The Rat Race EDINBURGH Urban Adventure Race
Aberdeen in Edinburgh
Bruce Duncan (Team Aberdeen Asset Management) / 29.07.2008
This was the 5th running of the Edinburgh Rat Race, my 4th time racing as I had helped plan it last year while injured. The event has lost none of its charm and constant surprises, so as everyone was on the start line the talk of was what strange and wacky things we’d be doing on the prologue, the 3hr street running section of the race.At 5pm 500 racers sprinted out of Princess St Gardens, heading in all directions. We knew that there would be queues at the first checkpoint, so we ran really hard to get there first, complete the challenge of getting the other team mates onto the large stone balls by the Sheraton hotel and get away quickly. From here on we ran a really good course, some checkpoints were only open between certain times, meaning route choice was critical to get everything in the correct order.
After 2hrs 45 minutes we returned to the gardens, having only missed out on 2 controls, 1 due to it being too out of the way for too few points, and the other for having too much of a queue for the points it was worth. We were then incredibly glad to see that we had beaten our closest rivals by almost 60 points, which translated into a 20 minute lead for Sunday.
We were all tired and sore after running hard for 27km around the city so after we had had our massages we headed home and rested up for the big day of Sunday marking up the map and eating plenty of food. (See our route here.
Sunday dawned a beautiful day, and as we all toiled up to the start in the castle esplanade there were many groans from people suffering as much as we were! After some last minute physio on my ITB from team mate Iona, we ran off into the city for an action packed course that would take us all over the place.
First up was a number of clues to solve, we had to run around the centre of Edinburgh to find the answers to 5 clues, once completed it was back to the gardens to get the bikes and head out to Roseburn to abseil into the Water of Leith, (another key place to be in and out of quickly to beat the queues), then back onto the bike, a bit of tricky navigation around a residential area in the west of Edinburgh then off to the Forth road bridge, to North Queensferry. This was the first time that the race had gone over the Forth, and it provided spectacular views for all.See All Event Posts
