URBAN ASSAULT RACERS TAKE ON AUSTIN
By Kate Alexander
Austin American-Statesman , TX
June 25 2006
Bike race requires blood, sweat and sense of humor
Austin’s urban warriors faced their foe Sunday morning and it was
not the four-foot rubber duckie, with its bulbous head and mocking,
wide-eyed grin.
Though vexing, the rubber duckie and its tendency to tip could be
overcome. Mount Bonnell proved a far greater challenge.
For Team Crazed Armenians, just the idea of the gravity-defying climb
up Mount Bonnell had them questioning their fortitude.
"You want to talk about our strategy?" asked Shant Donabedian, as
they prepared to take off toward the daunting hill.
"Survive," responded teammate Krikor Deurdulian.
Some 800 competitors in the third annual Austin Subaru Urban Assault
bike race slogged through foam, slip-n-slides and potato sack races
along the 20 to 25 mile trek. One of seven races across the country,
the contest in Austin, the race’s hometown, is by far the largest,
said race director Josh Kravetz. The Dallas contest last month drew
300 racers.
The goal: ride to checkpoints throughout Austin and complete the
various challenges at each destination.
At the Rowing Dock on Town Lake, one member of the team had to mount
the enormous rubber duckie as the other person swam them , duckie in
tow, to a buoy and back. The duckie was rarely cooperative.
Other challenges had the teams searching for plastic aquatic animals
in a vat of foam, riding mini-bikes through an obstacle course and
running a potato-sack race.
At the same time, the competitors had to decipher the clues to three
local landmarks. The clues led them to Mount Bonnell, the University
of Texas Tower and Treaty Oak.
The first two-person team to collect the beads at all 10 checkpoints
and return to Run-Tex on Riverside Drive won.
That honor went to doctors Lee Chilton and Brannan Smoot, who repeated
their victory from the first urban assault race in 2003.
Team Inaugural winners said the key to their dominance is planning.
"You win the race in the days before it and not on the day of,"
Smoot said.
Chilton left a good chunk of skin on the asphalt near the corner of
Barton Springs Drive and Lamar Boulevard when he hit a grease spot
in a parking lot and took a tumble off his bike. But a little blood
dripping down his leg did not slow them down. They completed the race
in just over an hour and a half.