Lythgoes Adrenalin Rush

Adrenalin Rush – How it all began

Rob / 25.05.2002

Now in it’s 3rd year Adrenalin Rush is already known around the world. It’s the biggest race on the British calendar, a World Championship qualifier, attracts some of the best teams in the world and the driving force behind it is it’s founder and the Race Director, Brian Elliot.

He was inspired to have a go at Eco Challenge 1996 in Australia, in a team which included his wife, Claire, and the Adrenalin Rush course planner Derek King. With no background in adventure racing (who did have then?) they had a hard time, but returned home with enough enthusiasm and inspiration to start a race themselves.

Not just any race though, that wouldn’t be good enough at all. Not by a long way. Elliot’s aim was to establish a big, multi-day race, but to make it affordable, and to prove you could have a demanding course without extremes of terrain and climate. And to make his point (and to make life easier) he started the first ever Adrenalin Rush in his home town of Banbridge in Northern Ireland.

It was a bold move to start a 6 day race, helped by a small band of largely inexperienced volunteers, but ambition is a quality the RD’s of the big races have to have in abundance. His core team is still the same, all close friends and family, and that helps create the friendly Adrenalin Rush atmosphere – this team know each other better than any of those on the course.

They could hardly have had a tougher start, as the first teams headed over the mountains of Mourne a huge electrical thunderstorm struck and from the outset Adrenalin Rush became a battle for survival with only a few teams making the finish line on a shortened course. (You can read all the reports in our race archive – just look down the list in Race Reports.) There was no question it was tough enough, not when an experienced racer like Marshal Ulrich compared it to Eco Challenge. (Things had been a bit touch and go when he capsized in big waves on Lough Neagh.)

There had been times when the fledgling race organisation barely held it together, but they came through, only to face a bigger challenge in 2001. The race was nearly a casualty of the extreme access restrictions imposed in the UK Foot and Mouth crisis and if it had failed to take place it would have been the end of Adrenalin Rush. Restrictions were eased in Scotland just in time, and a whole new race and course was put together in 6 frantic weeks by the dedicated race team and their friends.

The course, set at short notice by Gary Tompsett, was still tough enough for ‘Europe’s Toughest race’ and the weather once again played it’s part, with days of heavy rain. Martin Nieto, another Eco veteran inspired to start his own race, was competing and said it was the coldest he’d ever been. His race is the winter epic Raid Ukatak and it gets down to minus 40 in that! He’s coming again this year though.

So, now it’s the third Adrenalin Rush, back in Ireland on the course that should have been used last year. Most of the racers from the 2 previous winning teams are back, as are many previous competitors still out to complete their first Adrenalin Rush. The organising team, who have been working together for months to prepare the race, are geared up the highlight of their year and the Irish climate will surely play it’s part. And somewhere in race HQ the boots Brian Elliot wore on Eco-Challenge will be hung up as a reminder of how it all began.