Urban Assault Race

This morning, Lulu & I competed in our first Urban Assault Race. I'll be honest - signing up for an event that tests both my physical and mental capabilities is not my idea of fun. But I am coordinating a similar event for an organization I am in later this year, and I felt this would be a good test run to see how to plan a similar event.

I chose Lulu as my race partner for a number of reasons, primarily being that she said yes when I asked her. It doesn't help that she and I are extremely similar in our skill levels on the bike, and both have the same competitive yet fun nature about competition. I am happy to say that Lulu did not disappoint - she was the perfect race partner. Also on our team were Tim (ready and armed with his computer in front of him), Kevin (Lulu's brother) and Phil (as race support).

On Wednesday, Lulu & I met at Austin Java to discuss our race plan, which involved mapping a route between eight checkpoints and one secret checkpoint for us to most efficiently ride on our bikes. We also worked a little on this insane quiz that determined your starting position. Thursday morning at 6:00am, we rode the first part of our planned route. It took us over an hour and half to get to four checkpoints. (Uh oh.) Lulu submitted our quiz on Friday, and we only got a 65%! We were freaked out about what this would mean for our starting position on race day, not to mention pissed at how much work had gone into completing it. (Thanks Tim H., Tim S., and Ostrich for your help!) Luckily, when we picked up our packets on Saturday, we learned we were still starting in the first stage. Whew!!

We left my house at 6:50am this morning and headed to Runtex, thinking the 2.5 mile ride would be a good warmup. Instead of being warmed up, we ended up standing around for another hour upon arrival. This gave us a good chance to size up our competition, though. Lots of people in their fancy matching bike outfits. The race started around 8:15am - and we had to run from the Runtex parking lot, down under the First St. bridge, to our bike transition on the other side. This was not fun in biking shoes, I'll tell you! Luckily, we made it out of transition really quickly and were on our way.

First Stop: Rio Grande Restaurant @ 3rd and San Jacinto.
We, along with Tim & Carrie, were among the first people there. We ran inside the restaurant, where our task was to throw bean bags into the hole of wooden box. After some confusion, and switching off jobs between throwing and retrieving missed bags, we had 4 successful shots and got our first bead.

We then zoomed to Hyde Park Gym, which was the first secret checkpoint of the race. We took Trinity to San Jacinto to Duval over to 45th.

Second Stop: Hyde Park Gym @ 45th and Guadalupe.
No obstacle here, just the clue for the next landmark checkpoint. Clue: classical music playing from a boombox, composition by Mozart.

As we headed to our next stop, we called Tim and asked for help. We thought that Mozart's on Lake Austin was too obvious. I thought it might be Bass Concert Hall or the Austin Symphony Orchestra building. We rode up Guadalupe to Detson to Airport to Huntland. Uphill. Damn this was a far checkpoint!

Third Stop: Austin Suburu Dealership by Highland Mall
Here I sat in a wheelbarrow as Lulu wheeled me around a slalom course. To motivate her, I kept saying "these other teams suck! They are a bunch of, well... not nice things." I said all this while smiling sweetly at the volunteer for our lane. Little did he know how awful I was being. :) I gotta hand it to Lulu - I certainly wouldn't want to push me around in a wheelbarrow, but she rocked at it.

Next we headed to Ozone . Thank god it was downhill because I was actually starting to feel tired! Lulu was very impressed with my blatant disregard for traffic laws.

Fourth Stop: Ozone Bikes @ 32nd and Guadalupe
Holy cow. The line here was really long, and we contemplated skipping it. But we opted to stay and wait it out. This gave us a chance to figure out the Mozart's clue. (Thanks, Tim, for a ton of help with this.) Somehow, we determined the next secret checkpoint was the guitar signed by Reckless Kelly on 6th Street. Anyway, finally got through the line, did a stupid little obstacle course, and were on our way.

Fifth Stop: The secret checkpoint on 6th.
We had some trouble finding it until someone off the street pointed us in the right direction. We got our bead and asked for the next clue. No clue. What?! Apparently this was the last checkpoint - we had skipped the second. Hmmm... So we continued our plan and headed down 6th Street to Pure Austin.

