M heard about a ring race happening in Chicago in October so we did decided to do some more research. Razny Jewelers was holding a ‘scavenger hunt’ around the River North neighborhood of Chicago for a $15,000 Art Carved Diamond Engagement Ring. Second place won a TW Steel watch set and third place received a $500 Razny Jewelers gift card. We figured it would be a ton of fun, so we entered to participate.
Here’s how it worked: You were sent a location via text message to your phone along with a question to answer at that location. Example: ‘Go to the Hard Rock hotel. Who is the artist on the banner in front of the building?’ (It was Dave Matthews...to easy). You would then text the answer back. If you were correct, a new location and challenge were sent to you, but if you were wrong you only got two more tries to answer correctly otherwise you would have to move on to the next location with no points. Each correctly solved challenge won your team points, which were tallied at the end of the race.
M and I decided that the clues and locations were going to get sent to my phone and M was in charge of looking up directions on his. Right before the race started I tripped on an uneven sidewalk outside the Rainforest Cafe and badly scrapped my knees. M wanted to stop, but there was no way! We did not train for this race at all, but we were determined to do well. So with blood oozing down my leg and sweat dripping down our heads, we ran from location to location the entire time. One location lead us to the Chicago River off Merchandise Mart Plaza. There were 15+ teams sitting at that location, so we were preparing for a difficult clue. The clue asked us to come up with a 7 letter word using the letters from the sign “The Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame.” M took one look at the sign and said “diamond”! "Clever and correct," I thought. We sent the word ‘diamond’ via text and shouted in joy as we received our next location, leaving all the other teams starring at us as we ran away as quickly as we had come.
We were still running when we got the text that the race had concluded. It had lasted 1.5 hours, and M and I raced to 26 different locations all around northern Chicago. Our total mileage for the day was nearly 6.5 miles. We headed back to Moe's Cantina, where we started from, to have lunch and hear the race results.
M and I knew we did well, but had no idea just how well. They announced the winners by calling the phone number linked to the race. And third place, winners of a $500 gift card to Razny Jewelers, was none other than M & M! They called OUR phone and we could hardly believe it! It was so exciting. The couple who won second, we believe broke the rules during the race because we witnessed the man running alone from location to location which was not allowed, but we liked the $500 gift card more than the watches anyway. The winners came up to us after the race and said how worried they were because they saw us busting our butts, running all over, but they still took home the grand prize. We were still very happy we won third out of the 60+ couples that competed.
So with our soaking wet, orange Razny shirts still on and our prize in hand, we headed back to the train to relax. Let me just tell you, our legs were SORE the next day!
Check our the race and us winning at 2:10 on the video below!
