Mens Health Urbanathlon 2008 - Chicago, IL

I first heard about this race from Muddy Buddy race partner and long time friend, Nate Gawel. Racers have the choice of putting together a three person team, with each member running one of the three legs, or racers can opt to go it alone and run the full 10.5-11mi. I chose run solo and see how well I could finish. I was even included in the Men's Health video highlights! You can see it around 1min 53sec on the following link (find Chicago '08 Highlights under Video Highlights). Don't blink, you might miss me! Overall I finished 752nd out of 1604 individual racers, so by schooling standards I got an F, but my standards, I got an F+...

I'm not a big runner, don't really like it, so I think the majore allure if you will were the obstacles that we got to do in between the three different legs. After doing an obstacle, teams would transition to their next racer, or the gluttons for punishment (us solo racers) would just continue plodding along the course. Navy Pier's obstacles were the yellow construction barriers in the picture to the left. There were three barriers and then a tunnel you crawled through, repeat once and then start hoofing back down the pier toward Lake Shore Drive.

Fast forward to Soldier Field where we had to crawl under a cargo-net and then do some monkey bars...the picture to the left shows me after catching my shoe on the net and having to hold up a couple racers behind me and grab the thing. My sunglasses were also rudely stripped from my hat, but the photographer didn't catch that Nobel Prize winning moment.


I wasn't sure what was next, because I knew that we had to run up and down three aisles of the upper deck at Soldier Field, but race staff had us running down toward McCormick place. I was starting to get a little winded and my legs were getting jello-esque, so I found a guy running whose shirt said SWAT on the back. He and two other SWAT (special weapons and tactics) buddies were running and he was waiting to meet back up with them. Perfect, you're a badass and I can ask you questions about how you get to play GI Joe everyday and I'll distract myself until the next fun part of the race, MARINE HURDLES!

Man! I wish I had pictures of these things. Placed in the sand so you effectively have no solid ground to jump from, these large wooden hurdles were easily chest high and you had to clear each hurdle individually, touching the ground in between each beam. Definitely difficult to do, but a lot of fun regardless. Wasn't a huge fan of getting sand in my shoes, but the point of this race is to prove you're a toughguy, so I didn't tell anyone.


Soldier Field. Picture at right. Not easy. First you had to get up to the upper deck, which made me feel like I was having a broken femur set in traction with each step. If the race directors had to pay any money for getting into an empty Soldier Field, it was absolutely worth it. I didn't see anyone pitch over backwards and fall, but I know I thought I was going to a couple of times. After the third ascent and when I was back on a ramp heading back north to Grant Park, I saw a couple of friends that rallied my spirits a little and gave me enough of a push to carry me to the finish line.

Oh that finish line. One of the trademarks for the Urbanathlon are parking two NYC cabs hood to hood and having the racers jump over their front ends. That was fun. Never done the Dukes of Hazard slide, and sure as heck didn't do it with any type of style that day. Kind of skidded, but somehow the picture they got of me looks rather graceful, so thanks to the photographer for that! The last obstacle of the day, is a nasty, mean-spirited 8ft wool with a rope attached to it. I, to this day, do not know if someone, somehow, coated me in wet cement when I jumped and latched on to the top of that wall. I could not for the life of me, lift myself over that wall. I sat there, listening to the a-hole with a bullhorn 3ft away yelling at me to get over that wall, for a solid 20 seconds, TRYING, BEGGING, myself to just straighten my arms and get a leg over the wall. Someone answered that call, or maybe my body was hurting more from the bullhorn from the damn wall, but I got over. That's right, bullhorn guy, I made it.

What a great race though. I proved to myself what I was made of, that I could finish an endurance foot race, so I gues I have to do a marathon next...maybe I'll skip the marathon thing and go straight to Ironman competitions, more my style!