Independent Networks Adrenalin Rush
Tales and Adjustments
Rob / 30.05.2003
Throughout Friday teams have been arriving back at the event centre at the Bught Sports centre and camp site, delighted and relieved to have made it over the finish line. The camp site is once again busy as teams that have already finished start to dry, sort and repack all their equipment. They are resting, attending to their injuries (especially their feet), discussing their race with other teams and telling their own stories of the race. Among the early morning finishers were SleepMonsters.com but they managed to get lost right at he final checkpoint, paddling up a side channel. “We knew we were minutes from the finish� said Greg Clarke, “we just didn’t know where it was!� His team mate John Cunningham was particularly pleased to have crossed the line after having to pull out of last year’s race.
One of the hundreds of race stories that emerged as the teams got back was of SleepMonsters.com helping team Out There (who are still ‘out there’ as I write) on the swim. Water safety marshal Pete Dew said, “It was amazing. A couple of racers from Out There were having real difficulty and the SleepMonsters team just reached out and grabbed them as they went past. Not a word was spoken, they just swam with one arm and towed them across from there. A fantastic team effort.�
First Timers
Two of today’s finishers, both in unranked teams, were in their first ever adventure race, and a week before the start neither knew they’d be here. Winnie Chang joined Anabasis just a couple of days before the race, and by coincidence met Keith Byrne, of the winning team when buying up the equipment she needed in London. Despite never having done an adventure race before she was strong right to the end, though she did have trouble staying awake on Loch Ness. As there were only 3 in their team they were joined for the paddle by Pepi, one of the Dutch race volunteers and he was with Winnie. “She did a lot of paddling� he said, “but much of it was air paddling. She kept dozing off and was paddling on auto-pilot, but the blades were not in the water!�See All Event Posts
