The Chase is on!
Saturday in Vancouver, the Chase is on! It’s time again for the Vancouver City Chase and I can’t wait. This is year six for both me and the Chase, and it’s going to be the best race ever.
For the uninitiated, the City Chase is like The Amazing Race, but all contained within one city, and you can only travel by public transit or foot. An urban adventure race that’s part scavenger hunt, part footrace, part strategy and part “what the hell, let’s do it”, it’s a ridiculous amount of fun. Being that I’m totally obsessed with the Amazing Race, this is as close to being on the show that this Canadian girl can get: six hours of running around Vancouver and completing various random tasks at ten chasepoints scattered throughout the city. Oh, and you’re with a partner, so there’s someone there to drag you along, be dragged, argue with and hug in celebration along the way. Check it out online at mitsubishicitychase.com or on Facebook and see for yourself.
The big question is, as usual, what are they going to make us do this year? All they tell us going in is where the start line is and it’s not until they say “go” that you get your clue sheets, so it involves a lot of blind faith. Sometimes the tasks are fun (modeling your partner’s likeness out of play-doh), sometimes they’re physical (climbing the 700 stairs to the observation deck at Harbour Centre), sometimes they’re wet (the organizers promised not to make anyone ever do the underwater bowling ever again, as it was almost impossible), and sometimes they’re gross (anything with the words “smoothie” or “dog bakery” mean you’re going to have to eat something really, really gross, and last year for the first time I downed a live meal worm. Yep, it’s as unpleasant as you’d expect, but thankfully they’re small and can be taken like pills). God knows, it could be anything. Kayaking. Fencing. Wheelchair basketball against professionals. Nudity made it’s first appearance last year as one of the optional points was to run an obstacle course at Wreck Beach full-on starkers.
But that’s the fun of the chase. The unknown. I’m not exactly an overly-outgoing person, my friends would probobly describe me as the “quiet one” in our group, but I am incredibly competitive. Over the years I’ve discovered that in the heat of the race I’ll do pretty much anything. Approach random seniors and ask if I can hold their false teeth in a photo; eat the aforementioned mealworm; strip to my underwear in public for a water challenge (because, really, bathing suits are not supportive running attire); and one of my prouder moments came by completing a high ropes course, complete with rappel. I was shaking the whole time, but that competitive streak of mine got me over that fear, and afterwards it felt really good.
From a travel perspective (this is a travel blog, after all), it wasn’t until I started this race that I really learned how to navigate Vancouver. Before the first year I literally studied downtown maps like I was cramming for an exam, and now this girl from the ‘burbs knows her way around. But also, the race takes me places I might never have gone otherwise, like being a very fast-paced tourist in my own city. Every year I end up with a shortlist of places that looked really cool as I ran through them, so now I need to go back and really enjoy them.
But the coolest part is that this is an international race. All across Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Madrid, Paris, London… they’re adding more cities every year, and the winners of each go on to the World Championships, which have been in Rome, Chicago, Morocco, and this year are in Argentina. Sure, it’s way easier to race around a city you already have some knowledge about, but still I have this fantasy of running the London or Hong Kong race some year, zipping around on their great public transportation, trying new things…
We’ll soon see how this year plays out, and I’ll post an after-race recap, but it’s going to be fun!
mitsubishicitychase.com
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