How did I get into this? Well, Iñaki was harrassing me about a couple weeks ago. He originally signed up - and paid - for it with Xalba as his partner. Xalba couldn't do it, so for some reason Iñaki asked me. I kept refusing, even when he said I didn't have to pay him. I didn't want to do it for a few reasons: 1. I'm so unathletic. You all know me. The only sports I like to do are long walks and booty dancing. 2. I'm just not that competitive. If I do something like this, I would do it for fun. I like to win, but I just prefer having fun over frustrating/stressing out/killing myself and others. And 3. I hate the anticipation. Not knowing what I had to do for it makes me anxious. I kept thinking that they were going to make us repel off a skyscraper or eat something nasty like bull's balls. Nevertheless, after a few days of "pleeeasssee", I said yes to shut him up. But, I said, with one condition: I am not running. I told him about my messed up knees and he said that that was fine.
So off we went early in the AM on Saturday. I was nervous, but pretty excited about it. I knew it would be fun - I mean, how many people get to do do something like this - but still had my reservations...mostly about not knowing what we would have to do. After I agreed to doing Citychase, the final in Rome last year just happen to be on TV. One of the things they had to do was pose naked for a sketch artist. Iñaki and I looked at each other and said, "ummm not doing that!!" Now do you see why I was nervous about it??
We arrived in Palacio de Deportes around 9 and saw a long line of competitors. We couldn't help but laugh when we saw a bunch of people wearing running pants and had their Camelback gear filled with water. These guys were totally gung-ho. Here we are, half asleep and wearing normal work out clothes (all I had were Adidas wannabe pants from Target, and a Loyola t-shirt). They passed out waivers for us to sign that said I'm in good health, or that we don't mind that there are no medical stations in the Citychase route. Then they gave us our team numbers, a t-shirt, a map and bags full of goodies (granola bars, gatorade, Playstation magazines).
So here are the rules: there were 15 clues but we only had to do 10 proofs (OMG what is the word for this?! I know it's not proofs but it's the direct translation of pruebas. That's how the Spanish translate it and I've gotten so used to calling it this that I can't remember the real word for this in a race. Tests just sounds funny). Anyway, we could use our cellphones, or go to an internet cafe to figure out the clues. Also, we could only use public transportation (Metro or bus), or walk, or run. The race began at 10:15 and we had 5 hours to finish it.
The first proof was to find a one cent coin, a breakfast item, and underwear. Iñaki and I, like many other teams, ran to the nearest cafe and asked for a churro and 1 cent. Then we had the underwear problem. Who was going to give us underwear??? We realized we had to do give them one of ours. He was going to just take his off but I thought what if they don't give it back? I can imagine any man running around the city without one would be so uncomfortable. So I offered to take off my sports bra...I thought it would be better. Fortunately when we gave it to the Citychase people, the woman was nice enough to tell me to take my bra back. She obviously knew I needed it...ha! After this easy task, they gave us the list of 15 clues.
Iñaki and I first tried to figure out the clues before we started going. Since it was still early, we didn't want to wake anyone to help us out (10 AM on a saturday is still early in Madrid). So we just figured some of it out ourselves and tried to plan our route in the most efficient way we can. Here are the proofs we did in the order that we did them:
1. Go to Calle Montalban close to Retiro Park. There we had to draw the Madrid 2016 Olympic logo. That one was quick and easy!
2. Find one of the RoomMate Hotel chains that is related to cinema. Answer: Roommate Oscar in Chueca. Once there, we had to go up 8 flights of stairs to get to the rooftop deck (it was beautiful!). From the rooftop, we had to find Circulo de Bellas Artes building, look at the giant greek god statue above it and write down the god's name. Answer: Minerva - thankgod for Xalba!
3. Find Loteria Booth #59. We found it in Sol. There we had to line up boxes of granola bars and tip them over like dominoes.
4. Go find Wally (aka Where's Waldo) in Opera. We had to find a man wearing a backpack (not wearing red and white striped t-shirt) and say to him "perea, perea". If he was the right man, he would answer and tell us a secret phrase. We never found him. The area he was at was too big and had too many people.
5. A place named after shoes. Plaza Descalzas. This was my least favorite of all. They made us jump out of a second floor window. Now this doesn't sound so bad but for someone afraid of heights, I wanted to vomit. On the ground was some inflatable thing that I think firefighters use, except there were no firefighters. I stood on that ledge holding on to dear life freaking out and telling Iñaki I would kill him. Somehow, I just did it. I stopped looking down, stopped thinking, closed my eyes and jumped. I'm pretty sure I landed wrong because my neck and back really hurt right after and all the next day. Later on we found out they had to shut this proof down because someone got injured. Just glad it wasn't me...
6. Find a place of panaderia and carniceria. Answer: Plaza Mayor. There we had to do a quiz and answer 11 out of 20 questions using books Citychase provided.
7. Go to Parque de Oeste. We got there and they said "take off your clothes...you have to do the slip n' slide". I refused to take off my pants (for female reasons and I was totally wearing nasty granny panties!). They said it wouldn't work so Iñaki offered his shorts...we thought it would be better than pants. So I changed behind a tree and ran and slid...only to the halfway point. They said do it again. Same thing. So the Citychase guy and Iñaki grabbed my arms and pulled me to the end. It was pretty awesome...and hilarious!!!
8. Find the school for toreros. This is where we lost a lot of time. No one seemed to know where this is and Xalba had a hard time finding it on the internet. So we went to the area where we thought it may be. We get there and asked the locals and most of them didn't know. Finally one waiter told us where to go. It was so freaking far! I've never been to this metro stop before. We get there and an old man taught us how to be matadors. He gave us the capote (the yellow/pink sheet they use to attract the bull) and showed us how to move like a torero. It was pretty awesome! Did you know those things are heavy??? The matadors look so elegant and smooth when they carry that thing but it is heavy! Even Iñaki was surprised. This was my favorite proof for sure.
9. Go to last year's Citychase finish line. We went to Plaza Colon and there we had to do Karaoke. Normally, I would rock this, but we had to do a Spanish song I've never heard of. And to make it worse, it was Flamenco-ish! I sounded like a retard!
10. Go to Calle Francisco Silvela, 42. There we had to answer some quesions about technology. Thankgod Iñaki knows about this crap.
...And that was it. After that we only had ten minutes left and we decided to go back to the finish line and enjoy the after-race party of pizza and coke. Sadly, we only finished 8 proofs. We technically did 9 but the domino one didn't count (because of rules I'm too lazy to explain). But we were happy enough and satisfied with what we've done. My knees were killing me (I couldn't help but run a little every time I'd see everyone around me run), and we were just so tired. We stayed to watch the award ceremony. The winners did it in 2 hours and 15 minutes (jerks!!). They said they basically ran all of Madrid and took the Metro maybe once. I hope they do well in Marrakesh.
As for Iñaki and I, we were simply glad to have participated in it. I was also just glad Iñaki and I didn't hate each other by the end of it. Back in my school days, I've had people get annoyed/angry with me because of my lack of competitiveness...I didn't get too into a game. I thought he would do this, but he was very patient with me and never asked me to run even when it seemed like he wanted to (he only ran when I did). He never got short with me even when he had to re-explain some things to me because I was too slow to translate in my head. In the end, we worked pretty well together as a team. We had a ton of fun and now I can say I've ran around Madrid like a maniac doing silly things.
 |
| Citychase '08 |
1 comment:
by proofs do you mean challenges/tasks??? - nang M
Post a Comment