Mitsubishi City Chase 2010 Adventure Race

Toronto. June 19, 2010

The world's largest urban adventure series race

City Chase is an amazing urban adventure race that I can only describe as "The Amazing Race, compressed into one day". Teams of two have to decipher cryptic clues then dash off to various parts of the city to complete unique tasks using only public transportation or running. These tasks could range from the daring, to the physically strenuous, to mental challenges or even absurdly funny tasks.   My partner for this event was fellow adventurer Peter Klose. We, aka "Team Extreme" completed the race in about 4 hours and 13 minutes. Not bad considering we were first time competitors and we chose to do the most time consuming checkpoint of them all. The 28 story rappel down the side of Toronto City Hall! 330 feet straight down! We actually signed up for this race solely to get to experience this challenge alone and our day would've been awesome had we only done that challenge. The rest of the day's events were just the icing on the cake. Special thanks to Paul Tarsitano for the safety help and the photos!

Team Extreme at the start line at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto. We had no idea what challenges we were going to face throughout the day.	On the roof of Toronto City Hall. We're still out of breath after running up 28 flights of stairs and we have a news camera stuck in our face!

At the edge and getting ready to lean back. The view of the downtown skyline is amazing, but the view looking down is just as wild. This was my highest rappel to date, 330 feet.	Over the side... here we go. Once we got our clues, we ran to City Hall and managed to be the VERY FIRST team to get to do the rappel. It was amazing.

28 floors is a LOT higher up than you might imagine, especially when you're dangling from a rope!	The clock tower is old city hall. What a view!

Here comes Peter. I'm already at the bottom by now.	Showing off. Peter flips over to enjoy part of the rappel inverted style. Face down!

Peter, flipping back over for the landing.	Solid ground is in sight.

Here I am with Paul Tarsitano, one of the the guys in charge of our safety. I'm still alive, so he did his job well!	Waiting in line at one of the many checkpoints. There were over 30 of them and each team had to complete 10 to finish. Some were mandatory.

Balancing a glass on my forehead and getting ready to pour a cocktail into it. You never know what the challenges will be until you get there.	Peter and I chained together. We had to run around and find the phone numbers of local businesses and pay phones in order to figure out the combination of our padlock.

Our final event of the day was a variation of Jenga... Strip Jenga actually. We didn't have to get naked, but we got close.	Crossing the finish line. Our official time: 4:13:31

 

Checkpoint:	Checkpoint Name:	Description:
1	28 Floors!	330 foot rappel down the side of Toronto City Hall!
2	Serve 'em Up	One team member mixes a drink & has to toss a lime behind their back & catch it in a glass. The other teammate has to pour the drink into a glass... Balanced on their forehead.
3	Tissue?	Both team member have to cry on demand & the judge looks for real tears. We took one of the limes from the previous challenge and squirted it into our eyes. Painful, yes. But effective.
4	Sweeeet Ride!	We had to team up with another team and move a car around a traffic cone course using our own strength. One person steering, one pulling, one pushing and one directing.
5	Art Of Movement	A bit or "Parkour". We had to jump off a 15 foot ledge onto a mat below.
6	Gastronomy	I was blindfolded and had to eat 5 food items and identify each one. For every one I got wrong, Peter had to eat a cricket. I only guessed one wrong.
7	Unchain My Heart	We arrive at a pub where we were chained together and given clues to find local phone number of businesses and pay phones. We had to run around, chained up, and find the numbers which were part of a math formula that would reveal the combination to our padlock.
8	Tied Up	One teammate had to tie a bow tie on the other and the quality of the knot had to pass inspection.
9	Let's Rock!	A lacrosse challenge involving weaving, throwing and target shooting.
10	Nakedity	"Strip Jenga" We would pull numbered blocks from a stack and place them on top of the stack. Each time we pulled a 3, 7, or 10, an item of clothing had to come off. Once we reached 40, the challenge was complete.

 

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