http://www.greaturbanrace.com/index.html

Quote :

" The Great Urban Race is a one-of-a-kind urban adventure. Teams of two solve clues and complete challenges while navigating through the city and using public transit. It's a scavenger hunt, road race, and wandering party - all rolled into one heck of a fun day! All this, and a $10,000 Grand Prize at the Championships in Las Vegas! "

Quote :

"2/2 - Tampa Bay 2/9 – Phoenix 3/8 – Los Angeles 3/29 – Atlanta 4/5 – Dallas 4/19 – Cincinnati 5/3 – San Francisco 5/17 – Philadelphia 5/31 – Boston 6/7 – Seattle 6/21 - New York City 6/28 – Madison 7/26 – Denver 8/2 – Washington D.C. 9/6 – Chicago 9/13 – Portland 9/27 - Twin Cities 10/5 – Austin 10/18 – San Diego 11/8 – CHAMPIONSHIPS"

my wife and i are doing the one in ATL in march

has anyone done this before or planning on doing it this year?

1/10/2008 9:51:18 PM

this thread went really well

1/23/2008 1:02:51 PM

tlb?

sounds pretty cool - where all did it have yall go to?

1/23/2008 1:03:58 PM

...the race isn't until march

1/23/2008 1:04:47 PM

i didn't read the entire post

I read this far:

Quote :

"my wife and i are doing the one in ATL"

1/23/2008 1:05:30 PM

That looks awesome...I want to do this whenever it rolls back around to dc.

1/24/2008 9:40:06 PM

holy shit this is so up my alley. i am totally doing this! thanks for posting

1/25/2008 12:04:44 PM

I'm signed up for the one in Phoenix in 2 weeks

Also planning on Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Austin & maybe Seattle--- here I come!

<3 friends all over the country

1/25/2008 5:38:27 PM

yeah we're planning on going up for the chicago one - my brother and his gf are our "phone-a-friend' and when they do the DC one we're going to be theirs

1/25/2008 5:40:20 PM

chicago, yes

1/25/2008 7:49:12 PM

i thought this was about the DARPA challenge at first

1/25/2008 8:10:55 PM

bttt

2/8/2008 9:43:19 AM

wow, this looks like a lot of fun!

2/8/2008 9:50:05 AM

this looks awesome.. do they do this every year?

[Edited on February 8, 2008 at 10:11 AM. Reason : d]

2/8/2008 10:11:40 AM

They should do it in raleigh. They'd kill themselves.

2/8/2008 10:20:09 AM

phonenix race tomorrow!! so pumped-- making the team outfits tonight

2/8/2008 3:43:09 PM

nvm

[Edited on February 8, 2008 at 10:00 PM. Reason : this isn't chit chat]

2/8/2008 9:59:30 PM

we finished!! a TON of fun. we were literally running all over the place and only finished with 15min to spare. we didn't win anything but it was unforgettable & i plan on hitting the other cities on my list

2/9/2008 9:34:16 PM

congrats! i'm glad this worked out

i'm getting pumped about the ATL one

2/9/2008 10:13:21 PM

This looks fun. I'd really like to do the Chicago or DC one if I can find a teammate.

2/10/2008 11:04:46 AM

we are starting out training tomorrow - learning bus routes and whatnot

3/16/2008 8:42:33 PM

i'm getting pumped up for dallas in a few weeks!!

3/16/2008 10:16:11 PM

im gonna start looking into being in town for portland

3/16/2008 10:18:21 PM

final day of studying for the race tomorrow

feel somewhat prepared but at the same time not at all

3/28/2008 4:03:37 PM

How do you practice or study for this??

3/28/2008 4:36:20 PM

heh we didn't invest a whole lot of time into studying but in general you should know the bus/train routes and have some sort of strategy for coordinating your phone-a-friend(s) and getting info to/from them

3/28/2008 5:57:45 PM

registered today for dallas!

post pics of the ATL one when you finish

3/28/2008 6:55:04 PM

i highly recommend this to everyone! we had an amazing time - we're already trying to think about when we can do another

3/29/2008 6:10:09 PM

the results are up and we did much better than we originally thought - we beat over 70% of the teams

3/31/2008 1:23:09 PM

dallas was awesome! much more challenging than phoenix. we had to go to a mandatory location 17 miles away.

looking forward to austin & chicago, possibly others!

we finished in the top 50% this time around.

