Chase to the Max!

[hnpcc]

After the Urban Max abandoned Melbourne this year, they suggested that we might like to try out the Nokia City Chase instead. So, being a suggestible kind of sheep, I did so and enrolled astrocave and myself as "Calm a Llama Down" once again.

Having paid in full, I then I read the waiver, and discovered I'd managed to enroll us in a reality TV show, something not actually mentioned on their website. At least parts of the waiver were suspiciously like those from The Amazing Race (yes, of course I've read it), particularly the bits about producers being able to make up stuff and/or get actors to play you and there being no comeback. There were also a few interesting clauses about indemnifying the organisers if I were injured or killed due to faulty equipment. You know, it's these kind of waivers that usually don't stand up in court, from what I've read. In the end we decided to ignore it and went ahead anyway.

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, warm with barely a cloud in the sky. Dean dropped me at astrocave's house, and we finished packing our bags. astrocave wavered a bit on whether to take a raincoat or not, but in the end decided to put it in anyway. As ready and prepared as we were ever going to be we headed for the train station, and then managed our very first sprint of the day as the train started pulling in when we were still 200m away. The registration for the race was at the Transport Bar, at Federation Square. We arrived at 8.35am, to find that a large number of teams had taken the "8.30am sharp!" part of the instructions seriously and as a result there was a queue already. Fortunately they were breaking the queues up by team name - as it turns out not many people registered a team starting with the letters A-G. Having collected our t-shirts and race bibs we headed off to change - and then realised we had an hour and a half to kill before the race start at 10am. Naturally we went to Brunetti's.

On the way back astrocave realised he hadn't brought sunscreen. We checked out the 7-11, but a combination of the exorbitant price and a realisation that it was actually clouding over a bit meant that we didn't buy any.

Back at the registration, I collected our Nokia baseball caps (which I'd managed to miss earlier) and some free Nokia-branded water (I wonder who was sponsoring this event..?) and we were directed to head across the road to the grassy patch between the Arts Centre and the Concert Hall where a warm up was due to start at 9.30am.

It actually started at 9.35am, but whatever. My first thought about the guy taking the warm-up was that I'd seen him before. Then I realised I was mixing him up with a trainer from The Biggest Loser - but he was still seriously buff. Then I realised that no, I had actually seen him before (I think) - I'm reasonably certain I've seen him running a boot camp in the park near my work. Then again, these buff guys wearing black all look the same when you don't actually have your glasses on, so who knows. The warm up, however, was Boot Camp Lite. We had stretches, marching, pushups (seriously here), walking lunges - thank God I've been going to group training. Watching the trainer's three year old son doing the moves as well was so cute though.

After getting our heart rates up and pumping we then stood around for 15 minutes while the organiser of the event, Nick the Canadian, talked. I watched and listened, while the other part of my brain started noticing the black, black clouds coming our way. The clock edged closer to 10am. The clouds were coming faster. Nick got us all to hug our team-mate. Nick got us all to hug a random person standing next to us. The clouds loomed ominously. Finally 10am hit, and Nick informed us that the clue sheets would be given out by the black-clad guys on the stage with him - but to get them we would need two out of three of a bottle top, foreign currency, or a business card.

I looked at astrocave. I had brought my driver's licence (which the website told us we'd need to get into the venue, but which I didn't take out of my wallet the entire time) and some cash. "I've got a business card!" said astrocave, who hadn't cleared out his wallet as thoroughly as he'd thought. At that point I remembered my Nokia branded water, wrenched off the cap and let astrocave wade into the scrum to collect the clue sheet while I sculled the water. Not as much as I'd hoped, as I also managed to spill some on me, astrocave and (unfortunately) the clue sheet while trying to open my bag. I finished the water and we headed into the CBD.

The City Chase differs from the Urban Max in that you only have to collect 10 checkpoints before returning to the finish line as quickly as possible. The clue sheet offered us a choice of 14 checkpoints, of which one was mandatory. We headed to Flinders St to try and get a start on that one, which was:

Add the number of the tram that goes down Beaconsfield Parade, with the number of the tram to West Preston... subtract the number of stops the City Circle tram makes... then add the route number of the bus to East Kew and the last three digits of the Metlink call centre number. What do you get? Then take this answer to the furthest stop of tram 96.

