Mountain Hardwear Open5 - Sutton Bank
Mountain Hardwear Open5 - Sutton Bank
Anna Gracie / 15.03.2007
I'm sure most of the racers heart rates rose as they left the A1 and drove towards the spectacular towering hills of the North York Moors National Park. As you arrive at the base of Sutton Bank and start to climb the steep hill you realise that these are proper hills!! There is a story that one summer day in 1977, 62 cars broke down on the drive up the hill and since then caravans have been banded. The question before the race was how many times would Mr Thurlow send the racers up and down these hills and how many would it break!!Although it was a windy and chilly day the sun was shining and it was surprising dry. The Visitors centre made a good base and although perched on top of the hill, it was obvious the course would send you straight back down into the surrounding valleys.
Before the race started two people managed to lock their car keys in the car. Erica Henson's old Polo was saved by James Thurlow's previous occupation as a car thief and he managed to rescue the situation with a cable tie. However when Richard Stacey, racing at his first Open5 did the same thing James was reluctant to practice his dark skills on a brand new Jaguar!!
As the race began riders and runners left in all directions and it was the usual matrix of route decisions that made the event such a good one. Using the online race analysis it is easy to see which routes the high scoring teams and solos took. The majority of people opted to run first which is often the case. There was a fairly obvious route choice on the run but looking at Andy Simpson's route he seems to have bucked the trend and it paid dividends.
The mountain bike section held a lot more points and also more difficult route choice decisions. James had warned racers of particular muddy sections of the course which again played on the brain when route planning. Which ever way you went there would be a few big climbs but the riding was great and it was a brilliant mixture of technical single track, fast forest trails and muddy downhill's.
As the racers returned the route choice discussions began and it was obvious that many had under estimated the course and almost half the racers came back late, including 2 male teams, Andy Hutton and Joe Cowan and Ben Wright and Tom Hawkins who after scoring respectable scores lost all their points to time penalties meaning they raced hard for 5 and a bit hours and scored 0 points!!!See All Event Posts
