Team Calgary - Nicki Rehn and Jen Silverthorn
How do you contain such an awesome in experience in words? No one should have to endure that much fun and then return to real life.
The race festivities began on Thursday afternoon with media interviews, check-in, race meeting, get-to-know-you games, and then a champion's dinner. We were told to expect the unexpected, and the first part of that was being informed that unlike previous years, the race would run continuous for up to 36hrs. We were secretly excited, hoping that our experience in adventure racing and dodging sleep-monsters would give us an edge on the other teams. It did in one sense.... but the advantage was diminished by other challenges that played to our weaknesses.
At 8am Friday, we attended a pre-race inspection to search us to ensure we were not carrying any contraband. We were only allowed to bring extra clothes, shoes and photo ID that could fit into a small mesh backpack issued to each team. Nothing else was allowed - no food, water, first aid, credit cards, money, transit passes, maps, phone numbers, pen or pencils. Items confiscated from other teams included trinkets (that could be sold for money), ibuprofen, Gravol and Vaseline. Once that was done, we were walked over to Buckingham Fountain for some memorable group photos. Without anything else said, they handed us our first 5 clues and said 'Go'.
Chasepoint #1 - Go to 5 checkpoints spread throughout the downtown core of Chicago (a very big area). From the start of the race at the Buckingham Fountain, we proceeded back to the hostel to collect maps, paper, pens and directions to the 5 locations (Soldier Field, former site of Fort Dearborn, Water Tower, Pizzeria Uno, and Stained Glass Museum at Navy Pier). We begged for money to buy transit passes and proceeded to find the locations. At each checkpoint, an item required for the race was provided: emergency blanket, headlamp, $30 cash, transit pass, map, reflective arm band, and a bottles of Propel. During our visit to Pizzeria Uno, an establishment known for its famous Chicago Deep Dish, we leaned to properly assemble a pizza under the instruction and watchful eye of the chef.
We had no idea that the race organizers would be so generous with race supplies. Precious time was wasted begging for money for our transit pass which landed us in 12th (last) place, 20 minutes behind the next team.
Our "scavenging session" ended at a wonderful piece of artwork called "The Bean" in Grant Park. The race organizer was awaiting us not only to hand us our next clue but to warn us that if we didn't pull up our socks were we were going to be eliminated. He also mentioned that 51% of the population was counting on us.
We were definitely worried and actually rather distracted by our placing.
Chasepoint #2 - Go to North Avenue Beach. Feeling a little stressed about our position in the race, we frantically tried to get ourselves quickly to this beach. Unfortunately, irrational thinking lead us to believe transit would be a faster choice than running to the beach. We decided to hop on the Purple Line subway. After 10 minutes, we asked a fellow passenger when the next train would arrive and we were assured shortly. Another 10 minutes passed and we decided that we would try to get to the beach on foot. As we left the subway station, a small sign stating the Purple line was under construction and would be closed for several hours. We were now 1 hour behind 11th place by the time we arrived at the chasepoint. Having been promised that teams would be eliminated at random times throughout the weekend, potentially even early on the first day, we were desperately worried that our race was about to end sooner than it began. At the beach, we were given up to an hour to find keys buried in the sand. We never found a key and as a result both of us were forced to forced to swim in the frigid waters of Lake Michigan, out to a buoy and back. The air temperature was barely above zero. We both knew that hypothermia was a potential and wearing wet clothes on a cold, windy day would not be ideal. The area was remote and the lifeguard assured us other racers had bared it all. So....after scanning the beach and noticing that there were no people out on this freezing cold day, and the cameras had long left this chasepoint to follow the leaders, we stripped and skinny-dipped our way into the lake.
Chasepoint #3 - Go to Flying Gaonas Gym in Park. Surprised that we were still in the race due to being SO FAR behind, we carried on. We spent about 30 minutes trying to find where this place was. After a few phone calls to Illinois Tourism, the train system, and the City of Chicago, we discovered that it was about 30 miles north of Chicago. We headed to the appropriate train station, bought tickets and then chowed down some Balance Bars purchased at the local Walgreens while we waited the 45 minutes for our departure. Meanwhile, we convinced the security guards of a nearby d to let us use their Internet, googled the name of the gym, and printed off explicit instructions for getting there by train. On arrival, we were more than excited to discover that we had passed 2 teams. Finding this gym had proven VERY difficult for basically ALL the teams except us. Our spirits were lifted. This gym was actually a circus trapeze place. Our clue was "what goes up most come down, while the other waits around". Jen sat out the activity while Nicki was provided with a few lessons and practiced on a low bar before climbing to the heights of a circus trapeze and completing a jump. It was WILD and definitely a highlight. She looked and felt like Lois being caught by Superman. So now, when her kids at school get too much for her, she may run off and join the circus.
