Adventure Racers
Well, I hope the British weather is treating you well, it nearly had the better of us at Open Adventure last weekend with the Open24, a 24 hour adventure race in the Yorkshire Dales. News on this and the Open5 series – Open Adventure’s five hour adventure race to follow. Keep up the pace if you can and hang on for the ride, Adventure Racing in the UK has never been better.
July 29/30th :: Yorkshire Dales
[photos taken by James Kirby and Rob Howard]
Hot day out
The sun did its best to put a downer on the Open24 with moorland fires sprouting up across the north of England resulting in much of the land being closed to public access. After a considerable number of phone calls, we somehow managed to cobble together an event for the 120 competitors who made their way to the Yorkshire Dales on the last weekend of July. For anyone who thought they might be short changed, they needn’t have worried, with abseiling, caving and whitewater paddling all on the programme as well as some spectacular MTBing and running, there was way too much for the average racers senses.
James Kirby and Rob Howard were in attendance, taking photos at every corner – capturing shock, exasperated, and bewildering expressions with the backdrop of the Dales. It’s an exhausting experience but well worth a click through the photos – you can find them here. A new little feature of Sleepmonsters is the ability to search by race number so if you were one of those competitors, pop in your race number and watch the photos tell a story.
Rob has also put together a race report, another exhausting read of relentless adventure in the Dales, if you want to know what all the fuss is about take a little look here – it’s not to be missed.
[photos taken by James Kirby and Rob Howard]
1st, 2nd and 3rd
Winners of the events took away a real prize pool from Mountain Hardwear, EAS, Merrell, Anquet and Total Adventure – setting themselves up nicely for races later this year.
Male Pairs
Nick Gracie / Warren Bates :: Aberdeen Asset Management [2780 pts]
Anthony Emmet / Mark Ford :: Barclays The North Face 1 [2685 pts]
Simon Enderby / Andy Wilson :: Lost Boys AR [2650 pts]
Female Pairs
Louise Allen / Nicola England :: EWOK [975 pts]
Mixed Pairs
Ali Northcott / Mark Chryssanthou :: Barclays The North Face 2 [2685 pts]
Helen Jackson / Pete James :: Merrell / Mountain Hardwear 1 [2640 pts]
Chris Morgan / Anna Sloan :: Salt and Pepper [2505 pts]
Full results including splits and a table ranking time spent at transitions can be found on the Open Adventure website www.openadventure.com/results.htm
[Winners of the male pairs Warren Bates and Nick Gracie – Aberdeen Asset Management, with yours truly]
Photo – Rob Howard www.sleepmonsters.co.uk
October 1st :: Malham - Yorkshire Dales
November 26th :: Reeth - Yorkshire Dales
Well if the Open24 hasn’t wet your appetite for Adventure Racing you really need to seek some help. For those who don’t need help, we have 2 more races of the Open5 series to go in 2006 – following the trend of the Open24 we are back in the Dales, to places not visited on the Open24. For those who have not visited Malham you really have missed a little treat, spectacles’ of Malham Cove, Goredale Scar and Janet’s Foss provide an amazing backdrop to this part of the country. At the very least come and give us a look on Sunday 1st of October, drink tea, savour ice creams, and take a stroll in the midst of encouraging racers tackle this part of the country on foot and MTB. For more information go no further than www.malhamdale.com
[Malham Cove – nesting home to climbers and peregrine falcons]
Photo Paul Heaton www.fotocraftimages.co.uk
If you fancy a go yet are a little unsure about the format or what to expect, have a look at our web pages for those “new to the event” here. Still unsure? Check out the end of the article - it gives you details on how to obtain free maps of previous events from Open Adventure, just the solution for a bit of armchair adventure racing.
More details on the Open5 series can be found here.
Open Adventure 2007
The prize giving for the Open24 was also the venue to disclose some snippets of plans for 2007. For those who were not there, the plan is to run the Open24 in 2007 in the Lake District – the technicians who work on the Open24 have already been scheming the technical stages for next years event. We have even had a superb suggestion for the location in 2008 – so for anybody thinking we are about to run out of ideas or places to go.. don’t worry.
We also announced our hope to run a coast to coast event in 2007, probably on the August Bank Holiday weekend – initial thoughts are to run it as a pairs supported event (means a pair could be supported by a friend in a car). However we are also thinking of somehow making it a relay event to provide appeal to a wider audience. We are open to ideas, so if you have any thoughts of venues for the Open5 series, Open24 or formats in which we could run events, wing us an email we are always keen to find ways to get more people out in to this amazing part of the country we live in.
Hope you have a good day.
No worries
James Thurlow