do the tasks. I think Encanto Park was one of the best discoveries of this race. I never knew this place existed! We would definitely need to visit this place with the kids someday.

We had to run 1 ¼ mile to a bus stop at 7th and McDowell. We took the bus to Central and then the light rail to Washington for the next clue less than ¼ mile away from the light rail stop.

Clue 2. Unscramble the following three words to make a two word name of a Phoenix place that's on the National Register of Historic Places and take a picture of all teammates in front of the most prominent sign on this building. REPEAT OTHER HUM

The answer to the scramble was "Orpheum Theater."

We took care of the last 2 clues by running 3/4 miles to Hooters on 3rd St.

Clue 9. DETOUR (complete one of the following two): Take a picture of five or more people total in front of a juke box.
Or.. Take a picture of eight or more people total with a Phoenix Mercury t-shirt visible in the picture.

We weren’t able to find anyone with a Mercury T-Shirt, and someone told us there was a jukebox in Hooters.



Clue 4. DETOUR (complete one of the following two): Return to the finish line with a popsicle stick with a joke on it (must be originally on the stick - no written jokes).
Or..Return to the finish line with a job application.

After our jukebox picture, I asked the hostess if I could have a Hooters application.

It was a 3/4 mile run from Hooters to the finish line at Slider's Restaurant. When we got to Sliders, we were greeted with cheers from the racers that arrived before us. We had our items and cameras checked. “Can I get that application to Hooter’s back?” I asked the camera-checker, “I might need that later.”

After 2 hours and 57 minutes and running a total of 6.5 miles around the streets of Phoenix, we finished (officially) in 30th place out of 160 teams. In order to qualify for the National Championship in New Orleans, you would need to be in the top 25. The team in 25th place came in just 4 minutes before us! We were so close!

But we had a wonderful time, and who knows, maybe we’ll try to qualify later this year by doing a Great Urban Race in another city.