5 hours 56 minutes 34 seconds

"The numbers from this year's CityChase are in: 1000 participants. 750 crickets. 600 earth worms. 30 pounds of dog food. 450 people stripped to bowl. 5 people vomiting. Over $7500 dollars raised for Special Olympics. 2000 bottles of Vitamin Water/Smart Water. 150 volunteers that we are thankful for. 4 hours and ten minutes for the winning team to finish. "

team strangely asian did it! on saturday, aug. 25, sb and i completed the u.s. city chase by hitting all of the 10 required chase points. we finished the race in 5:56:34 putting us in 97th place out of 500 teams.

so going into the race, we had four goals:

1) don't get injured (we have a marathon starting line to get to in about 6 weeks)
2) finish all 10 chase points and make it to the finish line within the allotted 6 hours
3) don't break up
4) have fun

and yes, those are in order of importance.

so here's how it went down...

getting the clue sheet
in order to start our adventure, we needed to complete a scavenger hunt to get our clue sheet, which would provide us with our chase points. we needed to get seven out of 10 items, including things like a bruise that was at least 1 inch in diameter (good thing i'm so clumsy and easily bruised), a bar of soap with our team number carved into it, a lock of hair (i managed to disgust and surprise the volunteer who was checking our items when i yanked a small handful of hair off my head and yelled, "HERE" as I shoved it in her face) and a grass stain (thanks to cc's friend who ran over to sb and frantically started rubbing a leaf on his shirt).

chase point #1 - sb gets wet
after getting our clue sheet and planning out our route for the day, we hopped on the red line and went to wrigley field. to complete the challenge, one of us had to get in the dunk tank (sb) and one of us (me) had to find a stranger (non-city chase participant) who would throw the balls at the dunk tank. of course, i managed to find the most non-athletic person out there (although she was very sweet). after a few misses, we recruited someone else and sb managed to get dunked.

chase point #2 - there's no place like home
we then hopped back on the red line, took it to fullerton and then ran to oz park. the clue for this chase point said it would be a quick one. it was quick...but a bit odd. the volunteer explained that she was going to flip a coin - heads and sb would have to put a huge albino snake down his shirt and tails i would have to hold an alligator for 10 seconds. and tails it was. the alligator was probably about 3 or 4 feet long, but the trainer was there the whole time. i kind of felt bad for the poor little guy. i wouldn't want to have a bunch of strange sweaty and smelly people holding me all day long.

chase point #3 - runners are truly the best people in the world
after the alligator and a quick bathroom break, we ran out to north avenue beach. we weren't quite sure if we had this clue right, so we were really relieved to see a chase point when we got there. that relief quickly faded once we learned what our challenge would be. they had a trainer from bulldog bootcamp who informed us that we needed to find two more people who would complete the challenge with us. i took off running and found a guy standing on the bridge and begged him to help. turns out, he was the plainfield south high school cross country coach, and his boys were doing a workout on the path. he let two of his finest help us out with the challenge, and thank goodness because it was a rough one. they tethered all of us together, and we had to army crawl on the sand to three sets of cones. at the first set, we had to do 50 push ups total between the four of us (the one cross country kid did 30 by himself). at the second set, we had to figure out how to do 25 jumping jacks all at the same time (mind you, we were still tied together). finally, at the third set we had to do 25 squat thrusts each all at the same time. it was brutal,but those boys stuck with us, and we completed the challenge in about 5 minutes.

chase point #4 - let's hug it out
after wiping off as much sand as we could (and ignoring the sand that was in places sand should never be), we ran off to grab the 151 bus to take us to the water tower for our next challenge. it turned out this chase point was for the charity our race was supporting - the special olympics. i thought it was a really great cause to support in the spirit of what we were doing. anyway, we were told that we had to raise $25 for the special olympics by selling hugs on the street. the only rule was that we couldn't just take money out of our own pockets and donate ourselves. however, they said nothing about asking other chasers for their money. so we found another team that got there right about the same time we did, hugged it out, exchanged money and were on our way in less than 2 minutes.

chase point #5 - livin' on a prayer
we ran from the water tower down to ohio street beach where we were going to do a chase point but ended up changing our plans once we found out that it was taking teams about 40 minutes to get through it. so we moved on to navy pier where we learned that we would have to secure an audience and get up on stage with at least two other people and sing a song with the band. we ended up singing "livin' on a prayer" with two other chase teams. it was awesomely bad. or maybe just bad.

