City Chase Race Report – Mark Botelho

Jun 21, 2008

Ok I’m not much of a story teller, but here is what I have.

Date: Saturday June21st, 2008

Location: City of Toronto. Basically the city turns into to a playground for all racers. If I had to compare this to anything, it would be The Amazing Race, the difference is that it happens in 1 day.

The morning started off with an early rise 4:30am. Do you think I was maybe nervous or anxious to get started, either way not good. So I had breakfast, watched a little TV and called my teammate William at around 6:30am to ensure we were on track, we met at a halfway point Tim’s, got coffee and drove in together. With price of gas these days it was an easy decision to car pool. We got into the city around 8:00 am just in time to pick up our race kit before the race. BTW races start at 10:00am.

We got changed into our race T-shirts, everyone participating in the race is required to have on the official race T-shirt, and this is to help identify racers throughout the city at any given time. Also to note that you’re only allowed to use public transportation to get around the city and of course your god given legs.

At the beginning of the race it’s like a big pep rally, oh yes did I mention that CBC was on location and would be filming the days events……..cool hope I made it on TV. They handed out prizes for some really cool costumes and then asked for 2 teams to volunteer and come up to stage for a great prize, but they warned that the loser would ……….well it wasn’t revealed until they lost……..yes on national TV one of the Teammates had to shave the other persons eyebrow……..ouch at least he was a sales rep, I’m sure he will sell the story. We then got some clues to the days events, 1 of them was that if you happen to make it to one of the locations where you need to draw a nude model you could get 2 points if one of you were willing to become the nude model……that sounds just crazy, these event organizers are just nuts.

So now we are getting to about 1 minute to the start of the race. How we got started was you need to get a clue sheet with 40 clues, but the organizer warned us that depending on which location you get to, there might not be enough clue sheets, so choose wisely, at this point it’s a coin toss……on that note he says you will find your clue sheets at Union Station or the base of CN Tower. Being some what of a runner-sprinter I was able to pace my self fairly well and got to Union station first, I guess some of the training paid off.

With clue sheet in one hand, cell phone in the other, keep in mind calling people is encouraged by the organizers and you should have someone who has access to a computer, because it comes in handy, oh yes did I mention that the clues are printed on red paper making it impossible to fax.

William knows the city and, the way the subway runs, very well, great teammate to have.

We spent only 10 minutes before we started moving towards our first check point, last year we spent almost an hour before leaving the area, so we are off to a great start at this point. BTW out of 40 locations you are required to get at least 3 out of 4 mandatory locations and 7 other locations to get your stamp/hole punch to complete race.

Keep in mind that we traveled to and from on subway or bus to all these locations below

1st chase point location mandatory, we had to team up with a team and walk as one with a board tied to your foot, the thing that comes to mind snowshoes but with 4 people doing it at once right left right left right left through an obstacle course, ok done now move on to the second part of this station one team member guiding a team member from the other team who is blind folded to catch bean bags in a bucket on their head, keep in mind that we had to do this from 3 different distances, and the girl who was tossing it with me was awesome first throw in I had to take about 4 turns before getting mine in, next distance same thing happen, 3rd distance we both missed once and then we both got ours in, done that station took about 15 minutes, back to the subway to our next location

2nd chase point location we had to get in these really really small cars that reminded me of a skateboard with a seat and a steering wheel, the way this works is by moving the steering wheel which at this point the car begins to move, once you get it, momentum starts to take over, we both had to do an obstacle coarse one after the other

3rd chase point location mandatory at this location we had arrived where there was already 11 teams there, 5 participating and 6 waiting, as we are waiting we noticed that last years winners are right in front of us, perfect now these guys are in our sights, that didn’t last long they offered drinks to the girls that were in the beginning of the line no one said anything, but the girls asked if they would give up their clue sheets for their position, and from that point it went the wrong way for us, they moved ahead by 5 which meant 25 minutes because of the events that we had to perform 5 stations 1 being push-up to standing position for 1 minute then 2nd station you had to hit your partner as hard as you could with a pillow for 1 minute and if you weren’t putting in a good effort you wouldn’t get your stamp and had to rejoin the line, so I hit William as hard as I could for 1 minute I was exhausted by now. 3rd station William had to do push ups for 1 minute while I held his ankles and did I mention that a girl was hitting him with a pillow with 30 seconds and calling him a “””” you get my point.

4th station sit-up for one minute while your partner pushes the pillow into your face each time you go up that hurt trust me.

Station 5 and last one at this location was an all out pillow fight with your partner let me tell I got caught once really well we were exhausted by the end of one minute, that was by far the hardest point we got of the day. Off to location 4th chase point location play a team at bounce ball into a net, hard to explain but we completed this in about 10 minutes. Off to location #5



5th chase point location, learn a strip club routine with a pole and perform for the staff that teach this for a living, this is one I would not like seen on TV, thank god there were no cameras, it took me 3 tries before I got it, not sure if that is a good thing. On to #6

6th chase point location choose a picture of a chocolate bar, William says oh shit this can’t be good we are going to eat some thing bad, William chooses the Hershey bar she flips it over and rites 210 on our hands please proceed further in, the next person says you have to burn 210 calories between the 2 of you, perfect they had treadmills step climbers and bikes and I know which one burns most calories, off to the treadmill for both of us I cranked that baby as fast as I could go by the end of it I burned 50 more calories then William within the same time frame, no problem, got out of the club and we took our first gel of the day, replenish the calories I just burned. Off to #7

7th chase point location, if you raised in donation the night before for the right to play you got a hand shake a thank you and your point. That was easy perfect.

8th & 9th chase point location, remember when I mentioned if you become a nude model you get 2 points, at this point you go big or go home, we knew we were in great shape our time was good 2:45, ok, I can do it for art, all joking aside it was in a professional atmosphere, I didn’t feel awkward, ok this doesn’t sound good…. You know what I mean, either way William had the best nude model to draw, he might not agree, but too bad for him he had no choice “sucker’ off to the 10th location

10nd chase point mandatory We had a clue that we new was going to be tuff but we had a good idea were it might be, the clue was to find a GREEN P south of the old city hall before 1899, next time your in Toronto count how many Green P you see….hundreds. Green P is a parking lots, and at one of these locations we had to locate a Mitsubishi Lancer. We went into 3 Green P location spent a half an hour running and looking and just gave up. At this point we were hungry and decided that we would get a slice of pizza and make a decision to continue looking for the Lancer or to go to the other mandatory location that was across town, this would take a half hour out and a half hour back adding at least 1 hour to our time, we were having no luck so we decided to move onto the other location, when we got there we had to put a python on your necks for 15 seconds, it was weird feeling but no problem for the both of us.

Back to the finish line we still had to perform 1 task that required blind folding and walking without touching some of the balls that were scattered on the floor; your partner could only assist you by giving direction.

Done: We finished in 38th place out of 500 teams or more, not bad I had to ask if we completed an hour ago what position would we have gotten; answer 3rd place, goes to show this is a crazy event, it helps to have people in the city helping you out, the winner have won 3 years in a row they have a support group helping them out by locating some of chase points throughout the city, note to self “get more people to help out on race day”

To my teammate William it was awesome couldn’t do it without you and thanks to Lucy and Tania for helping us out with some of the clues on the internet. BTW we found out afterwards where the location of the Lancers was, we were about 2 blocks away……….. ca la vie.

Can’t wait until August 16 to have another try, this is a great event you have to give it a try one day

http://www.mitsubishicitychase.com/compupdates.asp?compid=Toronto2&nav=schedule

Mark