Lythgoes Adrenalin Rush

A Black Eye and a Canadian Roundup

Rob / 31.05.2002

Close to midday two more teams crossed the finish line - 19 hours after the previous finishers. First to arrive was the all female team ‘Snow and Rock’ and they’d been having a hard time overcoming the Sleepmonsters to get to the finish. They had a couple of wake up calls though, in Anna McCormack’s case a painful one. She’d fallen asleep while riding her bike and had a black eye and a badly bruised face and wrist. Their second shaker was being passed by Supplierpipeline on the water, but the competitive spirit took over and they passed them again before the finish.

They are the first female team to complete the race, but it’s wasn’t the first experience of girls only teams for Mo Monaghan. “I’ve raced with a few all girl teams before, it’s different and I really like it. We’ve got on OK, we certainly talked a lot, about anything and everything. It’s not so competitive of course, but we were always struggling. I came into the race with flu and was only really pulling my weight on this last day, and Sam hasn’t done anything this long before and had a really heavy bike. Not that it matters too much, we’ve had fun.�

One tactic the team used which the others didn’t was to call in at houses along the way. They did it on long ‘bike push’ and again at the start of the second trek. “We were cold and very tired as we passed a house to set off up the hill,� said Jue Panter. “Then we thought, why not, and turned back. We were made welcome, got warmed up and drank lots of tea.�

Maybe Supplierpipeline should have tried knocking on a few doors. They’d had trouble finding a place to stop according to Wendy Simms. “We were getting really tired and needed to lay down, but it was raining so much we couldn’t. If there was a burst of sunshine we’d stop, but within a few minutes the rain was lashing down again and we’d have to go on.� Despite that they looked good when they finished, or at least not as bad as most of the other finishers!�

It was the first unsupported race the team had done, and Wendy thought it gave the race an extra dimension. “When you have to be totally self-sufficient, and take everything you need with you everytime, it’s very testing. Also at PC’s you have to manage everything with no support to look after you, and if you’re not organised the time can very quickly tick away.�

Adam Challis and Dave Corner were both excited by the caving, which they’d never done before and they won’t forget the horse riding in a hurry. “A horse from another team behind us bolted and spooked ours, and we were all thrown off, “ said Adam. “I was flat out on the floor and the horses were galloping into the distance. It took us a while to run them down and we were helped by a race photographer and a local farmer, otherwise we might never have caught them.�

He felt the team dynamics were as challenging as the course. “We’d not raced together for so long before and when you get tired it’s easy for an innocent comment to lead to heated exchanges, but I think we recognised what was happening and learned to deal with it. It was the same with the sleep deprivation, you learn to cope with it.� And saying that he went off to shower and go to bed!