Imagine the thrill of riding on a camel through the sunrise into the desert of Dubai. Next, you leap out of a plane, skydiving into the city’s metropolis before walking to a beach with a luxury hotel. For Temple University alum Alyssa Kirk Borden, CPH ’15, it was her reality as one of the final four teams on the 37th season of The Amazing Race, a CBS reality show in which 14 teams of two race around the world completing physical and mental challenges for a grand prize of $1 million. 

Borden, a nurse anesthetist in Philadelphia, is no stranger to competition, having played four seasons of Division I soccer at Temple, where she earned a bachelor of science in nursing. She teamed up with her husband, Josiah Borden, a fellow nurse anesthetist she met while completing a graduate program in nurse anesthesia at the University of Pennsylvania.  

“The flights go by so fast on TV, but in reality, we often would wake up at 1 a.m. for a flight that is not happening until 10 a.m.,” she said. “So, you have been waiting around all day, then you fly somewhere and start racing. The element of how exhausted and fatigued you are gets overlooked on TV.” 

The married couple’s personalities worked well together in the race due to a blend of Alyssa’s highly competitive personality with the more laid-back and cheerful nature of her husband, whom she described as being funny and charming on the show.  

They both grew up loving competition-based reality television shows and sent their audition tape to The Amazing Race casting website in late November 2023. Their audition process took six months, including physical health tests, meeting a psychologist to evaluate their mental health, and several meetings with CBS executives and casting producers to assess their personalities. The final audition was an in-person interview in Los Angeles.  

“It was months of phone calls and texts and then we are suddenly sitting in a small room in LA with roughly 20 other couples, just sizing them up and not allowed to talk to them,” said Alyssa. “Phil [Keoghan], the show’s host, and the show’s creators, Elise [Doganieri] and Bertram [van Munster], were also there.  

While back in Philadelphia, the two nurse anesthetists received a phone call that they were selected for the show and were back on a flight to Los Angeles for the start of the race in May 2024.

Their careers as nurse anesthetists did not hold them back, as they worked out twice daily before and after their shifts for months before filming. “We started training like it was a job for a million dollars,” said Alyssa. “Our adaptability led us to success on the show, which comes from our jobs in anesthesia; for each day, every patient is different from the last. Even in the show’s most stressful moments, we never got mad at each other and worked together as a team.” 

The couple ran daily on the Schuylkill River Trail and explored other niche locations in Philadelphia, taking cooking and dance classes, practicing rock climbing and shooting arrows at an archery range. Alyssa practiced navigating to places with paper maps since they were not allowed to use GPS devices during the race and even bought a car with a manual transmission to learn how to drive one—Josiah learned in three weeks. His newly acquired skill helped them secure a first-place finish in Sofia, Bulgaria (leg 7), where all teams were self-driving a manual transmission vehicle for the first time in the race. 

Alyssa and Josiah practiced throwing darts every night for months before filming. (Courtesy of Alyssa Borden from CBS) 

The Borden team encountered several unique race challenges, including the burning sensation of firewalking over hot coals in Sofia, Bulgaria; making a Margherita pizza from scratch in Naples, Italy; and memorizing and identifying nine types of cheese outside of a restaurant in Strasbourg, France. Alyssa said her hardest task was a drumming challenge that required her to memorize and perform a taiko drum routine alongside a drum group in Osaka, Japan.  

“I wanted to defer all the rhythmic challenges to Josiah since I am not musically inclined at all,” she said. “It is still hard for me to believe that I memorized that entire sheet of music and completed the drum task.”  

In Porto, Portugal (leg 11)—the final race before the season finale in Miami—Alyssa and Josiah completed several tasks but took a wrong turn onto the highway on their way to the Campanhã train station. At the train station they endured several train delays, which allowed the team in last place to catch up to them. In the episode’s final challenge, both teams had to solve an azulejo tile puzzle and mount it on a wall, which revealed the final pit stop of leg 11. Racing to the banks of the Douro River beneath the Luís I Bridge, Alyssa and Josiah were the last team to arrive, eliminating them in the season’s penultimate episode.  

Alyssa said solving the azulejo tile puzzle was very difficult. “A lot of the pieces were so similar to each other like the sky, water and rocks at the bottom, and the two sailboats that had two like staffs at the top were easy to mix up.” (Courtesy of Alyssa Borden from CBS) 

“We drove for hours around Portugal, from sunrise to sunset. It was the longest leg of the race,” said Alyssa. “Seeing the other team catch up to us on the train station after we had a big lead just took the wind out of my sails. Phil told us off-air at the pit stop that we were only minutes behind the last team that made the final leg, so it was really heartbreaking.” 

Despite the heartbreak, participating in The Amazing Race was a life-changing experience for Alyssa: “All of the support we have received, especially from people in the Philadelphia, New Jersey and Delaware, sending us DMs (direct messages) on social media, telling us that they were watching and cheering us on or that they went to Temple too, means the world. 

“I am most proud to represent Temple, and I like seeing how joyous Josiah and I were on TV because we were truly having the time of our lives,” she added. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience I’ll keep forever.”