Citychase

I was up too late to do a blog post yesterday, but still early enough to help our son Alex and his friend and teammate Matt do their "citychase" race.

I had never heard of this before, but it's been going on since 2007, I think. It's held in 8 major cities in Canada. It's become such a big event in Toronto that they actually do two races.

It's billed as "Canada's largest urban adventure race". Sort of like a one day Amazing Race.

So when the race begins, each team of two gets a clue sheet and you have to make your way around the city performing various stunts. Once you have completed 10 events and made your way back to the finish line, you have completed the race.

But you have to make your own way to the events. No cars, bikes, rollerblades, taxis, flying carpets, etc. Your only option is to use your feet...or take public transportation. Each entry fee comes with a bus pass for the day.

Most people run (because it's probably faster than taking the bus!) and you end up running between 5 and 10 kms (3-6 miles) in order to complete the race, depending on which events you choose to do.

And, you're allowed to use the internet in order to help solve the clues. So Alex and Matt recruited me and another friend to help them solve the clues while they did the race. So at 8am our time, I received an email containing the clue sheets.

Page 1 of the two clue sheets.

So besides finding the answers to the clues which then told you where the event was located, you also had to use some strategy in order to complete the events efficiently. For example, don't go to the nearest event to the start because then you'll probably waste time waiting in line.

Anyhow, I spent a half hour or 45 minutes helping solve the clues and emailing and calling back and forth with him while they were doing the events. It was fun, and I'm pretty good at looking things up on the internet.

They're a pretty competitive pair and they were in it to win. They came pretty close and finished 7th out of over 300 teams! Most teams are in it for the fun of doing the events, and the average finish time is between 4 and 5 hours. Alex and Matt completed the race in about two and a half hours. But they said they made two mistakes that cost them almost 20 minutes. 

Maybe next year they'll win. I don't know what the prizes were, but with entry fees around $150 per team I would think there's some decent prizes.

Not sure if they received anything for a top ten finish. I'll have to ask him today.

Hey, and this isn't only for young people...they even have a category for the fastest time for the oldest combined age of the teammates! 

Back here at the campground, we had a big thunderstorm go through yesterday afternoon. And rain again overnight. A few campers left early yesterday, and I expect that many will pull out early today because the forecast is fairly wet for the day, and actually for the next several days. We haven't had a lot of rain this summer, so things will probably be pretty quiet around here for the next few days.

Our Amazon.com deal of the day? Great price on a (near) lifetime supply of biodegradable poop bags!

900 Earth Rated® Lavender-Scented Dog Waste Bags,with 2 Dispensers