Budding Racers

News on the forthcoming Open Adventure 24 hour race, excitement at the recent Open12 and a big win on the International Adventure Race circuit for GB racers - its tricky not to say that Adventure Racing has a bit of a buzz rattling through it. Join the ride and read on...

The Open24 is looming, with close competition in the Endurance Series made up of the Open5 at Keswick, the Open12 in the Dales and this final race in the Lakes. There certainly is some great racing going on.

Yet in the midst of this other heros have come out of the woodwork, in the recent Open12 was Duncan Honeysett / Stephen Tysome. They took 4th place in the male pairs by taking an almost direct route between transitions and special stages, outwitting a few greedy racers who went chasing points out of arms length. So expect surprises as the leader table is most certainly not set in stone. www.openadventure.com/results.htm

As ever the Open24 is expected to pull it out of the bag for the 3rd year running. The location is the Lakes - home of Open Adventure and arguably the place we know best, so competitors can expect to visit places where few people have ever been before.

The location for registration will be released this weekend, but just to wet the whistle here is a photo of where registration will be - slightly grander that the village halls of the past. Competitors already registered yet tempted by the bed and breakfast offer on the friday night should contact Lisa to reserve a bed.

Entries are still open and you can find an entry form here - the shortest distances we are expecting competitors to take (it does assume people don't get lost!) are;

mountain bike - 47km 1500m ascent
foot - 20km 1200m ascent
swim - 600m
paddling - 5km

Volunteers

The Open24 only works because we have an ickle army of volunteers who man transitions, special stages, drive vehicles and smile in the wee hours.  If you are injured, nosey, or just want to watch your friends endure hardship then wing us an email.

We provide money for fuel and make sure you are fed, if you can't lift boxes or want to get a good nights sleep aint no problem we can work with that - we only ask that you are available from 1st thing Saturday morning till late Sunday afternoon.www.openadventure.com/volunteers.htm

We threw a curved ball in to the Open12 by bussing all competitors 15miles away to Clapham (in the Yorkshire Dales not London! - that would be nasty). The event included caving, a run round the spectacular Ingleton falls walk and abseiling off Firbank Viaduct as well as a few pool jumps to sort out the nerves. You can find out what the competitors got up to and where they went by looking at the popular race analysis on the results page.

Ian and Judith Hughes pulled the report together which can be found on the Sleepmonsters website. Whilst James Kirby was also in attendance, his photos from the day are all up on Sleepmonsters with a swanky new system where competitors can search by competitor number - he has also just added photos from the pool jump so its worth having another browse to see what fear looks like. www.sleepmonsters.co.uk/photoshop.php?event_id=4895

Great Britain International Success
Mountain X-Race

Just over a week ago four guys set off for Switzerland to compete in the Mountain X-Race, come last Friday they had seen the best of the World off in 6 days of Adventure Racing from hydro Speeding, downhill mountain biking, white water paddling and lots of running! Well done to Team manager Tim Lloyd, Cumbrian locals Phil Davies and Ben Bardsley, the third in the team is Chris Near - sounds familiar he's leading the Open Adventure endurance series with Tim Higginbottom in Team Inov8.

And Finally

Open Adventure likes to dabble in a bit of racing ourselves, we have teamed up with one of our arch rivals in the 2 day ACE race series Ian Hughes to race as a three in the Edinburgh Rat Race.  If you see a top triathlete with a tandem hanging off his back wheel give us a wave, we might be able to squeeze a grin in between breathing.

No worries
James Thurlow