Happy New Year
Hope you had a pleasant Christmas and New Year. Well January is here and as expected the first Open5 is around the corner. We will keep this newsletter short so read on to find out more of what is happening in the world of Adventure Racing up North.
2007 Mountain Hardwear Open5 series
Yep just 2 weeks to go till the first Open5 event of the year. Jonathan Emberton and Phil Scarf are the event planners and by all accounts they are keen to rattle the cages of those competitors use to the Open5 events of the last couple of years - so it might be worth bringing your thinking head as well as that fresh set of legs you got for Christmas.
Mountain Hardwear are pulling out the stops this year with over £5000 worth of prizes over the series. The prizes for the
That's not all - we have over £2000 worth of watches from Timex, and mapping from Anquet (see more below), hydration from Nuun and goodies from Merrell. EAS the sports nutrition company will be supporting the Open5 series with their products to ensure racers get the best out of the events.
More details on the Open5 series can be found here.
Remember to count for a place in the series you only need to enter three of the Open5 events this year, so if you can't make Hebden Bridge be sure to pop a few of these in your diary.
Sutton Bank - 11th March :: Keswick - 13th May :: Grassington - 30th September :: Coniston - 25th November
2007 Endurance series
The endurance series is attracting interest and in particular the new Open12 event in June. As mentioned in December - it is made up of three very different events from the 5 to the 24. Planning this far ahead means there is plenty of time to get your head around the longer events. You have just over 4 months to find someone else whose game on for the challenge - if you are looking for someone, put a posting up on Sleepmonsters - there are plenty of other racers out there looking too. The deadline for the discounted entry is the 1st March or to focus the mind - the day after 28th February!
Open5 - Keswick 13 May
Open12 - Yorkshire Dales 23/24 June
Open24 -
We already have already drafted event maps for both the Open12 and Open24, we are now just confirming permissions with key landowners on both events - our hope is to put some more details on the website by the end of the month.
You can find out more here
Anquet Mapping
We have been working with Anquet mapping now for the last two years more recently testing new products before they go on the market as they see us as being one of the most intense users of their products. As we sat down and chatted with Anquet late last year it was clear that even with out their support we would still be using their products as they are key to the planning of our events. Planning a complex event like the Open12 or 24 would be almost impossible without using Anquet.
Just before Christmas Anquet made a subtle change to how you can buy their products - in summary rather than buying a CD (which you can still do) you can now select the exact area you need and download it from the internet, which means you don't have to have mapping of areas you don't need.
Take a look at www.anquetmapserver.co.uk you can download the software for free including photo mapping and a basic road map of the country. More details can be found on this page of their website.
http://www.anquetmapserver.co.uk/Map_Store/How_to_obtain_Maps.aspx
Anquet supports Open Adventure with maps for the Open5 series and prize vouchers for the Open5, Open12 and Open24 events. This year they will also be offering mapping for competitors of the Open12 and Open24 at an exclusive price. More details to come soon (err we need to finalise the area before they can finalise the price...)
Well, we hope to see you in
Hope you have a good day.
No worries
James Thurlow