ACE Races 1-Day Series - Ashdown Forest

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Ashdown - The Story from the Back

Tracey Smith -Team Aon Ladies / 12.05.2005

After attending the Ace Adventure training weekend in April it was a last minute decision by my team to do the first of 1-day Ace series as part of our training for the Microsoft Challenge in June. As we waited for the start of the race the nerves began to set in and we started questioning whether we were ready to take on our first adventure race as a team.

As we raced of with ‘The Final Countdown’ running through our heads (thanks for playing that one Phil!) a mixture of nerves and over confidence in our ability lead to us starting off far too fast and after a few undulating hills we began to struggle and fall back in the field.

By the time we finished the initial three-mile run we were in last place although the fantastic marshals, some of which we had met at the training weekend, kept our moral high. We quickly realised that are ambitions of doing well in the race were a little over zealous and the event became more about ‘learns for the Microsoft Challenge’ and there were lots of them through out the day!

As we ran to ‘Challenge 1’ we began to catch up with a few people along the route. We were beginning to feel more positive as we approached checkpoint 2. Picking up speed as we bounded down a steep hill, we quickly ran past a tree with red & white ribbon on it, happy that this meant we were going the right way and we looked on down the hill expecting to see a group of people doing ‘Challenge 2’.

At the bottom at the big hill came our biggest ‘learn’ of the day ‘… always read the instructions’! Point two was in fact a checkpoint not a challenge - the red and white ribbon marking it was now 200m back uphill! See All Event Posts