Urban Max Adventure Series – Melbourne

30 August 2008

Race Report: Team Calm a llama down

By: Alison Campbell

Both myself and my teammate Chris enjoyed participating in last year’s Urban Max, so when it turned out that our respective partners would both be unable to make it this year we decided to enter as "Calm a llama down".

We got up bright and early on Saturday morning (earlier than I'd managed all week to get to work in fact!) and headed down to Albert Park lake ready to compete. 8.45am the safety briefing started, 8.50am we moved outside for a group photo and at 9am - after a dramatic pause for effect - came the announcement:

"Your clue sheet is in the car park behind the building!"

Chris took off like a rocket, while I followed more cautiously, having seen that poor woman run straight into a waist-height pole last year. After a couple of minutes searching, I caught up with Chris, who had the clue sheet and was already starting to read and write answers on the clue sheet. There were only two that we didn't get pretty much straight off, and after a glance at the opening/closing hours we'd already made a vague plan of attack and decided to run to the 96 tram line to head for our first checkpoint, which happened to be checkpoint one, the See Yup Society Temple, in South Melbourne. Unfortunately our good start was tempered a bit by the discovery that the 96 tram line was closed for repairs, so we had to run to the 112 line instead. (Advice for racers (1): check public transport maintenance pages beforehand!) Fortunately a tram came along in short time, and we made it to the temple, clipped our card, and started heading to the South Melbourne Market to find the Lonely Planet stall, buying a Herald-Sun en route.

At the market Chris again used local knowledge as to where the less permanent stalls were usually located and found the stall in quick order. (Advice for racers (2): look for the crowd of people wearing Urban Max bibs, not at the stalls!) The Melbourne trivia quiz was finished in fairly short order - they loaned us a copy of "Lonely Planet Melbourne", which we barely used ("Who is the editor of Lonely Planet Melbourne?" and "Did Bill Clinton dine at Taxi?" were the only two answers we had to look up.) After a short diversion to buy fruit, we started heading to Webb Bridge, while searching for the clue in the Herald-Sun. It's interesting how difficult it actually is to read a newspaper while walking - especially when it's blowing a gale, as it was, and even more so when you haven't actually read the clue properly. After we'd split the paper and both skim read both parts of it we went back and retrieved the important information: “In amongst the classifieds” from the clue sheet... and found it in two seconds flat. (Advice for racers (3): read the clue carefully!) Still, I did learn a lot about Tony Mokbel's wig. To be honest, I'd actually already guessed the checkpoint from the clipper location information (Centre Bell). And yes, it was Federation Bells at Birrarung Marr.

At Webb Bridge (which was deserted), we had a quick look at the clues/map and opening hours again and then saw a tram coming in the right direction so decided to head for Birrarung Marr, via Hosier Lane. This was a bit tricky of the organisers. Yes, they'd given us the name of the lane, but the map this year was only A4 size, and as a result didn't have enough detail to name lanes in the CBD. Yet again Chris knew exactly where it was (I'd certainly no idea, although I could have found AC/DC Lane with no problems!) We jumped off the tram at Russell St, and jogged back to Hoiser Lane and clipped our cards. Across the road and through the back of Fed Square took us to Birrarung Marr where we found the centre bell. As we were clipping, another team came up.

"How's it going?"
"Good, we've got four. How are you going?"
"This is our first! We saw you here and thought - great! There's one!" Heh. They were even more chuffed when we mentioned it was the Herald-Sun one.

As they were clipping their card, we started heading for Margaret Court Arena, via Batman Avenue, then up the steps to Rod Laver Arena, then around the corner following the signs to come out at the top of the stands. Which were locked. We could see through the gates down to the court, and see the Marshals but couldn't work out how to get down to the court. Then we saw the team we'd left at Birrarung Marr (who'd obviously followed us! J) going down the stairs on the opposite side of the court. Brilliant! Along with another, seriously fit team, we started running around the court only to find scaffolding blocking us. In a move seriously reminiscent of The Amazing Race, the seriously fit team climbed over/around the scaffolding and kept going. Chris followed. I looked at the scaffolding, which was up to chest height on me and was also above a 3-4 metre drop.
"Um..."
We realised that the scaffolding was attached to concrete blocks, shifted it enough so that I could squeeze through the gap and kept going. We arrived at the open gate, just as the seriously fit team were 3/4 of the way down the stairs.
"You can't come through this way!" yelled the Marshals on the court. "You have to go back down and come through the player’s entrance".