chase point #6 - i want my baby back baby back baby back...ribs
looking back, i realize that much of our "success" was thanks to pure luck. after our grammy-worthy performance, we had planned on getting our way back to a red line so that we could head on down to chinatown. however, on our way there, sb decided to use his nerd phone to look up one of the clues. turned out we were right near it - st. james cathedral on east huron. so we jumped off the bus and ran over to the church where a volunteer handed us a t-shirt that was double knotted and frozen solid. she told us that we had 30 minutes to defrost the shirt. once it was defrosted, we had to come back to her and each of us had to put it on to show her that it was indeed defrosted. luckily, the church was in the area where sb and i used to work so we knew what was around. there was a chili's about 2 blocks away, so while sb was frantically trying to defrost the t-shirt in the sink of the men's bathroom, i was at the host stand explaining why i was sitting in their restaurant sweating and with sand all over me. they were really nice and didn't seem to mind at all. bravo to sb for managing to defrost the thing in only about 12 minutes.

chase points #7 and 8 - why didn't i ever learn mandarin
after we ran back to the church and each put the sopping wet and very cold t-shirt on, we ran to the red line to make our way to chinatown. when we got there, we were able to knock out two chase points. the first one was called "mensa" because we had to complete a bunch of trivia questions and brain teasers. we'd been working on those all along because they were on the back of our clue sheets. once we got that point out of the way, we could move on to the next one, which could've been much easier had i ever taken the time to learn mandarin like a good chinese girl. we were given a sheet with pictures of signs from the various stores around chinatown square. we had to use those pictures to find the stores and write down either the store name in english or other questions related to the store itself. luckily, one of the teams was desperate for help, and we just happened to have one of the answers for which they were searching. once we gave them that answer, they just started rattling off the ones they knew. by the time we were able to tell them that we had just started and only had one answer we could give them, they had already given us about four or five. i'm telling you...we were one lucky team.

chase point #9 - boobies
this was our most frustrating chase point. we hopped back on the red line and were feeling pretty good about ourselves because we knew we only had two more to go, and we thought we knew exactly where we were going and what we had to do. and of course, we were wrong. our clue said something about going to the famous art college on south wabash. we just assumed it was the art institute on 37 s. wabash. assuming is a bad thing to do in this event. after being turned away from the art institute by some security guards and then running around the block like chickens with our heads cut off for 10 minutes, we gave up and went to the brown line to go to a different chase point. again, with luck on our side, the brown line train was delayed, which gave us more time to think about the "famous art college" clue. i decided to call my co-worker cc who was also doing the chase, and he said he heard that the clue was referring to columbia college. so we took off running again, hopped on a bus and finally found the chase point. once we got there, sb sure was glad we didn't miss it. we walked into a classroom to find a naked woman posing for us. we had to hone in on our best drawing skills (which for me started and ended in 4th grade art class) and each of us had to sketch this nude lady. i was half expecting to look over on sb's paper and just see "boobies" scrawled all over it.

chase point #10 - I CAN'T DO IT
after wiping the drool from sb's chin, we hopped back on the red line and rode up to the fit plex on division and lasalle where we knew the rock climbing wall awaited us. at this point, we only had about 30-40 minutes left before the course closed so we were getting anxious. after filling out some ridiculous "we're going to spam you in hopes that you will pay $3,000 a month to join our hoity-toity gold coast club" personal information form, we got harnessed up and were ready to attack the wall. little did we know, the section the volunteer put us at was the hardest part of the entire wall. sb, like the champ he is, climbed up the thing like curious george and was down in probably less than a minute. i, on the other hand, was a completely different story. i got to the crazy overhang and just couldn't manage to get myself up and over it. sb kept trying to encourage me, but i finally just screamed out, "I CAN'T DO IT!!!" at this point, sb decided it was in his best interest to find one of the fit plex employees to give me some guidance. the guy was really nice and managed to help me find a way up the wall. as i was climbing up, i heard the employee say to sb, "man, you guys picked the most difficult part of the wall" to which sb replied, "WE DIDN'T PICK IT!"

the finish
after finally making it to the top, we took off our harnesses and bolted back to the red line. we only had about 15 minutes to make it back to the finish line before the course officially closed at 4 p.m. we had pretty good luck all day long with the train arrivals, but of course, we waited the longest for this last train. it was 3:55 p.m., and i had lost almost all hope at that point that we'd make it back by 4 p.m. the train finally came about a minute later. we only had to go one stop, which thankfully took just about two minutes, but we also had to run to the finish line. the second the train doors opened, we jumped out and started sprinting. as we were running up to the finish, we saw the official clock was at 5:56 and realized we still had about three to four minutes to spare - i guess the race started a few minutes after 10 a.m. so we had more time than we thought.

even though it was both physically and emotionally draining, i would absolutely do it all over again. the experience was so amazing, and sb and i had a great time doing it together.

i hear they're already planning next year's event, so if any of you crazy kids out there are up to it, you should create your own teams and meet up with the strangely asians in 2008.