---

Easter Weekend Roundup

Rob / 13.04.2004

Over the Easter weekend there were some ideal AR training events taking place in the UK, on foot, bike and on the water, and the second round of the Irish Championships was on.

The competition area for this was around Lough Melvin, and once again there was a 2-day race on offer and an easier one-day option, which was the most popular. This was won by Team BB from Dublin (Paul Mahon, Beth McCluskey, Andrew Howse and Jonny McCabe), who put their orienteering skills to good use. ‘Flapjacks’ were the only team to go through the night and complete the 2-day event as part of their build-up towards the 2005 Adrenalin Rush.

In Cumbria the first Peel Adventure Mountain Bike Orienteering event took place in the Grizedale Forest the day before the big JK Orienteering Festival. The standard of competition was very high, with many of the national MTBO squad racing, and Gary Tompsett lead the way, winning the Men’s Open class in 1.09.44.

Some regular racers used the long weekend for navigation practice on both bike and foot, and Anthony Emmet described the navigation at the JK as the toughest he’d ever encountered. Jamie Stevenson recovered from his exertions at the Indoor Race at the NEC the previous weekend to win the M21E class and Steve Birkinshaw of Saab Salomon was back orienteering at the highest level, winning the M35 class.

On the water it was time for the annual Devizes to Westminster Canoe marathon down the Thames and John Drummond of Team Anabasis was in one of the closest finishes ever. He was racing with James Treadgold for Reading Canoe Club, and the pair lead from Devizes to Teddington, but lost out by just 65 seconds to Henry and Richard Hendron in the prestigious Senior Doubles class. (The winning time was 18 hours 24 minutes 50 seconds.)

Pete James and Jules Taylor were 15th overall, and Howard Lowe and Fiona Paterson of Team SleepMonsters 26th, taking 24 hours 38 minutes 49 seconds and finishing 4th mixed pair.

[We’ll have full race reports to follow in the next few days.]