Urban Dare Dallas 2009

Ever since my Butterfly Boogie a month or so ago, I've been inundated with emails encouraging me to be more active by running this race for this charity or that race for that charity. Hadn't really felt the push so just went on my merry little non-running way. But then I got a notification about Urban Dare - think a one day amazing race kind of thing - and I thought well, why the hell not?

Recruited Autumn to be my partner and we've been in training ever since. Our training has mainly consisted of playing a few random bar games, learning the ins and outs of googlemaps on our blackberries, and participating in a few trivia nights. Oh, we did actually go for a few (very few) runs/walks. But basically we've spent the last few weeks rationalizing every thing we've done by claiming it as a training experience. Pretty brilliant in a lazy slacker kind of way:)

Our daring day began at 1100 am at the Gingerman in Uptown. Gotta love a racing adventure that starts (and ends!) at a bar. We donned our matching t-shirts, represented the Show Me State (A's an honorary resident) with our choice in hats, and gave ourselves some tough temporary tattoos. Oh, yeah. And we had a beer. Seemed like a good idea at the time . . . :)





I'm not sure we really knew what we had gotten ourselves into until we received our clue sheets and the race was on. Even though the teams were all made up of just 2 people, we belatedly realized that most people were teaming up into much larger groups. The advantage being that they were able to decipher the clues much quicker and then hit the road. A sample of the kind of thing we were figuring out: As a writer, Erato is my muse. Go to the park where she and her sisters are represented by stones for your 3-legged dare. Thank God for crackberries. And for friends with high speed Internet:)

After we had finished getting through the clues we then had to plot out our route that took us all over Dallas. Time was important as was limiting a lot of backtracking. Wanted to conserve energy as much as possible. The rules stated that you could walk, run, or take public transportation but Autumn and I have no first-hand knowledge or experience with DART. And we didn't think we could bring ourselves up to speed in enough time for it to be helpful. So basically we had to rely on our own horsepower. Learned 2 things: Autumn is kind of a navigation/plotting rockstar and I have the smallest bladder in the world. I had to sprint back to the Ginger to relieve said bladder while Autumn finished up planning our route:)




We hauled ass all over Uptown, Downtown, the West End/Arts District, and Deep Ellum. We saw places - really cool places - we didn't even know existed in Dallas. We ran, we sweat, we were cheered on by random strangers. We participated in some pretty ridiculous challenges . . .


We finished up our last challenge and got our passport stamped just seconds before the down pour that had been threatening all day came to volition. Luckily we are the two most prepared people I know and we had the most perfect rain gear. Ok, actually? Not at all appropriate or helpful. But, I think everyone will agree, pretty stinkin' cute:)

We considered ourselves having successfully completed Urban Dare '09 at that point and cabbed it back to the Gingerman. We arrived drenched and exhausted but with the sweet buzz of satisfaction - soon to be replaced with the sweet buzz of more beer:) We may not have come in first place. Or second or third or fourth. But we didn't come in last. And we were the only team to be greeted by such ultra supportive friends/fans . . .

Thanks Gigi and Clayton for all the technical help and for your mad poster making skills - you guys are the best:)

So, yeah. We kinda kicked Urban Dare Dallas's ass. As promised. And we're more than ready for the rematch.