OK, the first two parts of that we knew off the top of our heads. Route 1 goes down Beaconsfield Parade, route 112 goes to West Preston (sometimes it helps being a transport geek.) The bus to East Kew though - well neither of us had ever lived out that way. Fortunately we'd organised the postdoc to be our googlemonkey for this year, and she was able to confirm that it was route 202 quite quickly. Unfortunately the tram stop at Flinders St didn't have a map of the City Circle route as we were hoping, so the postdoc confirmed that too, by the simple method of counting all the stops (27). That only left the Metlink number - which Chris realised was printed on our tram ticket. Heh. That all sorted, we huddled under the tram stop as the clouds which had been threatening earlier decided to cut to the chase and dump an entire year's worth of rain on us all at once. It poured.

"Good thing I brought the rain coat!" said astrocave.

Checking our map, we headed for a checkpoint in the CBD, number 5:

At a Melbourne Institute, Croft by name, play the Operation game.[1]

Fortunately astrocave knew where the Croft Institute was, and had managed to locate the correct lane on our map. We splashed off through the rain, heading up to Exhibition St, then down Little Bourke till we found it, and dripped our way in to the main bar. This activity turned out to involve the Operation game, where you retrieve a piece of plastic from a game board without setting off a buzzer. There was, however, one small twist. One person would be doing the operation while blindfolded, while the other directed them verbally.

After a brief discussion ("your arms are longer!") it was decided that I would direct astrocave. He put on the blindfold while I put on an apron and off we went. We were very nearly successful on our first attempt, which was trying to get the frog-in-the-throat. I picked this piece solely because it was the only one which was anywhere near central in it's hole. Unfortunately it's also kind of tricky to pick up, and we failed. The second attempt was with a different piece, and also failed. The third was very close... but again, failed at the last minute. "OK, you need to go over to the table there and scull a drink!" said the volunteer.

There were lots of small green drinks on the table. They were cordial. Sugar rush!

We got our bib stamped (the control card was my bib), and dodged the waterfalls in Crofts Lane as we headed for checkpoint 3:

"Such is Life."

This, I thought, was a gimme. Talking to people after the event though, it seems that not everyone is aware of Ned Kelly's (alleged) final words, nor that he was hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol. We ran up through the back streets, to find a small queue of Chasers waiting to go in.

"Do you know what we have to do?"
"No", said a team ahead of us with a Melways.

Then I noticed a small, water-sodden piece of paper with questions on it.

"Cool!" We rang the postdoc to try and get the answers to the questions, but unfortunately Google and the internet were un-forthcoming. Team Melways were also having no luck with their googlemonkey.

So we waited until another team came out. Wearing black and white prisoner pajamas. Oh joy. Trying to get the quite damp pajamas on was fun (and my top ended up inside out[2]), but we finally managed to head inside where we were met by a volunteer.

"The answers are in cells 21, 25 and 26. Oh, and the answer to question four is 'Second Cell Block'. No running!"

The questions were:

1. Who was responsible for the "Horror of Healesville"?
2. What was the name of the Lady of the night murdered by some bloke with a Spanish name?
3. What was the "science" of looking at bumps on the head as a predictor of criminality known as?
4. What is the name of the part of the gaol you are now in?

As you can tell, I've forgotten the answers (and part of the question) to 1 and 2, but 3 was phrenology (which we already knew.) Coming out again we discovered that it's actually harder to take wet pajamas off than to get them on. Our second stamp achieved we ran down Latrobe St to find checkpoint 4:

At 211 LaTrobe, find out from Nokia how not to be a technophobe.

Why is it that City of Melbourne puts the numbers on the street signs only on one side of the street? Very annoying. astrocave sprinted down towards Elizabeth St, when I realised from reading the numbers on the other side that 211 was actually Melbourne Central. *eye roll* We dived into the main part, to find a series of coloured balls in tubs arranged around a wall with coloured holes in it.

"Hi! One of you has to run around and collect two balls at a time, the other has to throw one through the holes. You have to do it in the order indicated by the markers on the floor."

astrocave looked at me. "I'll throw!"

I sprinted off to find two green balls, then (as astrocave threw one effortlessly through the right hole), two pink balls, two red balls, two white balls, two blue balls and finally two yellow balls[3].

"Are you sure you don't want to play netball?" I asked.

astrocave promptly missed, and I had to run back to get more yellow balls.

"No - see, I stress and I miss!" Our third stamp completed, the volunteer said "I've got a clue for you! The Melbourne Aquatic Centre!" "OK!" we said, and headed back into the rain.

Once outside we had a quick debate. Should we head for checkpoint 1, which was further out but which we knew exactly where it was, or checkpoint 2, which was probably closer but we were less certain of the location? On balance we decided that certainty won out over distance so we ran back up Lonsdale St towards the West Preston/East Brunswick/Bundoora trams and checkpoint 1:

The Rainbow Hotel is not too far, where like a hero you'll play guitar!"[4]

Managing to catch an 86 East Brunswick tram, we made it to the Rainbow Hotel and discovered to no one's surprise that we would be playing Guitar Hero. Against a member of the public, who we would have to ask.

