I Dare You

The Urban Dare Adventure Race is coming to Tampa on March 7th. Will you be there? I would not miss it.

I have done four urban adventure races, two in Tampa and one in New Orleans teamed with my daughter Wendy. Then, I did one in San Francisco with my son Ben as my teammate. What fun! If you've ever watched The Amazing Race on TV, it's like that except that it only lasts a few hours.

Two-person teams leave from a location downtown. Each team must go to the same ten checkpoints, but they must solve clues to determine where to go. If they solve the clue incorrectly and go to the wrong place, they're disqualified, but don't worry, that  hasn't happened to us yet, so it's not that hard to get the right answer. 

However, solving the clues almost always requires use  of the Internet. Therefore, each team generally has one or more members at home on the Internet.

There is no set course, and you are allowed to take public transportation, i.e., buses or streetcars. The routes in Tampa aren't much help, though. We took public transportation for portions of the race in the other cities, but not in Tampa. It just didn't go to the right place at the right time. But running it worked out fine. I guess each time we ran between 6 and 10 miles.

You are not  running continually, though. For one thing, sometimes you are standing or sitting, talking on the phone to your Internet  person. Also, at some of the checkpoints there is a dare that one or both members of the team must perform.

Don't  worry about the dares; they're all reasonable. No eating disgusting stuff. We had to do fifty 'girl' pushups for one. For another we had to kick a soccer ball around some cones and then through a goal. Another time one team member had to carry the other piggyback around a course of cones. I carried Wendy since she is twenty pounds lighter. It was easier than I would have thought. I hadn't carried her in about 26 years!

Each time, the race ends at a bar where the last challenge is to complete a jigsaw puzzle, one of those easy ones with fifty pieces. Then everyone has a drink and shares race stories. Both of the Tampa races all the checkpoints were in downtown, on the University of Tampa campus or in Ybor City, so we didn't really cover any great distance. We finished at the Green Iguana last time.

You take self portraits with a digital camera at each checkpoint to prove you were there. Then at the finish line, they go through your camera to make sure you went to all the right places.

It was a blast  every single time. Oh, and teams can help each other.

Now, I've been describing Urban Dare races, but there are several other urban adventure race companies, for example, GUR (Great Urban Race), the Oyster Racing Series, Rubberneck, etc. If you google urban adventure races, you may find half a dozen race series, but I believe they are all similar in nature.

Go to UrbanDare.com to read all about it or go to YouTube.com and search Urban Dare. There are several race videos.

If you google UrbanChallenge.com, you can still see the photos Wendy and I took in the first Tampa race.

It's a blast! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Many teams just do it for fun and don't even run, so you might want to do it with a non-runner family member. Some parents did it with their 12 year old kids and seemed to have a great time.

Email me with any questions. You can register on Active.com

Here are the photos of finishers in the one Tampa Urban Challenge. That company seems to be defunct, but Urban Dare is alive and well.