Chasepoint #4 - Bike to Bobby's Bike Hike back in Chicago. They handed us each a 'city cruising' bike...you know the ones, with 1 gear and back pedaling breaks and a seat that is larger than your butt. We could out-ride the gear on the bike, especially Nicki who was very thankful for the spin classes she attended with her tri club back in Calgary. We have no idea how far or how long it was to ride back to downtown Chicago (it had been a 35 minute ride on the train to get there). We were hungry and thirsty and we begged food from some construction workers, a couple of cyclists and anyone else we could find along the way. It was hard to look like serious adventure racers as Nicki was donning a kiddie helmet with pink love-hearts all over it!!! Nicki really surprised a pro-looking cyclist when she managed to speed up in order to ride alongside him (her legs turning a mile a minute) while saying, "I can't help but notice that you have a power-gel in your side pocket...can I have it?" We had to find an obscurely hidden bike rental place to deliver the bikes, right on sunset, and receive our next clue.
Chasepoint #5 - Go to Harvey. We arrived by train just on dark and hesitantly made our way to the address given. It was a Habitat for Humanity project and we had to give 1 hr of labor moving dirt around. While we had no clue initially, we discovered this is potentially one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the southern suburbs. The police fire their gun twice a week and gang activity is common. It felt great to contribute to such a worthwhile project, despite it being a little scary. The police came around 7.30pm and offered to provide protection. Thanks!! Depending on how hard we worked during that hour (as judged by Rob, the champion from last year, we could earn ourselves time credits or penalties). We sang a few songs, worked harder than ever, and managed to impress Rob. e were then tailed back to the train station in order to ensure our safety. A group of students were on the train platform heading into Chicago for the weekend. Nicki, the social one, approached the group and scored us a mittful of food. Boarding the train back to Chicago, we were glad to get out of the 'hood.
Chasepoint #6 - Make your way to the Discovery Center in the NW of Chicago. At the Humanity project, we had agreed to team-up Team Toronto 3 and work together to see if we could pool skills and abilities to pull further ahead. They were fast runners and helped carry our pack, and we were able to charm everyone for food, water, money and information. We worked well together. However, 1hr later when we found the Discovery Center, we were forced to separate in sit an SAT exam. It was now 9.30pm and we were VERY mentally tired. There were 40 pages of Math and English multiple-choice questions. We were told that the team who scored the lowest, regardless of current race position, would be eliminated. Way to add pressure!!! We had 45 minutes to finish, which was impossible, but we applied some strategy to split up the questions. We are pleased to announce that we scored the highest...apparently by a fair margin, than any other team. It was yet another small victory to lift our spirits.
Chasepoint #7 - Across from Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. Here we met Nick (the owner of the race) and the pizzas that we had made earlier, and we couldn't leave until the entirety of our LARGE Chicago DEEP dish MEAT pizza was finished. Jen is a vegetarian. We were allowed to ask one person from the public to help but our guy decided he only wanted one piece. The guy that Team Toronto got ate 4 of their pieces. Still, we finished the fastest in 25 minutes. It was ironic that we thought our endurance and running ability would be our to this chasepoint was eliminated (Team Extra).
Chasepoint #8 - Midnight private architectural tour. We were met by an expert in local architecture and taken on a walking tour for about 40 minutes. He spewed more details than you can imagine in a short amount of time and we were told to listen "very carefully". We frantically tried to scribble down as much as possible on torn pieces of map. It was actually very interesting.
Chasepoint #9 - ESPN centre. We showed up here only to discover that we were too late because it had closed. Instead we were given a 15-minute penalty and told to move onto the next CP.
Chasepoint #10 - 10 pin bowling marathon at Lucky Strike, a very swanky downtown club. We had until 2 am to score 800 points in as many games as it took. We didn't even get close and were given time penalties according to how far away from the target we were. Actually, only 3 teams managed to get the 800 points before 2am and so it was a good chance to finally see ALL the teams at once and find out how other people's races were going. We noticed very quickly that many teams were suffering from the sleep deprivation. We were still pumped and bouncing around with our usual abundance of energy which most certainly irritated everyone else. Here we were told the results to the SAT exam and Team Montreal was eliminated.