Normally that wouldn't be too big a stretch. The Rainbow is just off Brunswick St, which is a mecca for hipster and black-clad dudes, many of whom would leap at the opportunity to play and score a free beer (we're not stupid.) However, it was pouring and the streets were deserted. The only people out were harrassed looking house-hunters, who were attending an open-for-inspection and had another 10 or so to go to. After running up and down for 10 minutes or so and even going into a shop to ask people, we finally managed to convince Anthony, who was heading off to his parent's place, that Guitar Hero would be really quick (he declined the beer.) We nearly lost him straight away when the volunteer explained that he'd need to put on a rainbow wig, some "cool" glasses and get a lightning bolt painted on his face ("no, we don't have to, we'll pretend") and that it could take as long as 5 minutes ("Trust me, I've played this before, we'll get to 5000 points in under 2"), he and I headed into a rendition of "Living on a Prayer". Two minutes later Anthony was back on his way and we were running back to catch a tram to our next checkpoint (#6), which opened at midday:

Google "Boxing Flinders St" and remember to protect your face!

You might notice there's a few results there. We headed for the top of the list, which turned out to be correct. Two teams were waiting when we got there at 7 minutes to twelve, a number which had reached 10 by the time the doors opened.

"OK, take your shoes off once we hit the blue mats! Come this way!"

We filed into the gym, towards a boxing ring at the back. An extremely fit guy with absolutely no body fat was shadowboxing and doing pushups next to it.

"You'll be fighting him!" said the volunteer.

A moment of shocked silence as the thought "we're all going to die" went across everyone's faces.

"Only joking! You'll be pillow fighting each other!"

One member from each team went into the ring to fight each other. To win you needed two touches to the head, two to the torso and two to the arse. The women from the two mixed teams ahead of us went first. Three minutes later, and after some extremely effective defensive strategy from both sides, they had one touch each and were stuffed. Their male partners swapped in. A minute later we had a winner (guys don't bother with this defensive bullshit!) and astrocave stepped in to fight the loser. He lost in a close match, then won the next bout so we laced up our very wet shoes and headed out.

"Where's that bus go?"
"Port Melbourne I think.. quick, jump on!"

The bus dropped us right next to our next checkpoint destination, number 10:

At South Melbourne Markets is waiting some food, it won't taste bad if you don't chew.

We had a bit of a debate about this one. astrocave was convinced it was going to be oysters. From something that Nick the Canadian had said, so was I. We were, fortunately, wrong (I hate seafood.) After a quick search we found the checkpoint, which had a roulette wheel and a table set up with small containers of food. astrocave spun first, and landed on 35 - which turned out to have lollies on it. I spun next and got baby food with wasabi peas. Both of us were fine with that - particularly when the guy after me got cat food. (Another team got anchovies in cream, which ergh.) We caught the light rail up a stop or two, and then started jogging towards checkpoint 12:

At Gharana work together as a team, to perform a Bollywood routine.

This was totally the most fun of all the checkpoints. I went off to get dressed in a sari (6m by 2m of bright yellow cloth!) while astrocave learned the routine to "Jai Ho!" Then we swapped over, with astrocave emerging dressed in a bright orange cloth. Then we performed the routine for the maharajah, just as about 6 other teams arrived.

"You were fantastic! Best we've had today!" said the dance teacher[5].

We thanked her, got out of the saris and ran quickly over to catch the tram the other teams had disembarked from[6]. Back at the light rail, we headed for the mandatory checkpoint at the end of the line.

Our thinking at this stage was:

1. We'd been told by Nick the Canadian that we wouldn't know where the finishing point was, but would find out during the race.
2. We'd been told by a volunteer that the Melbourne Aquatic Centre was a clue.
3. This was the only mandatory checkpoint, where surely they would confirm the finishing point.

At the end of the line we gave our numerical total to the volunteers, who stamped us with an angel fish stamp.

I looked at him expectantly. "Is that it?"

"Yeah."

OK... so maybe the Melbourne Aquatic Centre was the finishing line. Bizarre.

Deciding to work on the theory that it must be, we headed for our penultimate checkpoint, number 13:

Car-eoke your time away, in a Volvo out Stokehouse way.