?!?!?

The seriously fit team sprinted back up the stairs, muttering under their breath. I stopped long enough to close the gate, just so further teams wouldn't try the same route.

Back around to Rod Laver Arena we went. Maybe we could get down to Margaret Court from inside here? We went in. There was a Christian Revival meeting on. Interesting, but no access to Margaret Court Arena that we could see.
Back down the stairs, and we started heading around the arena. On the way we found the team from Birrarung Marr, who'd completed the checkpoint and were heading back into the city.

"Go through the car park, go right to the back and then there's a door!”

We ran around to the car park, and were stopped by the guys at the front wanting to know if we were registering for a fun run. We explained what we were doing, and asked how to get to the player’s door. As they started to explain, their boss arrived.

"Why are you directing members of the public through what is supposed to be a closed site?"

We decided now was a good time to vanish and nicked off into the car park, finding the players tunnel and door and heading on to the court only half an hour after we'd arrived at the tennis centre.

This checkpoint needed both of us to get a serve in. I hadn't played tennis since 1989. Chris had never played, nor apparently watched. This was obvious from his first questions ("Where do I have to stand? Where do I have to hit the ball to?") I decided to just go for it, and managed a perfect serve first go (I was sure it was (a) out, and (b) I'd foot-faulted, but the Marshal assured me I'd done neither!) Chris hit huge lobs, until on the 3rd or 4th he managed to get it into the little box (given the first one was right out of court, this was good!) We gratefully got our card stamped, and headed across to the tram stop. As we were nearing the stop I noticed a flight of stairs just behind where we'd climbed the scaffolding which headed straight down to the player's door. D'oh! By this stage there was also a Marshal standing there - I think we managed to hit that point when they'd gone to the loo.

Back on the tram into the city, back to Exhibition St where we jogged (mostly) up the hill to Collins St to catch another tram out to Fitzroy. (En route we saw the team from Birrarung Marr again, who'd walked back to the city, and who now started up the hill after us.) The tram we managed to catch (and wave at the Birrarung Marr team from) only took us as far as St Vincent's Plaza, but that was close enough for us to walk/jog to St Mary’s House of Welcome where we had to donate at least two pieces of fruit.

In a fit of organisedness, I'd actually read this clue properly and we'd bought fruit at the South Melbourne Market (and had now jogged with it for over an hour and a half.) St Mary's House of Welcome is on Brunswick St, just up from Gertrude St. We knew the right place long before we reached it - at least one of the patrons thought this was the most exciting thing to happen in ages, and was outside waving all racers in with a huge grin on his face. We grinned back, thanked him, headed in and gave them our fruit ("…um, sorry, it might be a bit bruised...")

Then we noticed a pub two doors up that was open. This was not, surprisingly, because we were in serious need of a drink by this stage but because we were also chasing coasters with the pub name on them. We stuck our heads in the door, and the barman yelled out: "Sorry, we don't have them!" Heh, guess we weren't the first by a long shot then.

Onward to the next checkpoint, which was the Hard Rock Climbing Centre on Swanston St. I'd been half-expecting this place to come up last year, and here it was. We jogged/walked back up to Victoria St, then along it to Swanston and to the Hard Rock Climbing Centre. Chris volunteered to climb (for which I was totally grateful!) while I worked out how many checkpoints we had left and the best route to get to them from here. I also managed to get sweat in my eyes, which hurt like hell. (Advice to Racers (4): don't look down when sweaty!)

The obvious next choice was Kingpin Bowling at Melbourne Central. Down Swanston St we headed, only stopping to stick our heads in at Druids on the way (Barman: "Sorry, we don't have them.") At Melbourne Central we headed up to Kingpin Bowling where we were immediately directed to change into bowling shoes. A couple of minutes later the Marshal explained "OK, you need a strike or a spare. Take it in turns to bowl, only one of you needs to get it."

Chris went first. Hit pins, but not all of them.
I went. Two gutter balls. Way too much spin.
Chris again. As previous.
Me. Hit a pin this time. Still too much spin.
Chris again. Two pins left standing, dammit!
Me. Three pins left standing. Getting better on the spin though!
Chris. Spare!

