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The Rat Race Rocks Edinburgh – Again

Rob Howard / 18.07.2006

The Rat Race was back in Edinburgh last weekend, the third visit to the city where Rat Racing began, and the event was bigger and louder than ever.

Once again the sun was shining, a bit too much for the racers on Sunday who found the heat wave conditions hard to cope with, and the race was full, with 155 adventure course teams and 16 Rookie teams.

The Rookies were content to race on the Saturday night ‘Mean Streets Prologue’, a tough 3 hours of ‘street entertainment’ which included a few playground activities, the use of chopsticks and a go at wheelchair rugby. The North Face were clear winners of the Prologue, starting Sunday’s main event with a 9 minute advantage over their nearest rivals after clearing all the controls.

Sunday’s race was 80km of cycling which took teams southwards, over the Pentland hills then northwards again to kayak on the Firth of Forth before finishing back in the city centre. On the way teams abseiled into a quarry where a rave was happening, hit golf balls, traversed underneath a viaduct, performed on stage …and more!

There were many navigational dramas, including some for the lead teams, but by the end of the day the winners by a big margin were Team SleepMonsters.com who were over 40 minutes quicker on Sunday than anyone else. It was a very good weekend too for the Accelerate squad who took 2nd, 3rd and 5th with their 3 teams.

A full race report and lots of pictures will follow very soon.