For urban adventure racers, Philadelphia is the course
The Philadelphia leg of the Xplore Urban Racing Series was to be taxing already: a landmark-to-landmark obstacle course around buzzing trolleys and dawdling tourists, stretching from Elfreth's Alley to Boathouse Row. But it was made all the more difficult by the fact that, on race day, no one actually knew where the starting line was.
"You can start wherever you think is the most strategic for your team based on the clues," came the official response.
Two hints had been deployed to participants days earlier, featuring images from Philadelphia's streets. The spots pictured were within a mile and a half-mile of the race's mysterious starting point, respectively, and were the only clues offered. Racers had to determine the locations, calculate the radius, and wander around where the circles had overlapped until receiving further notice.
And so, on race day, teams ranging in size from loners to busloads (Xplore doesn't stipulate the number of participants on one squad) loitered between Logan Circle and Center City on the Ben Franklin Parkway. It was a lot of legwork for a race that hadn't even started; until, finally, the clock struck noon and the message came: Report to City Hall. From there, racers disappeared into the city, in search of clues etched on bricks and embedded Xplore agents hidden in crowds.
This madness began at a small, environmental liberal arts school nestled in a bend of Vermont's Poultney River. The orchestrator of the chaos, Logan Smith, was received his training there in the late 1990s, part of a student body of fewer than a thousand who were seeking degrees in farming, sustainability or, in Smith's case, "Adventure Recreation." His pursuit was inspired by a rafting trip during a family vacation to Colorado, one of the country's frontiers for adventure sports.
"I wasn't yet a strong swimmer," he recalls. "The thought of being at the mercy of the river nearly paralyzed me with fear. But something in me shifted and that fear turned into adrenaline. It's that rush that I have been pursuing ever since, and strive to give to others through our experiences."
Xplore Urban Adventure Racing is just one facet of Xperience Adventures, the company run by Smith and his friend and Appalachian Trail hiking partner Jonathan Craig. They sought to bring orienteering out of the wilderness to a generation of city dwellers. Unlike most of the conventional races pattering down blocked-off Philadelphia streets all summer, urban adventure racing takes a more comprehensive, meandering route through each city in which it takes place.
In a given Xplore Adventure Race, competitors decrypt a list of clues that lead to various tasks, which they can complete in any order they wish, but require them to race around a major American city on foot or public transportation. In this, its third year, Xplore will hold races in Philadelphia, New York, D.C., Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
Racers wind up calling upon a bevy of skills to complete their tasks: Local knowledge, history, speed, endurance, navigation, patience and outgoingness are needed to find certain landmarks, interact with people (both strangers and Xperience staffers), and/or dump cheese whiz on their heads.
"Unlike a standard foot race in the city, like a 5k or marathon, our races don't limit your experience to what you can see from inside the metal fencing," Smith explains. "You're immediately engaged with the diverse culture of each city, you're learning about its history, and you can outrace someone twice as fast as you if you're savvy with public transit and know your way around the city."
As far as the competition goes, the sport has drawn in widespread demographics, a list Smith rattles off with glee: families with toddlers, ultra-marathoners, guys celebrating bachelor parties, a group of women in their 70s, and a married couple in wheelchairs, to name a few. One of the sport's most known squads, The Nads, has been racing since "1967," according to their Facebook page. "We dominate and we grow mustaches" is their cry.
But the sport's most successful Philadelphian sat down for a drink weeks before this year's race and talked about how to scramble across a major metropolitan area without getting lost, stuck, or stabbed.
***
"I'm legally blind in my right eye," Ed Wagner says from a stool in the Wishing Well bar near the Italian Market. "I wasn't particularly good at baseball. Basketball, I wasn't very good at. I was in the Boy Scouts. In the woods, you look at the map, and you got the compass, but I like running in the city better. You don't have to blaze a trail through a bunch of briars."
Wagner, who would acknowledge only that he's "over 50," is one of Xplore's most known entities. Having grown up in Yardley, Wagner knows Philadelphia more than any other major city and has used that background to win an Xplore race in his home city both times he has attempted, while competing and winning several other races here and in other cities as well (he once flew to and from Atlanta in a single day to compete in a race).
An interest in unraveling riddles and cracking mysteries drew him toward scavenger hunts, which he sets up for local events, and the physical aspect of urban adventure racing made it a natural fit. His first was in 2006, with a group called Urban Challenge. Wagner's team finished second, missing the championship in Las Vegas that had a $50,000 purse.
Still, Wagner says, "I was hooked."
An amicable, white-bearded Drexel alum who served at the naval base in Warminster in his younger days, Wagner would be tough to imagine committing acts of brutal violence on a sunny, cobblestoned pathway. But in the heat of competition, as racers search frantically for any boost or advantage, primal instincts can take over.