Running from the end of Acland St to the Stokehouse we arrived to find that we had, once again, to find a member of the public - this time to sing a minute's worth of ABBA with us. Oh and we couldn't look in the restaurant.

Again, normally St Kilda Beach is humming with people everywhere. In the middle of a very wet day though? Three people, two of whom were running late for their lunch date at the Stokehouse. The third was Lindsey, a Canadian backpacker who knew no ABBA lyrics but was happy to come fake it with us. One minute's worth of "Mamma Mia" later and we were back on track to our final checkpoint, number 8:

To Oval 5 in Albert Park where we will push your spirit, stamina and muscle.

Getting off the light rail we ran into Team Melways, who'd just spent 30 minutes unsuccessfully searching for the checkpoint and were heading for the Aquatic Centre.

We dithered briefly, then decided to try looking anyway. Oval 5, which is rectangular by the way, had a rugby game on it. Oval 6 had a soccer game. Somehow astrocave managed to spot a sign, over in the distance (God only knows how, there were millions of white signs all over the place. Mostly saying "Contractors Park Here" as they're setting up for the Grand Prix at the moment.) I jogged over to check where it was pointing and we headed off down Hockey Drive, following the arrow and looking around for the checkpoint flag. At the end of hockey drive we'd found nothing. We looked at each other. Maybe it was back at Oval 5 after all. Back we went, circling both oval 5 and oval 6 - no, no flag - back to the sign - yep, arrow definitely pointing down Hockey Drive towards St Kilda. astrocave headed onto oval 2 to see if he could see anything there, while I went back down Hockey Drive, calling in at a pavilion and a tennis re-stringing business on the way[7]. Meeting astrocave on the other side of the oval (I couldn't go across it due to the Grand Prix having put up barriers all over the place), we checked out another pavilion and I asked a lady walking her dog if she'd seen anyone.

"Maybe it's back over there..?" I said.
"We could search this entire park, we've no idea where it is. I think we should give up and go to the Belgian Beer Cafe one instead."

We started heading towards the Belgian Beer Cafe, whose checkpoint clue read:

9. That mighty tradition of the European Beer Hall is alive and kicking, sitting smack in the middle of St Kilda Rd.

Coming around a corner, we ran into the Albert Park Checkpoint, taking both us and the volunteers completely by surprise.

We mentioned the difficulty we'd had finding them, especially given the sign was pointing away from the checkpoint and where we were was actually nowhere near Oval 5 - and then joked that the clue had said it would test our spirit, stamina and patience, and it certainly had.

Unfortunately that wasn't what they meant.

This checkpoint was a shuttle run, where you ran to the first point, did a burpee with pushup, ran backwards to the start, ran to the second checkpoint, did two burpees with pushups, ran backwards to the start, and so on until you'd completed 5 checkpoints. Oh for crying out loud, which sadist designed this one? (And couldn't we have come to it earlier in the day?)

Having finished the course the volunteer asked if we'd been to the Aquatic Centre yet.

"Um, no - isn't that the finish line?"
"Oh, no, that's at Transport, where you started."

Oh FFS. We thanked them, suggested they might want to make themselves a tad more visible to anyone looking for them, and headed off to catch a tram back down St Kilda Rd to the end.

As we detoured around Junction Oval (Lakeside drive was closed due to the bloody Grand Prix) we heard the Sheffield Shield final being postponed due to rain.

Coming back in to transport all the finished teams cheered us over the line. We ended up coming in 43rd, out of 100 teams, in 4 hours, 30-something minutes and some seconds. Seriously, that 40 minutes running around Albert Park cost us.

Inside we caught up again with Team Melways, who'd finished a couple of minutes behind us. We filled them in on where the Albert Park checkpoint actually was, they filled us in on what some of the other checkpoints we hadn't done were. Top of the list was number 11:

At Gasworks you will get to draw, as someone poses in the raw.

Nick the Canadian had said at the start that the race would challenge us and push us beyond our normal limits. Amongst his slightly too specific examples were eating gross stuff - hence my apprehension about the South Melbourne Market clue, which turned out to be fairly tame - and nudity. astrocave and I have known each other since 1993, and I don't think our friendship is ready for nudity[8] so we'd crossed that one off the list immediately. Sure enough, one team member was nude while the other drew them.

"I was fine when I was in the room with just us" the male half of Team Melways said, "but then six other teams came in and suddenly I was in the middle of a whole group of naked men. Then I was a bit uncomfortable."

The Belgian Beer checkpoint was unfortunately not beer drinking, but in fact finding letters to spell out "Nat Geo" (another sponsor) in wading pools filled with various substances such as honey, cream, etc.

