Urban Assault.

Swag UAR t-shirt.  It's actually a pretty nice shirt!

Some months ago, M asked me if I wanted to do the Urban Assault race with her.  She has done it for the past three years and always talked about how much she loved it and how fun it was.  This year I got called up from the bench when her old partner subtly asked if she could switch partners to race with her girlfriend.  M did not have a problem with that.  In fact, when we signed up, she told me that they had come in fourth last year but that I was faster than her old partner so she fully intended to win this year.  No pressure.

Regardless, I was in. And, excited.  Unfortunately, as it turned out, I have been out of town and/or just not riding or working out that much for the past few weeks due to work.  But whatever, I was still in it to win it.  

We had a 7:45 strategy meeting at Starbucks before heading to the starting point.  Of course, we got slightly lost.  Not a great omen. 

Urban Assualt is a bike race sponsored by New Belgium (among others) that involves seven checkpoints around the city.  The first five they give you immediately.  Last Thursday, they gave us a clue in the form of a word search puzzle to the sixth checkpoint.  Once you arrive at the first mystery checkpoint, you are given a clue to the second.  At five of the checkpoints, you have to perform some obstacle (today, running around a baseball field to find numbers that tied to letters in a word jumble type thing, doing an obstacle course with highs and lows while balancing two balls on two poles horizontally between us, bouncing a tennis ball into a bucket with one person tossing and the second using a wooden cutout as a backboard, hiking a shoe (a la a football) and having your partner catch it with a net, and one person riding in a circle while holding a foam sword while the other tried to toss rings on it) and collect a bead.  Return without one of the beads and you get a ten HOUR penalty.  

The all-important beads.

So, we had a tentative route based on going to the mystery point first and working our way around.  Seemed simple enough.  Until we got on our bikes for the first sprint to the mystery checkpoint during which I thought I might die, or at least throw up.  Between having a slower bike (M rides a road bike, I have a hybrid) and just not working out much, I was not fully prepared for this. Once we got past the first checkpoint (at which, we just collected our bead and took a picture of the second mystery checkpoint to text to our friend, L, who agreed to be our phone-a-friend), things simmered down a bit.  We were still riding essentially all-out the entire time but it was not as big of a pack.  By the time we got to the sixth checkpoint, we were on our own more or less.

Parts of the roads were so bumpy and broken (actual gaping holes) that I wished I had a mountain bike.  As it was, I was about a block slower than M thanks to my slow-ass (and slow-ass bike).  However, that worked out just fine. She would arrive first, figure out the obstacle and check our route for where-to once completed.  I may have slowed her down but not hugely, for which I was thankful.

Our friend L figured out the mystery checkpoint for us and we realized it made sense for it to be our last checkpoint.  When we arrived to collect our bead, they told us we were the first of the women's teams through.  Yay!  So, we got to the finish, did our big wheel race to the end, strung our beads and ran to the finish.  At which point, they told us we weren't first.  Drat.

We killed some time -- both before prize time and until the truck with lost-and-found items returned -- with our free beers (yes, at 10:45 am).  They asked us what we normally drank when we were stumbling in our order.  We said prosecco and asked if they had any sparkling.  They didn't find that funny.

We also got out shirts silk-screened.  Neither of us had thought ahead to bring a second shirt so we were down to sports bras in the middle of Wrigleyville for a few minutes but it was worth it as the result was pretty cute and very race-appropriate.

Guess what we are wearing next year?

Around noon, they announced the winners and wouldn't you know, Team Lissy was in first place for the women's division.  The men's division beat us by 20 minutes -- they were 25 minutes faster than google maps anticipated, and that was without any obstacles! We've determined that we lost at least 10 minutes due to our poor performance on obstacles but they probably were just that much faster.  Regardless, we will take our W and resulting backpack prizes and come back to defend our title next year.  Our goal for next year is to just flat-out win the whole thing.  (Clearly not for the prize, which is as much beer as you are tall.)

If only I hadn't bought a backpack last week!