Nopesport

3rd place at the City Chase for Pete & Paul

On Saturday 16th September 2006, London saw the arrival of the City Chase series - billed as "The World's Largest Adventure Series". Thanks to Nopesport's recent Graffiti Competition, we (Paul Nixon & Pete Huzan) had won a complimentary free entry to the race - not a bad prize considering the entry fee was £100 per team. A couple of other orienteering teams were taking part - Ben Roberts & Clive Parry as "Team Nopesport", and SLOW members Tim Smith & Christine Jones amongst others. The grand prize for the winners of the event was an all-expenses paid trip to Chicago in October to represent the UK in the City Chase "World Championships" - this event would also be televised as part of a reality-style American TV show (featuring all the winners of the various individual City Chase events around the world).

Reading the City Chase website gave us a good idea of what to expect. Teams of 2 compete in the race which was described by the organisers as "a unique urban adventure that requires participants to exhibit teamwork, resourcefulness, determination and the ability to make decisions on the fly as they search for ChasePoints scattered in unknown locations throughout the city. ChasePoints are designed to test teams with a variety of physical, mental, and otherwise adventurous challenges." One of the key points made in the pre-race information was that anything goes regarding getting help whilst competing. It was actively encouraged that you should bring along mobile phones, and call friends to get them to look things up for you on the internet, both to help with working out the locations, and solving any other problems that were required en route. Any form of public transport was allowed to be used during the race - buses, trains, tubes - but no form of private transportation, so cars, taxis, bikes and private jets were out. As it turned out we would probably do more running than anything else - often quicker to get around that way than wait around for public transport.

The event started and finished in the park at Russell Square, in central London. Olympic gold medal winning rower Tim Foster was the special guest invited to start the race - he is a patron of the kids charity Sparks which was being supported by the event. After a brief introductory speech by the event organiser, we were off.

The first challenge, which had to be completed before you received your "clue sheet" for the main event, was a form of scavenger hunt. Each team had to collect, and present to one of the officials in exchange for your clue sheet: (i) a lock of hair, (ii) a lipstick kiss mark on the cheek, (iii) one team member's head drenched in water, (iv) a live animal. This proved easier than it first sounded and only took a few minutes. Luckily we had brought a pair of scissors (amongst many other random things, in anticipation of strange challenges) which helped for (i). Pete used his immeasurable charm to obtain (ii) from unknown female in the park very quickly. There was a big fountain in the park which I cooled myself off in for (iii). And a quick rummage in a flower bed produced a friendly worm for (iv).

The clue sheet we then received contained clues for 13 locations/challenges. We had to successfully complete 10 of these 13, in any order, and then get back to the finish. It could be described as a massive orienteering score event, with a few extra elements, although it felt more like something along the lines of Annika Rice's "Treasure Hunt".

The main challenge was that the locations of the ChasePoints were not clearly defined - rather we were just given clues to their whereabouts, some more obvious than others. The clues also gave some hints as to what we might have to do when we got there. We quickly worked out that 4 of them were in the Camden/Hampstead area of north London, and decided to head straight off there and work out rest of them en route, with the assistance of our 'internet support team' Tess & Vicky who were ready & waiting.

THE CHASEPOINTS
1. CAMDEN MARKET - PRICE CHECK
Ran to Euston station from Russell Square, got the underground up Northern Line to Camden ("there's 4 others just ahead of you!" shouts someone as we leave the tube station - we were all recognisable as we were wearing City Chase t-shirts and race numbers). We ran to Camden Lock, and saw the City Chase marshals waving at us in their bright orange t-shirts. The task - find the prices of 4 out of 5 particular items in different stalls/shops listed, which were somewhere in the Market. Not an easy task when we didn't know where anything was, but we utilised the help of many other shopkeepers/passers by to point us in the right direction (although we got many contrasting directions, so proved more difficult than anticipated!). We finally found them all, back to the volunteers who punched our stamp card, and away.

2. HAMPSTEAD HEATH - LAWN BOWLS
The next location we had identified was Hampstead Heath, and the quickest way of getting there, in the unfortunate absence of any buses going our direction, was a 20 minute uphill run. We'd guessed from the clues that we would be lawn bowling, so found our way to the bowling green where the marshals were waiting. The task was fairly simple - bowl one ball to land within 1 metre of the jack, a distance of around 20m away. We were allowed as many goes as we wanted - Pete managed it on about the 10th throw.

3. WATERLOW PARK - HILL RUNNING
We decided the quickest way to the next location was another run, which again was about 20 minutes uphill. We were pretty knackered when we arrived, and disappointed to find that the first of 2 challenges in this location involved even more hill running! The task - change into Merrell shoes and run 5 times up and down a fairly long slope and some steps. This probably took about 10 minutes.

4. WATERLOW PARK - "ORIENTEERING"
We've all heard of schools & scout groups etc putting on events described as "orienteering" which are anything but. This was about as bad as you'll ever come across, which is very disappointing given the number of people who will have tried it (and would probably never want to try anything called orienteering again). We were given a sheet with compass bearings and paces, with questions to answer when you reached the locations (eg signs on park benches etc). Unfortunately no. 4 (out of 5) proved impossible to find, for us and the 5 or 6 other teams around, which in turn made no. 5 impossible without the starting point for the bearing. After a long time trying, we practically gave up and headed back to the finish point - at which point we were thankfully told the missing answers by Clive & Ben (the other Nopesport team), who themselves had been told them by some other team. They had wasted a lot more time than us there, and were not happy...

By now, with the help of Tess & Vicky we had worked out our entire route for the rest of the day, which led us neatly back to Russell Square at the finish.

