Mountain Hardwear Open5 Adventure Race Series #3
Hot Competition at Endurance Series Open5
Gill Watson/Team SleepMonsters/Inov-8 / 21.05.2008
As we emerged from our tents we were relieved to see blue skies overhead and with the sunshine lifting our spirits we drove to Broughton to find the small village was buzzing with people sorting kit, heading off to the start transition and registering.The race has been here before, but as we studied the maps it was evident that this time we were heading to the other side on the Dunnerdale Fells. The run looked good with tricky navigation on the fells and the bike looked challenging. This was to be expected really as this was the first of the Open Endurance Series and people had come from far and wide. The Open Series has been voted best UK race in the prestigious and unrivalled AR Excellence Awards two years running so James is obviously hoping for a hat trick!!
On With The Job!
We registered and got our maps and had a quick team discussion. There was a good showing by the Sleepmonsters/Inov-8 squad and the Inov-8 team, and Ali Northcott (and a few others) had made the long journey from the South to race with the \"retired\" Anthony Emmet.
We got ready and rode to the transition, which was about 3 km away … uphill! The ride was a good legwarmer and we then prepared our kit for transition - bike shoes, fluid, food etc. as we had decided to run first, which seemed a popular decision amongst the top teams.
We cleared our dibbers and headed off up the Knott after sorting out the values and the dummy controls. After some quick maths we figured there were a lot more points on the bike, so we decided on a 2 hour/3 hour split as we were strong on the bike!
As soon as we gained the height on the run the views were great, especially from the trig point on Great Stickle and the terrain excellent but with a couple of elusive checkpoints.
CP 38 eluded us and some others for a while - it was a footpath/wall crossing/fencepost and there were a few walls about confusing the issue. Eventually we found it, but wasted too much time doing so. We did all but 3 checkpoints on the run which only lost us 25 points from the maximum score, and headed back with plenty of time to spend on the bike section.
Roller Coaster Ride!
We set off south on the bike heading for CP 19. As we spent most of the first hour covering ground to get over to the CP’s it became evident that this bike stage was going to be a challenging roller coaster ride of steep ups and downs and pushing!
CP7 was situated underneath a bridge that required a bit of climbing skill to shimmy round the parapet to the very low and precariously placed SI box. I think a couple of people took a dip but what a beautiful clear pool to fall into - obviously a favourite spot with the locals judging by the curious audience that had accumulated!See All Event Posts