The Aquatic Centre actually involved diving into the deep pool to find your team number. It was probably fortunate that we missed this one, as neither of us had goggles - the lack of bathers was less of an issue given how wet we were by that point.

Checkpoint 2, which was in the Docklands and which we skipped on the grounds of inadequate local knowledge had the clue:

Head to the James Squire brew, where some animals are waiting to scare you.

This was supposed to be reptiles and getting people to hold snakes, but the reptiles got stuck in traffic (flash flooding again) and so people sang the national anthem instead.

The last checkpoint we missed involved us finding and utilising the Volvo Fast Forwards, which were cars you could take (if there was room) between checkpoints. We didn't see one all day, no idea what that was.

So all up, how did I feel about this compared to the Urban Max? The short answer is - complicated. Up until the last checkpoint I would say I enjoyed the Chase. The clues weren't particularly hard, but that wasn't so much of an issue. The things that really irritated me were the Albert Park checkpoint fiasco - seriously, by that point we were getting tired and it really shouldn't have been such a problem to find a checkpoint. At least when we couldn't find the entrance to Margaret Court Stadium last year we knew where the hell we were supposed to be. Albert Park we were completely clueless as to even which direction the checkpoint might have been located. Sure, you can argue we should have bailed earlier and gone to the Aquatic Centre - which brings me to the second thing that really, really irritated me. I just don't see the point of not telling people where the end of the race is. Other teams I talked to were surprised that the volunteers just told us - they were made to take a guess or just stonewalled completely. Which is just stupid, really. If the mandatory checkpoint had been where we were given the information I would have been better with it. Or even if one of the other checkpoints was - but as it was, it just bugged me. Probably not least because it came right after the Albert Park thing.

It took me until a bit later to work out the third thing which was... not irritating, but just making me like the Urban Max more than the Chase. In the Urban Max everyone racing has to do all the checkpoints. The teams that finished before you may have had some luck with public transport timing, or may just have been super-fit and ran the entire thing, but they still had to go out to Fitzroy, back to St Kilda and do all the same activities you did. So while you can blame not being able to find the door to Margaret Court Arena for you not winning your section (honest!) you can see where it was that you stuffed up and the winning teams didn't. The Chase though - well, if you caught the Volvo FF you not only got a free checkpoint but you got free transportation to another checkpoint. The element of luck is much higher in the Chase - from finding members of the public quickly (astrocave and I discussed getting friends to hang around the areas where checkpoints were as part of next year's strategy, something I think more experienced teams may have done.) Strategy also plays a much bigger role than in the Max - the winning team didn't go to either Fitzroy or Docklands, concentrating exclusively on the St Kilda/CBD checkpoints. I didn't realise how much more luck played a role until I talked to an umpire at netball, who'd also competed - and come 10th. Granted he and his teammate are very fit - but they also caught the Volvo FF very early on and got taken out to Fitzroy, and almost caught it a second time in St Kilda but it was full. Given that we didn't even see the Volvos once during the race - well, it's certainly a major luck factor.

The other thing was that while I really enjoyed all but the Albert Park activity, they were a lot less active than most of the Max checkpoints. In the Max I've been kayaking (badly), watched my team mate abseil, watched astrocave rock-climb, grass-boarded down Flagstaff Hill - it does make playing Blindfolded Operation look a bit tame. Interestingly similar complaints have turned up on the facebook group about the Sydney race.

Would I do the Chase again? Yeah, it was enjoyable and I had fun for most of it. I think now that we've got a better idea of what we're doing we'll plan our route a lot more carefully next year though. And stack certain areas with "general public" members.

And if the Max comes back to Melbourne I'd probably do that too.

A map of where we went, incidentally, is here. Notice where the Albert Park line goes, i.e. all over the bloody shop. *sigh*

--

[1] There's more to this clue, but my clue sheet disintegrated. A lot. It's currently in four pieces with parts missing from the middle where they stuck together.
[2] making it white and black..? There was originally also a ball and chain but they'd abandoned that as too cumbersome by the time we got there.
[3] May not be correct colour order.
[4] Seriously, these rhymes are worse than Survivor clues.
[5] I think she may have been exaggerating a bit. Not least because we were doing it mirroring each other, when I started with the wrong hand.
[6] We're fairly certain the trams had banked up due to flash flooding, as there were 3 of them there. This after none went past us while we were running the three blocks to the restaurant!
[7] Yeah, so much for the "25 metres apart maximum" rule.
[8] Particularly while completely sober.

Comments

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Anything that doesn't actually require physical strength or dexterity I'm good for!