5 . ST PANCRAS GARDENS - CRYPTIC CHALLENGE
The nearest tube station to Waterlow Park, Archway, was closed, so we took a couple of buses and a bit of running at the end to get back towards St Pancras. This ChasePoint proved a bit tricky to initially locate, but easy to find once we'd worked it out. The challenge here wasn't great, a few cryptic clues leading us around the garden, with the final challenge being to work out the word which appeared the most times on a memorial statue in the gardens. Having decided the answer was "The" (10 times), we were then told by the officials that "The" didn't count (changing the rules as they went along...). After another look we realised the answer they were after was "Blessed" (only 7 times) - correct this time.

6 . JUBILE CENTRE - CLIMBING WALL
This location had proved quite tricky for Tess & Vicky to locate, but they eventually tracked it down to a residential area near Camden. Soon we found the centre, gradually converging on it with many other teams. The task here was for one member of the team to climb to the top of the indoor climbing wall, whilst blindfolded - the other member had to shout instructions to guide them, whilst keeping the rope tight. Paul donned the blindfold, and despite having never climbed before managed to get to the top fairly quickly with some expert instruction from Pete below.

7. JUBILEE BRIDGE - OBSERVATION
We now had our biggest journey of the day, needing to get from the King's Cross area down to the Millennium Bridge. Pete had the inspirational idea of using the Thameslink train service which worked brilliantly - got the train from King's Cross Thameslink straight down to Blackfriars and out onto the bridge. Again the challenge here was a bit simple, and it seemed like they were running out of ideas. The marshal at the end of the bridge told us that we had to run along the bridge to another marshal standing in the middle, take any notes we wanted, and go back again where we would be quizzed about his appearance. This was completed fairly easily.

8. GABRIEL'S WHARF - CYCLE CHALLENGE
The journey between 7 & 8 was very tough - running along the South Bank early on a Saturday afternoon is not recommended, given the thousands of tourists around. We nearly knocked over several small children and old grannies. Eventually we located the marshal at a cycle shop. Challenge - one of us (Paul) had to cycle to a location, which Pete would have to describe by phone after I'd cycled away. This worked fairly well, although I managed to forget the last part of Pete's instructions and had to call back for redirection, so we lost a couple of minutes.

9. RUSSELL SQUARE - TRIVIA QUIZ
We'd been given the 15 questions to answer for this quiz at the start of the day. Answers had to be handed in at the assembly point in Russell Square, although this couldn't be the last ChasePoint you completed. Tess & Vicky had been busy researching all the answers for us on the internet during the day - most of which were very obscure - but we were fairly sure we now had them all right. This was quite crucial, as for any you got wrong the penalty was to eat a spoonful of dog food!! Pete conveniently pointed out he was a vegetarian, which would have left it down to me; thankfully we got them all correct though. (Unlike most teams - Clive and Tim both enjoyed a nice spoonful of Pedigree's finest...).

10. BLOOMSBURY SQUARE - CIRCUS SKILLS
The final point took a lot of finding with some very cryptic clues, but we finally located it not too far from Russell Square. The challenge was for one member to walk on stilts whilst the other had to master the diablo. I miserably failed at both, whilst Pete used his clowning skills to good effect, making the tasks look easy. My final task was to create a balloon sausage dog - can't say it really looked like one, but it passed the test.

Finally - back to Russell Square as quickly as we could run, to finish in a time of just under 4 hours 15 minutes. There weren't many people around at the time, so we thought we might have done quite well, but even so we were very surprised to learn we had finished in 3rd place. However, the winning team had beaten us by nearly an hour. This initially seemed unbelievable, but having talked to them we realised that the difference was due to us doing numbers 2, 3 and 4 above, which did take quite a lot of time as they were a long way out; the winning team had instead done the 3 other checkpoints we missed out which were all more central. But we had avoided these on the grounds of the tasks that had to be done - we didn't particulary fancy having our heads shaved (the penalty for failing to complete a sudoku puzzle), singing karaoke (although Pete had been practising "Yellow Submarine" beforehand), or selling baseball caps for charity (which sounded like it could take a long time to complete). In hindsight these tasks were probably quite easy, and if we had chosen these 3 instead then we would certainly have been a lot closer to winning.

The majority of teams took between 5-6 hours, so our final result of 3rd out of 75 teams was very pleasing. We found out afterwards that Nick Gracie, in the winning team, is a very experienced Adventure Racer who has twice finished in the top 10 in the world adventure racing championships! - would have been very tough to beat him. The other Nopesport team of Ben & Clive finished 7th, with Tim & CJ in 22nd.
Overall comments - it was a really good fun day, something a bit different, with some good fun challenges along the way. There was a really friendly atmosphere, and most of the teams stayed in the bar for many hours afterwards. It was good to have the competitive element as well, and very pleasing that we did so well. The "orienteering" exercise was very disappointing however, and somewhat inexcusable given they had been advertising on Nopesport and Brooner had even offered to put on a proper orienteering exercise for them!
Would we do it again? - maybe, but probably only if it was free again! - I don't think it was worth the £100 that was charged (although some proceeds of the event did go to charity). More expenditure probably goes into your average large orienteering event that costs a fraction of the price to enter. What we really needed to do was persuade the other people who competed here that they could get just as much fun by coming orienteering (PROPER orienteering!) for the day. We did try to do a bit of publicity afterwards for SLOW's Trail Challenge race at Richmond Park the following weekend - Pete in particular was refusing to let people go from the pub until they had some details of next week's event and website address in hand. Let's hope this has some success.

Overall, a very good day's entertainment. Thanks to the CityChase organisers & volunteers, and thanks very much to Nopesport for sorting out the free entry for us.
Full results of the event can be found here