An amazing race

The blast of a bullhorn siren signaled the start of the event. Competitors scrambled in all directions, 112 racers running off with water bottles and iPhones in hand. "Go, go, go!" a participant shouted.

It was a Saturday in August at Minnehaha Falls Park in Minneapolis, and the inaugural Great MN Race had begun. Fifty-two teams of two grabbed their race guides and departed on a choose-your-own adventure through Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Modeled in part after "The Amazing Race," a reality TV show in which teams race around the world for $1 million, urban scavenger hunts such as the Great MN Race have cropped up by the dozens nationwide. In Minnesota, four major scavenger events have been held this summer, including the Salvation Army's Most Amazing Race, an annual fundraiser in July in which teams vie for $5,000.

Part physical feat, part mental challenge, urban scavenger hunts mix aerobic output with logistical skills, map reading, teamwork and ad-hoc problem solving at checkpoints. You might sprint a mile through town to a manned station stocked with Sudoku puzzles.

Public transit, including buses and trains, are often legal. But foot travel can be quicker. Wait at a bus stop, or run? In an urban race, competitors pick their mode of movement from challenge to challenge throughout a city.

"Running vs. taking a bus can provide a big edge," said Carl Schwab, director of the Great MN Race. "Or hit the streets until the buses catch up."

The winning squad at Schwab's event, Team Oozing Monkeys, blazed the course in about 2 1/2 hours. They took buses and light rail, and they ran on sidewalks in neighborhoods from northeast Minneapolis to Uptown.

"We ran all around the city -- maybe 5 or 6 miles total," said Catherine Lee, who with her husband, Terrance, won $500 at the August event.

I raced with a friend, Stanley Barton, and came prepared with a backpack, energy bars and a street map. Stanley brought a smartphone to look up addresses and decipher clues -- a technological edge that's allowed by race organizers as a tool to parse the complex course.

For the Great MN Race, 12 challenges were outlined in a guidebook. Each team had to pick eight of them, including such endeavors as a bocce ball toss at the Stone Arch Bridge, a photo feat at the base of a waterfall and a task that necessitated selling coffee to strangers.

At the sound of the bullhorn siren, Stanley and I ripped open our race packet and sat at a picnic table. I scanned the checkpoint and challenge descriptions, sketching a rough map on the back of an envelope.

Stanley typed manically on his phone.

"Where the heck is the fire museum?" he said, squinting at the small screen.

We ran west after 10 minutes of plotting and mapping a route. The Hiawatha Line would bring us north toward our first checkpoint clue at a train stop.

"Darn slow connection," Stanley shouted, waiting for a Web page on the phone to load.

Within an hour, we'd visited a gift shop with a giant bobble-head doll, copied a historic plaque with a crayon and blank paper, tossed bocce balls into a ring and persuaded a musical group to pose for a photo.

But on Central Avenue in northeast Minneapolis, we hit a wall. The race clock ticked for more than 10 minutes as we idly waited for a bus. Once we were aboard, the bus seemed to hit every red light on its journey north.

"Come on!" Stanley shouted, as the bus groaned again and again to a halt.

After a checkpoint at the Bill & Bonnie Daniels Firefighters Hall & Museum on 22nd Avenue NE., we ran back toward downtown.

"Forget the bus," I shouted, sprinting south on a sidewalk.

Once downtown, sweaty and with a long way to go, we scanned a bus schedule and caught a No. 5 to Lake Street. An indoor scavenger hunt at a youth center was our final stop before a sprint and a train ride to the finish line at Minnehaha Falls Park.

In the end, our route through the city took three hours and 38 minutes -- quick enough to earn us third place. Team Oozing Monkeys had beaten us by an hour. Another squad, Team Smith Bros., edged us out by eight minutes.

Next time we'll copy the Monkeys, running more and sitting on buses less. And we'll pause at the start to find a faster connection for the phone -- a stronger signal netting quicker clues before we head off again on a long urban sprint.

Stephen Regenold writes about the outdoors at www.gearjunkie.com.