It all started with a group of four friends. We arrived at Dupont promptly at 7pm. Others were already highlighting their escape routes while we were tying our blue ribbons on our skinny arms. We noticed the Marines talking and unanimously decided they were going to win. After standing around, listening to the rules and sizing up our competition it was time to start and when the commands were said, we ran off in the direction of the White House via New Hampshire. Unfortunately, most of my group is out of shape and only my friend Katie and I (the only girls) were able to keep a steady running pace (hooray for track). Despite our slow men members, we made it to the first checkpoint in good time. The wait was not too bad, even though some people were complaining. Upon receiving our stamps the five of us were off towards the Taft memorial. Naturally, after only a few minutes of jogging, the guys began to slack and we decided that taking the metro would be faster so we rerouted ourselves towards Federal Triangle. As we were going down the escalator we talk of how lucky we were to have avoided all the chaser so far, we heard that some were crazier than the previous year at the last checkpoint. The train to South Capital had arrived as we did so we made a dash for it, but Katie's metro card was not working! All the guys were through and they were standing one foot on the platform and the other on the train waiting for us. I made a split decision and told them to go on and that Katie and I would meet them later. Obediently they got on the train and Katie and I decided to run. About ten minutes later Katie and I arrived at the memorial and none of the boys were in sight. We borrowed a phone (both of ours were stashed in a friend's pocket) and left the guys voice mails, saying that we had gone on without them. Now Katie and I were a team of two. Since we had been doing quite a bit of running, we selected to go to the 3rd stop by metro. We jogged up to Union Station, making faces at a few cameras on the way. From Union Station we went to Rhode Island, got off there and ran up Florida to reach the house. Yet again we had made it to a check point with no chasers. Quickly we sketched drawings of our futures and came up with our next route. Unlike the previous stops, we encountered slow walking chasers the second we left the safe zone. We ran back to the check point to reevaluate our plan. We decided to wing it and just go with whichever street seemed quiet. We ran on R until 6th street where decided to go up towards Howard. At a bus stop on 6th we saw a crowd of people who we knew were just waiting to chase someone. Suddenly one of them spotted us and started sprinting towards us. Katie and I made a mad dash back to R, running like our life depended on it. Just a street over, we saw a cop car and ran up to the officer making a traffic stop. Out of breath we ran up to the cop saying "Officer! Officer!". Confused and slightly taken aback, he asked what's wrong and we told him we were in dire need of directions. By this time our chaser (there was only one left) had caught up to us and she was waiting for us to finish talking so she could tag us. My friend and I were not going down without a fight. The officer gave us the easiest directions given to anyone and in order to stall for time, my friend and I acted as though we didn't know which way was up. The exchanged sounded a bit like this.

Me: Officer do you know how we can get to Howard from here?
Officer: Just keep going straight on 7th and make a right.
Me: So we keep going on 7th and take a left.
Officer: No, go straight and take a right