Street Scramble At The Market

I participated in my first street scramble. The Street Scramble at the Market is a popular holiday event, and was sold out with 300 people registered. A lot of people brought their families and kids for an enjoyable walk/jog around town looking to answer 32 clues relating to statues, murals and holiday decorations. We got our maps a half hour early, and I spent the time writing a few street names onto the map and plotting my route.

When we started, I found that I was running with Roger and Yumay for the first seven our eight checkpoints. I eventually headed up to the hospital to get one of the far-lying checkpoints, whereas Roger decided to skip it (to his later regret when they finished almost half an hour early with only that one checkpoint missed). My path took me up to Capitol Hill, back to downtown, over to Seattle Center and back. I pulled back into the Market Street Theatre in 1:32:45 with lots of time to spare. Nikolay Nachev, a fierce orienteering competitor who wins some of the local O' Meets, arrived only seconds after I did. Wow. My sheet was quickly taken away and the final time written on it. I hope I circled all the answers. My hands were so cold (it was barely above freezing) that I had a hard time using the pen, and some of my circles were chicken scratches. I always worry that points are going to be deducted for illegibility.

It turns out that they could read all my answers, however, and I finished the course with all 1000 points in the fastest time. I am now the proud owner of a small blue ribbon and a few
words of congratulations from Eric Bone, the course designer and orienteer extraordinaire.

The course was very enjoyable and the navigation was minimal. Adding some of the street
names to the map ahead of time was very helpful. Knowing the area also helped a bit - I never felt like I really needed to rely on the map to tell me where I was. I planned out my complete path before I started, wrote it down as a list on the side of my passport, and I stuck with it the whole time. During the race, I enjoyed an inside look at a bunch of the different sights around downtown and a fun and festive race. Thanks Eric and Terry!

Here is the order in which I visited the checkpoints:

*,31,13,48,23,44,22,24,53,43,55,52,42,26,12,41,47,34,15,37,21,
25,32,35,54,46,51,11,56,45,33,36,14,*