The Great Urban Race

Paddle boat challenge at the Tidal Basin - paddle around the designated boat station in the water

Challenge at the National Aquarium ~ find live versions of the famous underwater duo featured in a popular 2003 Pixar film

I've started the first sentence of this entry many times and then erased it and started again simply because I'm still so excited from the race that I don't even know where to begin! Saturday, Sam and I participated in the Great Urban Race. It's based after the reality tv show "The Amazing Race" where teams race around the WORLD solving clues and completing challenges in an effort to be the first to cross the finish line and win a million dollars. GUR is very similar (except for the racing around the world part and the million dollar prize) and teams of 2 are given a clue sheet to solve with places and challenges to complete around DC. It was a 5 hour course and we finished in 4 hours 3 minutes! The only forms of transportation allowed were walking/running and metro, so as you can imagine from looking at the map above, my feet hated me at the end of the day!! It's kind of hard to see but I tried to highlight in pink all the places we had to go to complete challenges. There were 12 clues and we had to complete 11 of them, so our strategy was to solve all the clues first then plot them on a map and make our route. It was a great strategy and a fun race! This was by far one of the, if not THE, most fun things I've done in DC :)