The New Jersey Bergen Record
(Original article online)

This race doesn't always go to the fastest.

Thinking on the run in N.Y.C.

By ADAM LISBERG Staff Writer

We dashed out of the starting gate with a single clue to guide us: Find the pub that had to move when David Letterman took over a Broadway theater. And find it fast, because there were 11 more stops to go.

That was how my wife, Rachel, and I began racing through New York City on a hot and sticky Saturday as part of Urban Challenge, a high-tech scavenger hunt crossed with a city road race. We competed against 201 other two-person teams in a trek from Central Park to the Financial District, from Midtown to Brooklyn, all while trying to decipher devious clues and map the fastest route between them.

Perhaps some trivia buff already knew that McGee's Pub, now on 55th Street between Eighth Avenue, had to make way for Letterman; we had to figure that out by interrogating half a dozen store clerks, hotel doormen, and cops. But we already knew where to find the next checkpoint - a statue of a dog in Central Park - though some (OK, most) of the other competitors probably could run there faster.

It was infectious fun. Urban Challenge's rules are simple: You take a 30-question trivia challenge to determine your starting order. Then you are handed a list of 12 clues and sent on your way. With a loaned digital camera, you take pictures of your team at the checkpoints, in order, then scramble back to headquarters to finish.

You're encouraged to bring cellphones and call your friends for help finding, say, a Greenwich Village café named after a famous painting. But here's the catch: The checkpoints are scattered around the city, and the only allowable way to get to them is on foot or on mass transit. No taxis, no skates, no pogo sticks.

So if you're a slovenly non-runner who knows lots of New York trivia and has memorized the subway map, you could do just as well as a marathoner who doesn't know that, say, there's a big bust of Washington Irving on East 17th Street.

Most of our competitors seemed to be pretty healthy runners, at least judging by the way they flew past us at the checkpoints, or the way they blithely shouted "Let's run there!" while I dragged Rachel to the nearest subway.

We made for a mismatched team. Rachel has lived almost all her life in and around New York, she rides the subway every day, and her daily workout involves a five-mile run. I've lived in the city less than two years, I spend more time in my car than on the subway, and I can't run more than a couple of blocks without stopping for a pizza break.

Yet we had some real strokes of luck: Rachel knew the most difficult checkpoint (a Benetton store in an old publishing house on Fifth Avenue) off the top of her head. And when we stopped at a friend's apartment to look up clues on the Web, the next checkpoint (a small "ice cream" sign on a building) turned out to be just around the corner.

Our Web break chewed up almost 45 minutes, though we never could have finished the course without it. Equally important, though, was a quick cellphone call to the office, where two colleagues jumped online to find answers to more obscure clues (like where to find a large pair of gloves hanging from a building near Wall Street - thanks, Tom!).

Along the way, we found the "skip chick" -a woman in an Urban Challenge T-shirt -and had our picture taken with her on the Brooklyn Promenade. By finding her, we were able to skip any checkpoint on our list, which was a big help.

But we also burned up valuable minutes when we had second thoughts about the Atlantis Printing store in Brooklyn (it was correct); when we ran to catch an uptown F train, only to find it had been rerouted that day; and, of course, when I wheezed to a sweaty halt because I couldn't keep up with my wife's jogging pace.

Urban Challenge - motto: "Think on the run" - is making its way to 20 cities this year, stopping in a different one every Saturday, until the finalists from each local race meet for a national championship in Las Vegas this fall. The New York race was the best-attended, and plenty of teams got into the spirit with matching shirts and snazzy team names.

The winners, Paul and Kimberly Niehaus of Manhattan, used a careful strategy to finish the course in a blistering 3:39:20. They lined up an Internet guru buddy to surf the Web for clues, they kept in touch with him with cellphones and a two-way e-mail pager, and they counted on their buddy to do research while they did the running (in eye-catching green and purple striped shirts).

"We knew there were going to be a lot of people who were better runners than we were," Kimberly said. "He's running Philadelphia in two weeks, so we'll do this for him then."

But the second-place finishers, 6 minutes and 19 seconds behind, didn't use any electronic help. They just ran fast, counted on their knowledge of Manhattan, and traded information with other racers they encountered.

"We called about seven or eight of our friends who know the city really well, and not one of them was helpful," said Sean Grant, 29, of Manhattan, who played basketball in the hot sun for weeks to build up his endurance. "I think we might have set the record for arguments. But we always figured it out."

Grant's teammate, Terence Gerchberg, 30, also of Manhattan, is in training for the New York Marathon. He wore a pedometer that measured how far they ran during the race: 9.25 miles.

Rachel and I finished the course in a respectable 4:45:39, placing us 29th. We didn't win a free trip to Las Vegas or a place in the championships, but we got a goodie bag with T-shirts, Pez dispensers, and medals with blue ribbons.

If that sounds like fun, the Philadelphia race is Saturday (for more information, www.urbanchallenge.com). It's not cheap - $65 per person, rising to $75 as the race gets closer - but if you ever wanted to feel like you're competing in a reality TV show, without having to eat worms or live with strangers, it's worthwhile.