Polaris Challenge
Autumn Sun in the Lakes
Karen McDonald / 14.10.2004
This year’s autumn event was in the Lake District with the start and event centre in Coniston. The local school housed the registration and event shops from Outdoors Unlimited and Trackloggs (who provided a free download of the grid references onto GPS). The event centre is always a busy environment with teams marking up their special event maps, provided by Biketreks of Ambleside, with all the grid references and out of bound/permissible tracks for the weekend, then getting food from Wilfs and buying all their last minute kit from the event shop.
Friday night saw most competitors camped at Coniston Hall Campsite right next to the lake for a fantastic view in the morning just before the inevitable ride uphill to the start. There were a few competitors who had to do this twice as they’d forgotten to bring their electronic score tags provided by Sport Ident, you can’t get a score for the day without one of these devices!
There was a banner at the start saying Happy 40th to Andy Heading, one of the event’s regular riders, what a great way to spend your birthday, out on the hills with 600 other riders! After a short ride from the start everyone collected a list of all the checkpoints for that day and their values. This caused some confusion as the course directors Ade Gidney and Andy Slatery had spread the scores so well that the route choice of north or south was a difficult one.
The tracks looked more technical (on the map) to the north and slightly easier to the south, but with more distance. Well the tracks all over the map turned out to be superb, with some fantastic descents and most up hills totally ride-able, which with the added bonus of superb weather meant a great days biking was to be had.
The checkpoints were spread through the forest tracks of Grizedale, on open fell areas south west of Coniston, by some superb rocky descents on Loughrigg and as far south as Whitbarrow. The hills were draining on the legs but with some fantastic views from all the tops with the autumn colours showing against clear blue skies for most of the day.See All Event Posts