Next stop (after sticking our heads in at the bar next to Kingpin - Barman: "Sorry, we don't have them") was the Flagstaff Gardens. As Flagstaff station doesn't open Saturdays, we headed out onto Latrobe St and managed to catch a city circle tram down to the gardens. Then we had to run up a hill... a big hill. At the top was a lot of what looked suspiciously like snowboards on wheels, with helmets lying next to them. Hm. Chris had been chatting to the Marshal while I staggered up the last couple of metres.

"Right, you're going to go down the hill on the board, I'm running next to you, OK?"
"Um, yeah, OK."

I put the helmet on, put my feet into the fittings and we started off.

"Where am I supposed to go?"
"Between the tree and the witches hat. Then slalom through the witches hats."

No problems. I shifted weight forward and back, with Chris running alongside me making sure I didn't fall. We slalomed to the end, at which point I realised I had no idea how to stop this thing other than by falling off it. Chris really came in handy at that point, grabbing me to stop!

I hopped off the board and we ran back up the hill, with me managing to give myself a blood blister from the helmet on the way.

Three checkpoints to go! Our next destination was in the arcades of Melbourne.
And again, traps for young players. We'd skim read the clue initially (see advice #2), and mentally marked it down as Royal Arcade. We got there and discovered no Marshals. Hm, obviously not the right place. Re-reading we realised that we needed Block Arcade, and, in particular, Haigh's Chocolates. This proved to be correct. We found the Marshals at the back of the shop, holding a tray of three kinds of chocolates.

"OK, you need to identify what the ingredients are in each of the chocolates."

Chris grabbed one, I grabbed another. "Mint", said Chris. "Caramel" I said, kind of muffledly. Both of us took one of the last chocolates.

"Hm.. peach? Coconut? Can I have another one?"
"Still tastes like caramel to me..."

We took another one. "It's a fruit" said one of the Marshals helpfully.

A bit more chewing and Chris identified it. "Apricot!"

"Can I try the mint one?" I asked. I took a mint, Chris took a caramel, we thanked the Marshals and kept going.

On the way through the arcades we stuck our head into the Charles Dickens Hotel. "Sorry" said a regular, "we don't have them..."

At our next pub, the kind of bleedingly-obvious-one-but-we-still-had-to-try-all-the-others-just-in-case Young and Jackson's we barely made it through the door before the barman thrust several branded coasters at us. Heh.

Last checkpoint! This one had a GPS reference as the clue, together with (tip: Google Maps).

This one we'd had to ring around for. Our first port of call had been Chris's other half, who had immense difficulty working it out, not least because Google Maps won't let you use degrees minutes seconds, but only decimal degrees. For some reason Chris explaining how to do the conversion from a mobile phone while running at 9am was confusing. Either way, she said she'd phone us back if she worked it out. In the interim I tried phoning my partner from the previous year (no answer), my sister (no answer) and finally a friend, whose husband is a chemical engineer. No answer, but I left a message just in case. They called us back while we were at Webb Bridge. Google Earth lets you use degrees minutes seconds apparently and the answer was.... where we'd started, the Powerhouse Function Centre at Albert Park.

Again, I'd sort of worked this out because the opening hours were 11-3pm - which was also the finish time for the race. So we figured it had to be very close by.

We jumped onto a tram at Fed Sq and headed back out to Albert Park. Ran from the tram down Lorne St, across Queen's Road and around to the Powerhouse. All the time I was looking for what the final checkpoint (which was marked as an activity checkpoint) could be. No boats, no kayaks (unlike last year), couldn't see anyone... we came around to the front of the venue and a Marshal called out "up here!"

Up the stairs to where we'd started from, towards the finish line... and the Marshal gave us a sheet of paper.

"Pick a song - you're doing karaoke!"

I started laughing. Of the three choices listed when we got there, we settled on Mamma Mia. Performed admirably (Chris: “sing louder, you can sing better than I can!”) and then headed to the finish line where we deposited our coaster on to the enormous pile of Young and Jackson's coasters.

We headed over to grab a sandwich, a drink and a beer and watch the remaining karaoke. It was a really fun day, and I'd like to thank the organisers and the volunteers for running it and Chris for being really patient when I couldn't run as much as would have been helpful, for stopping me crashing out on Flagstaff hill and for doing the rock climb. Next year we’re aiming for the top!