Tri-adventure Experience, Swinley June 2012

Press Release - Julie / 25.06.2012

On arrival, we were greeted by a good crowd of familiar and less familiar faces, busy getting bikes and kit ready, marking maps and drinking tea.

I was really looking forward to the event, though with a certain degree of trepidation as the area is renowned for its tricky navigation. Last time I’d raced here had been fine though, and I hadn’t had any navigation issues recently, so what could go wrong?

Looking at the map before the race, it seemed sensible to run more than usual, as some of the bike checkpoints down to the south east looked hard to find. At the start people seemed evenly split between those heading off east and west – I joined a crowd running east to collect checkpoint 14, but after that diverted to checkpoint 1 so was soon relatively on my own. The pill box at the top of the hill was easy to find, as was checkpoint 2, back down the track. So far so good.  Even checkpoint 3, off track, proved unchallenging thanks to a handy fence corner.

However things went less to plan finding my way out from 3 to 5 – a good reminder that there is no room for complacency at Swinley.

Lost (adj) – unable to find one’s way or ascertain one’s whereabouts. Confused, bewildered.

In fact there are various degrees of lostness, ranging from slightly misplaced to completely flummoxed – most of which I experienced in the 3 hours to follow…

My current position was only a slight misplacement, but attempting to head in the right direction involved a muddy slide and wade across a stream - this was turning into a proper adventure race now. Luckily I soon reorientated myself and found checkpoint 5 at the very scenic location of Rapley Lake.

For reasons unclear with hindsight, I decided to go for checkpoint 4 rather than 15, but on arriving at a heavily wooded area full of singletrack it didn’t seem worth spending ages looking for a checkpoint in the middle of trees somewhere…only later that evening did I spot the extremely narrow white firebreak line on the map which might just have helped…!