Chasepoint #11 - Penalty sit-out and glow-in-the-dark golf. We made our way to a small tent erected next to the clubhouse of a city golf course. Because of the 2am thing at the bowling, there were 7 teams heading there together. It took an hour to find the place...that's what happens when 'too many chefs get into the kitchen'. Everyone thought everyone else knew where we were going. It was FREEZING and despite all the teams being cramped into this tent and huddled together, no-one was warm. According to all the penalties and credits assessed up to this point, and our current position in race, they allocated us a tee-off time. With 11th and 12th team just eliminated, we were last AGAIN and had a 5.15 am tee time. We had to play 4 holes of golf, in the dark, with glowing balls. BINGO.....Jen and Nicki's biggest disadvantage. Jen had never picked up a golf club in her life and Nicki didn't thing her minor exposure to golf would be an asset. We both HATE the concept of golf, opting for more physically demanding sports. Some of the front teams were amazing golfers and the gap continued to widened. We scored 20 strokes over the City Chase par, which was actually 32 strokes over real par, earning ourselves a 20-minute wait before we could leave.
Chasepoint #12 - Canoeing. The next clue said that the last team to the start of the canoeing section would be eliminated, as they only had 9 canoes. In a show of admirable support, Team Toronto 3 gave up their chance to take off 8 minutes before us, guaranteeing our elimination and their security, and waited for us to serve our golf penalty. We knew that Team Ottawa had left at least 20 minutes ahead of us and it was going to be a big stretch to overtake them on the short train ride to the river. However, we decided to attempt a risky route choice (what did we have to lose?) in order to hopefully leapfrog them. Instead of going into downtown to change trains from the Red line to the Blue line, we decided to jump off the Red line early and run west along North Ave to the Blue line. In a stroke of luck, a bus came and saved us from the potentially long run. In perhaps the happiest moment of the race, we did indeed beat Team Ottawa to the canoes and neither Toronto nor us had to suffer elimination. We were forced to take a 15 minute mandatory break in order to vote for which teams we would most like to provide assistance in order of preference before donning our life jackets and portaging the canoes down a very slippery slope. We paddled 22km south along Des Plaines river to the take-out in a park. Team Ottawa arrived 10 minutes later and were given their bad news.
Chasepoint #13 - Brookfield Zoo. After we got out of the canoes, we were given a short quiz on the architectural tour from the previous night. Every wrong answer was assessed a penalty. However, Jen, the architectural whiz, got them all right. We then ran over to a nearby zoo and had to go looking for weird plastic mold-a-rama animals. It didn't take long because Toronto and us divided the tasks between us. Nicki stopped momentarily to enjoy the polar bears. At the conclusion of that, we were taken out to a van where Team London had been waiting. The race clock was stopped; we were piled into the van and told that the next challenge just had to be completed. We drove 1hr west of Chicago out into cornfield land to a town called Hinkley.
Chasepoint #14 - Skydiving. When we got out of the car, we were met by the TV camera and Nick (always a bad sign). He announced that only six teams were allowed to continue and all of us 3 teams were eliminated. But...a vote that had been taken earlier in the day, resulted in usI being awarded the "Favorite Team" which earned us a berth BACK into the race. Talk about an emotional roller coaster. We were told to get kitted up immediately because we were going SKYDIVING. In tandem with an instructor, we jumped from 14,000 ft and free fell for 60 seconds to 5000 ft, where we pulled the ripcord and enjoyed another 5 minutes of spectacular floating towards the ground. This was definitely the highlight of highlights.
Chasepoint #15 - Photo scavenger hunt. We were driven back to Chicago on dark and dropped downtown. We were sad to part ways with Team Toronto behind because they had helped us so much, and quite frankly, it was going to be lonely without them in the race. From here we had to complete a photo scavenger hunt that involved taking 12 out of 30 pictures of VERY random things. It was extremely hard and took us nearly 2 hours to complete. Perhaps we were really tired, or perhaps we just wanted to be done, or perhaps finding a live cat, a convertible with the top down, a guy with a nipple ring, and a stretch limo driver willing to let two very stinky women in his car is just plain difficult. At 8.30pm, we crossed the finish line in 7th position. We still can't believe that we evaded elimination for the entire race and managed to complete all the challenges. We were the last team to finish. It was disappointing not to be up with the front teams, and had we not screwed up those first couple of hours so badly, we might have been able to join them. As the only all-female team in the race, we really wanted to perform well, rather than just be the 'token girls'. Hopefully, we did that by staying in the race until the end!
Chasepoint #16 - Make our way to the hotel, shower, eat, climb into a stretch limo, and party-it-up at a swanky club, pushing through a 3rd night in 4 days without sleeping and somehow get to the O'Hare airport by 8.30am.
They said that once you've been to a City Chase final, you'd do anything to get back the next year. You'll see us traveling the City Chase regional circuit next year in hopes of repeating one of the BEST experiences of our lives.
Nicki & Jen