"There was one race where the end was at Buffalo Billiards at 2nd and Chestnut," Wagner recalls. "So we're on the subway coming from West Philly and there's like two other teams. ... So we get off and we're running down a side cobblestone street and there's a person next to me and part of me just wanted to elbow them – but I didn't! But that was one time when I really felt the dynamic to just …" He lets his explanation trail into a chuckle.
In Philadelphia, a town of jagged edges, it can be inadvisable to move quickly without thinking; but sometimes, the city will just reach out and threaten you, unprovoked. During one race, Wagner needed a picture of a particularl butcher shop. "We're trying to compose the shot, and a guy's out there with a cleaver," he recalls. "I don't know what he thought, but he was screaming, cursing up a storm. And he's waving stuff and screaming that he'll 'f------ kill' us. We were just taking a photo. We weren't even going in the store."
Avoiding local business owners with murder in their hearts could be viewed as one of the race's key components, but Wagner keeps returning to the physical aspect – "It definitely skews more toward speed, or at least endurance."
But as in all sports, it's on the players to find a style that matches their natural strengths. Some racers rely more on their preparedness than their speed, such as former collegiate javelin thrower Kris Schultz, who first took part in an Xplore Urban Adventure Race in 2011.
"My mom once told me that I run like a pregnant cow in quicksand," she says from her home in Austin, Texas. "So I tend to focus more on being organized and having a plan in place that's flexible. I've seen people win either way. That's one of the draws for urban racing for me, because I kind of hate running."
But in an urban adventure race, you can hate running and find success, as speed takes a backseat at times to awareness. As co-owner of a pet care company with her twin sister, Schultz was inadvertently gaining the upper hand for an urban race every day she went to work, walking the neighborhoods of Austin and soaking in street names, business locations, and historical markers. She entered her first race on a whim in 2011, the night before the event, having no idea what to expect; what she got was an insatiable taco craving.
"We had to find hot sauce of some sort and drink a whole spoonful," she says. "And you have to find things along the way as you're going, and I had just left a cemetery and was making a shortcut through a neighborhood in East Austin that I didn't really know. I happened upon this taco truck and asked for a thing of hot sauce, but the truck smelled really good. After I left there, I swear the tacos from that truck were on my mind for a few days so I went back the next week and started frequenting the place."
***
Out of a second-story window on 6th Street in Philadelphia, a hastily crafted paper plane darts into the air and loops violently from gust to gust. It soars well out of reach of two racers, a man and a woman, on the street below, trying desperately to chase it down between bouts of laughter.
The woman's gaze slowly turns toward the SEPTA bus idling at the red light a block away. It growls and spews exhaust in anticipation, and she turns quickly back to her compatriot in the window above.
"Hurry up," she shouts with a nervous chuckle.
"I'm trying. I'm trying" comes the reply, but the bus is already on its way.
A second plane flits from the window, its erratic flight this time taking it quite short of where its recipients have positioned themselves. They scuttle off the pavement toward the sidewalk, shrieking gleefully as the 47 bus to Whitman Plaza roars past.
The instructions for Checkpoint #6 were simple: "Create a paper airplane and then send one member of your team to the 2nd level (one above ground level) of any parking garage. The rest of your team should be located below them outside the garage on the sidewalk level ready to catch it." As is often the case, comprehending a three- or four-line clue is far simpler than its execution.
Other challenges of the day had been to find a mom pushing a stroller and give her a rose; take a picture with a particular brick in Franklin Square; and find the door in Elfreth's Alley adorned with the bird from the Wawa logo. Racers completed challenges on a rowing machine near the Schuylkill River Trail and underground in Philadelphia's "Escape The Room" facility on Walnut Street.
At the end of the day, most teams are able to carry out the required nine of 10 tests and discover the finish line at City Tap House near Logan Square. It's there that "Team Shaw," a one-man squad, is declared the winner of Philadelphia's 2015 Xplore Urban Adventure Race.
Philadelphia was only the fifth race of the season, which started in Denver earlier in May. The next stop will be Chicago in August, with races scheduled across the country until the year ends in New Orleans in November. Some will follow from city to city, competing to make the championship round and take home the winners' purse, which is currently at $1,728 (and growing).
Urban adventure racing has existed for years, but without a rigid history of stubborn tradition behind it, a constantly shifting roster of players, and innovative creators, it is in a constant, healthy state of flux. This gives the sport a more modern feel as instigators such as Smith establish its place among active city folk and, they hope, normalize it to the point that there is a downward trend in confusion, at least among furious butchers.
Though it would probably be best to stay out of Ed Wagner's way.
"One team of two 21-year-old guys who were very fast … they're like, 'You look old, you don't look like somebody who's going to win,'" he recalls with a spry, vicious grin. "Well, surprise."