The Southern Ontario Amazing Race is a hidden gem of a race that is spread out over two days. This race exists to raise money for the Children’s Foundation of Guelph and Wellington. This is based on the television show and adheres to the formula of traveling, socializing, and running around. The organizers limit the racers to 20 teams of 2. They get way more applicants than positions available, so it always makes for a great cross section of teams. I have raced this race two years in a row, and I have determined that these race organizers are amongst the most organized race organizers that I have ever seen.
This type of racing biggest requirement is the ability to work as a team. Athleticism helps, but it will not guarantee success. The ability to problem solve and do puzzles helps, but it won’t guarantee success. Socializing abilities help, but again this will not guarantee success. The right mixture of athleticism, problem solving and socializing abilities mixed in with a heavy dose teamwork makes form the right conditions to do well and luck takes care of the rest.
My teammate for this race was Jay Hahn. We have grown up together and in 8 some odd years of adventure racing, I have never raced without him.
The race started in Guelph at the Church of Our Lady on the hill and ended up as far away as Mapleton, Ontario. Some of the highlights from the day include running all over Guelph for some number clues that would enable us to open up a locked box. We had 8 different spots to visit, and we did so running, as we felt it would be faster than hitching rides.
Another highlight was some stellar team work and map skills where we had to use a map of Hamilton with 50 directions to find an intersection that was the same as one in Guelph which is where we had to travel. We made a sketchy looking scale bar and we breezed through the directions with minimal frustration. It was after this challenge that we met a rather odd little lady. The lady that picked us up was rather suspicious and arguably slightly not all there. She proceeded to tell us that she thought we were sent from the devil to kill her and that she was scared but ready for anything that god sent her way. Her son was apparently sick and she wanted our opinion as to whether or not it was cancer and she wanted god to take her instead of her son. That is why she thought that perhaps god sent us to test her and potentially take her out of the game of life. It was a sad story with a special kind of crazy. We asked her to drop us off early so that we could run the rest of the way to get away from the woman who we think thought she was talking to god and the devil while driving us, which incidentally made her late for work. It turns out we were right and the location was correct in the end.
There was a fantastic zip line challenge that led over the Elora Gorge where we got to do some river whacking while looking for a “Room with a view”. This ended up being a clue in a cave.
There was some funky puzzles that can only be described as Sudoku puzzles but on steroids, as they involved colours and shapes instead of numbers. There were three of varying difficulty, but Jay and I worked with another team Allison and Leah to get through them all and maintain or lead as we were in 1st and 2nd.
The last event of the day involved us building a fire with limited scrap wood, some toilet paper, and a striker and magnesium stick. Jay’s hands were bleeding and beat up by the time we finished up, but we finished up in 1st place because of his efforts. We won two tickets to anywhere in Canada for our effort on the day. Allison and Leah finished in 2nd. We had a night of camping outside, great food and some fun. Overall it was a good day with more challenges and fun to come.
The second day was the key to the race, as the times for the previous day meant very little. A 3 hour lead can turn into only a 30 minute lead in the morning. The fastest time and the slowest time were fractionally split so that the max advantage was only 1 hour in between the 1st and last place team. We started in Elmira at 9:00am and ended up back in Guelph for the finish much later. We received rides from a variety of people, one guy even had a rusty machete in the back where I was. It was a good day and led to some glorious results.
Some of the highlights of the second day include a great number of challenges throughout the day. The first task was to the use numerous boxes spread throughout a field that contained brail letters that were covered to figure out a message on a separate sheet that describes where to go next. Another highlight was matching images with their corresponding Google earth image in a particular order so that when the paper was turned over, we could see an image on the back of the location we were to travel to next. This part was easy as we had got lost earlier and already passed it.
One particular highlight was that of having to solve a rather large jigsaw puzzle from a pile of pieces and figuring out the directions (rally car style) as to where to get the next clue. After some wondering, Jay had a moment of brilliance and figured out what we were to do and we ran it for about 20 minutes to our next location.
One of the final tasks was to use a giant 5 foot sling shot to catapult tennis balls across a field to be caught. I slung, and Jay caught. Each coloured ball gave us one more clue to where the final location was on the map. One team had arrived before us, our old friends Allison and Leah. We closed the gap quickly and started to figure out where the end was. Allison and Leah came over to us and wanted to know if we would want to figure it out together and get to the end at the same time. They claimed that they would let us go across first. We had worked well together over the last two days and they thought that if it was close in the end that they would let us take the win. They were very nice. We took the win. We won a great gift voucher from a travel agency and we waited to cheer the rest of the competitors on.
Jay and I did well in this race due to a number of factors. One, we are athletic and this means if there is anything remotely physical, we excel in the challenge. We also have the ability to run from task to task and not rely on hitch hiking as our only means of transportation. Two, I am decent at problem solving and puzzles, and Jay just destroys them. Three, we work well with others. Four, we love to have fun. We went into the racing wishing to be competitive and ideally win, but above all else, our main goal was to have fun, and we did.