Sixth Stop: Pure Austin @ 5th and Lamar
Here we were given a sheet of paper and sent on a scavenger hunt to find different letter around the property. Once getting the letters, we had to unscramble them to come up with a tag line. We hooked up with a male team and eventually figured out that the slogan was "Follow Your Folly" - Fat Tire Ale. Wish we had called Tim as soon as we got the clue and had him look up sponsor slogans. Could have saved time. We did, however, learn that the first clue really did mean Mozart's, so we took back off on 6th Street. The only trauma here was me completely banging my right ankle in the parking lot of Whole Foods. I wanted to cry it hurt so bad, but I sucked it up. Can't let Lulu see me cry!

Seventh Stop: Mozart's
Nothing much here. Since we somehow had already gone to the last checkpoint, we didn't have to waste much time here looking at the clue.

Heading east on Lake Austin Blvd, Lulu and I were definitely in game mode. We passed everyone we could and hauled butt!

Eighth Stop: Rowing Dock on Stratford Drive
Here, Phil was waiting for us. (He'd actually been waiting for over an hour, poor guy!) We had to take our bikes all the way down to the dock, take off our shoes and socks, then paddle an inflatable boat around a buoy. We were awesome at this, thanks largely to Lulu's long arms, I believe. I couldn't get both of mine out of both sides of the boat, which made things interesting. Here was passed up the 2 guys from Pure Austin, which was kinda fun.

Ninth Stop: Bicycle Sport Shop @ Barton Springs & Lamar
Here we had to complete an inflatable obstacle course. I must admit, this thing was hard. You had to pull yourself up with ropes and climb things - which is really hard to do when you are tired and wet. Luckily this was short, and there was no line.

Tenth Stop: Jack & Adam's @ Barton Springs and Lamar
My favorite obstacle - big wheels! Here we raced around a big wheel course - I admit, I was pretty awesome at this. Poor Lulu though, her legs are far too long to be any good at this!

From here, we hopped over Lamar and headed up Dawson towards our last checkpoint. Unfortunately, Lulu's phone, which she stashed in my bike bag, fell out and I had to stop. On the hill. Yuck. And man, Dawson is hilly! Luckily, though, there was not much traffic so we were able to make it to our final stop fairly quickly.

Eleventh Stop: Jo's Coffee on South Congress
Here we had to walk on stilts back and forth. I was not at all talented at this. Maybe it was because I was in bike shoes, maybe because I was tired, or maybe because I am just not meant to walk on stilts. Upon finishing the task, we saw a few female only teams and realized we needed to haul it back to Runtex. We passed everyone on our way back down Congress (albeit we were totally breaking the law, riding into traffic) and then made it back to transition at Runtex. I was a little annoyed because I thought we could just bike in, but no... back to transition.

Final Stop/Finish Line: Runtex
We racked our bikes and then had to run back to Runtex. Again, not fun in biking shoes. Lulu had taken hers off and she was running strong. I was merely trying to keep her in sight. Luckily, I outran the mean team who was right behind us and made it to the final stop before them. Here, we climbed up a water slide, slide down into a pool of water, then checked in at the finish line. Very fun! When we got to the finish line, I gave them our necklace of beads. We were one short. $#*#(%!!!! Oh, nevermind, it was in the back of the jersey. Whew. So... then we asked, how did we do??

"Female only team... Looks like you're... Fourth." UGH!!! Rather than be excited, Lulu and I were pissed. We wanted second (or third). Not that we're competitive or anything! :)
Truth be told... we did awesome. I'm not sure how we could have done any better, especially in our first race. The biggest problem was the backup at Ozone and taking a long time at Pure Austin. But this was not really in our control. So... we should be really proud of ourselves.

Tim and Carrie did awesome too - they came in just a few minutes after us. It was fun seeing them throughout the morning and working on clues together with them.

Anyway, they haven't posted the results yet so I'm not sure how we did it. But I did have a blast. Lulu was an amazing partner - we worked really well together and had fun doing it. We're already planning on how we're going to do better next year. By the way, one thing we probably won't do next year is leave from my house. The hills coming back home suck after a race!!