Dynamic Adventure Racing Endurance
Puncture Prone!
Jason Haigh / 11.10.2007
After a wet summer, and little sunshine, a small field of competitors were welcomed back to Duncton Hall and the South Downs event with a sunny morning and the hope of a fine and dry day. The DAR team were very organised with Simon having loads of time to welcome the early birds with tales of his summer activities and a reminder to avoid un-necessary elevation changes.As a contrast to the Wye Valley event there were some areas North of the Downs that were flat and invitingly had some easy points to acquire. Like last year, during the briefing there were cautions of a couple of shoots in the area, and the warning to walk past the stud farm horses and avoid wearing bright colours! Nicky had suffered a series of punctures when setting the course and for some this was a sign of things to come! This being the first DAR event back from the summer break, I certainly had thoughts of the Sunday event, as 8 hours seemed a long time after a period of lower activity on the exercise front and higher activity on socialising.
10 o’clock came and many people set off on the run first, with the appearance of a straight-forward loop and hope of racking up the points. With access to the fire tracks in the woods south of Graffham Down there were some chances to pick up valuable minutes with good route selection, and the risk of losing significant time if you lost concentration.
With a new bike (my first time out on SPD pedals)and having always run first I decided to buck the trend and head out on the bike. Again I thought ‘this course can be cleared’ and with the hope of seeing some of the Rugby (Eng v Australia) in transition, I had a time target of 4 hours. The first 5 check points were sociable with a few riders following the same route, and with a nice steep climb after CP2, I was not alone in pushing my new bike up the hill.
My advice to novice riders would be not to go out on SPD’s until you have been on many training rides. I must have fallen off my bike about 20 times, trying to negotiate the rutted trails. Oh well, maybe next time I could wear motocross gear to reduce the bruising!
Navigation was fairly straight forward, although a few of the tracks were tough on the tyres and there were reports of a number of punctures. Luckily for me, I had a slow leak in the back tyre and I managed to finish without having to pump it up. (Surprisingly when I came out of the presentation my front tyre was also totally flat!) See All Event Posts
