ACE Races 1-Day Series - Ashdown Forest

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Fast Racing, Quick Thinking

Jim Godden – Team SleepMonsters / 19.05.2006

Even after 5 years of adventure racing, I still hadn\'t completed a 1 day Ace Race, mainly being put off by having to complete \'challenges\' in a race. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

A \'hands in the air\' type survey by Phil before the start showed that about 50% of participants were first timers, which must be good for the sport. However, there were also a number of seasoned racers, some obviously training for the Wilderness race, so this certainly wasn\'t going to be an easy race.

From the start, the theme of the day would be \'fast\'. Running from a mass start, and following a taped route certainly gets you moving quicker than you would normally, and many lead teams were mixed together. After collecting the map, and a 6k run through the forest, the lead teams Aberdeen Asset Management, Accelerate, Tea and Medals and Sleepmonsters were only seconds apart at the bike transition. We managed to pass AAM, but only due to a puncture for them after a few minutes from the transition, which showed how rough some of the tracks were.

The challenges that Phil had laid on were varied and interesting, ranging from sliding down a muddy rope to walking through a pond keeping one member of the team dry. I found the only challenge I didn\'t like was collecting letters from trees and making a word, as it is a mental challenge rather than a purely physical one - just a bugbear of mine !!!

The only problem we encountered on the course was a missing marshal, due to a fall on a bike. This did cause a few problems as to what to do when a challenge is present but with no marshal - perhaps something to be mentioned at future briefings.See All Event Posts