4/6/2008 11:01:08 AM

awesome! congrats!!!

we're thinking about doing austin as well but kind of worried because there is no train system so you would HAVE to know the buses it seems - we have to do at least one more city this year - it was too fun not to`

4/6/2008 11:05:17 AM

google maps has a feature where you can choose to use public transport and it tells you what bus and or train to take. thats how we survived in dallas. some teams were using complex maps and shit-- thats for the birds. the train and bus system in dallas was far too big and detailed for people never from there to just figure it out-- especially on a saturday when schedules are less frequent

my laptop and aircard carries us through the race, other teams were definitely jealous

4/6/2008 11:08:29 AM

yeah we used my laptop and got online with my cell tethered to it - i think it helped us a whole bunch especially in the beginning when solving the clues - that and my brother was our "phone-a-friend" and he helped us tremendously

google maps doesn't have that feature in every city - not in atlanta at least - i just went and tried dallas and i'm impressed - i wish we had that feature - that would have made things a lot easier

i'm jealous you've done 2 now

4/6/2008 11:13:17 AM

i think im getting addicted to it. despite how tired and sore i am the next day. its a great way to see parts of a new city. one of the race people at the finish line recognized me from phoenix, lol.

i'd love to do san fran but i have other plans that weekend

4/6/2008 11:39:08 AM

yeah we were going to do seattle because my wife's brother is doing an internship up there but it's the weekend that i've got to be in a wedding in florida

there are definitely some fun cities that this takes place in - i'm glad someone else on here got into this - have the people that keep winning the the 2 you've done started with the furthest clue?

any funny outfits? the best 2 we saw i think were the 2 dressed up as mimes that supposedly did the race without talking the whole time and 4 guys dressed up like the team from will ferrel's movie semi-pro

4/6/2008 11:46:39 AM

in phoenix the best costume was mario & luigi

in dallas it was two girls who had on blue wigs and big sunglasses, pretty generic.

i'm not sure how the winning teams ordered the clues

for dallas we google mapped everything & emailed a friend all the clues for the riddles and crossword. then we started with the farthest clue

3 hours into the race we ran into a team who had finished everything except the last clue & they were on the way out there, i don't think that was a good idea because with 2 hours left in the race and considering how far away the clue was, it didn't seem like they would make it back in time.

we finished all the downtown clues (5-6) within an hour then ran straight back to the finish line, i think one of the top 25 teams had a similar strategy.

4/6/2008 1:27:41 PM

i'm doing the one in DC on august 2nd - very excited about it but the weather is going to make it somewhat unbearable i think

4/24/2008 10:49:52 PM

i'm totally trying to work out DC as well!! chicago & austin are a given

chicago depends slightly on airfare & austin is in the bag

4/25/2008 2:45:17 AM

philly is today - we're pretty nervous about it for some reason

5/17/2008 9:25:10 AM

good luck!

5/17/2008 10:37:07 AM

we were teetering on whether or not to do DC but ended up registering last night - my brother lives there and we originally heard about it from him because some of his coworkers are doing it so we really hope he registers as well - if not he's a great googler and was key to us doing so well in our first race

7/7/2008 4:10:12 PM

im confirmed for chicago but still trying to make dc work!!

7/7/2008 7:00:48 PM

less than a week away for DC - flights are booked and whatnot - still need to look over the metro system to get an idea - i think my little brother and his gf are backing out possibly and going to be our "phone-a-friend" like they were for the ATL one

7/27/2008 11:46:33 AM

dc didn't happen for me

but chicago and austin are ON!

7/27/2008 12:58:04 PM

town will be empty, you should have free reign

[Edited on July 27, 2008 at 1:27 PM. Reason : well, except the Mall area of course]

7/27/2008 1:25:46 PM

hmmm, id love to do the austin one since im moving to oklahoma in a few days

7/27/2008 9:40:25 PM

Running all over a city does not sound like fun to me. I'd rather stay in my air-conditioned home or car.

7/28/2008 11:45:32 AM

running all over a city really does actually sound fun

7/29/2008 11:30:46 AM

This sounds awesome. But it seems like it would be expensive unless you had friends/family that you could stay with in all the cities.

7/31/2008 1:10:24 AM

here we go

top 25 or bust

8/2/2008 9:31:16 AM