The 2007 Adventure Race World Championship
iRULE in Scotland
Jon Mayne / 16.07.2007
‘So Jon, are you up here marshalling?’ was the question asked by a experienced UK adventure racer as I and team iRULE UK entered the Nevis Centre for registration. After nearly chocking out my dummy I calmly informed the gentleman that I was here in Scotland to race in the World Champs, curtly turned away and joined the queue of vastly fit looking International Adventure Racers! As Race Dirctor Phil Humphreys had so rightly stated, the greatest challenge of the WARC 2007 was getting to the start line. For us it began 9 months earlier, developing a team with shared objectives and goals for before, during and after the race, working worked hard on our training and focused on our individual and team weaknesses. I had even given up pies and pints for 3 months, a sacrifice I didn’t even make for my wedding! Finally, with kit boxes packed, skills testing complete, first aid briefing over, we sat down with heightened expectation for the presentation of the course.
Gary showed the virtual fly through of the course. Two things became immediately clear: 1. it was a monster of a course that would test the world’s best and 2. there was no realistic chance of our team completing the full course within the 7 days. This caused some mixed emotions. There was the enormous excitement of such an epic course and then the disappointment that we weren’t going to complete it ranked as a World Championship team.
I believe that all of the less experienced teams secretly harboured dreams of racing with the world’s best and pride and ego dictate that we all wanted to complete the full course. The course was set in such a way that there was going to be 2 races – an elite and the rest. Either way, the race was what it was, no point in moaning or whinging about it, and in these situations you have to put any disappointment aside and get on with the job in hand. Our target had always been to race as hard as we could for the full 7 days, that was what we’d trained and mentally prepared for and that was what we were going to do.
Time then went by very quickly, the Prologue begun with a short swim across the bay, and following a smooth transition we headed into the hills. Due to our quicker than average swim and solid transition, we ran alongside Team Sole, Nike, Balance Vector and AAM. A simply awesome moment, short lived, but awesome all the same!See All Event Posts
