Quest ARS

---

Questars go North

Pippa MacDougall - Questars / 09.07.2003

This first weekend in July saw the fifth event in the Quest Adventure Race Series 2003 held for the first time in North Yorkshire. With a new location for the race it was great to see so many new comers taking part to see what they thought of Adventure Racing - so far the feedback has been pretty good!

The weather remained warm and dry for the event, although a little breezy around Grimwith Reservoir which doesn\'t provide a great deal of shelter. This mainly effected the canoeing stage, where quite a few teams found themselves battling against the wind to get to the check points. Those teams who were on the water first suffered the worst, as the wind did eventually die down towards the end of the event.

All the transition points were from the Reservoir, making it easy on teams who didn’t have to carry kit to change into for the cycling or canoeing stages. Most of the race took place across the moor land towards the West of the reservoir as a huge amount of the area is currently full of ground nesting birds. Consequently teams had to make sure they stuck to the paths & bridleways at all times to avoid disturbing any unsuspecting wildlife.

It was certainly a tough course, with some challenging terrain as the scores proved - the highest being 630 Questars. Obviously used to this type of terrain, the Peak Freaks scored an excellent 385 Questars on the Mountain Bike stage out of a possible 450, to be followed closely by \'Whatever\' and \'Supper Stars\' who both scored 305 Questars on this stage. Sadly for \'Whatever\' they lost a whopping 230 in penalties for coming in after time on their running stage, cancelling out the good work they had achieved on the cycling stage.

The running stage, however was the highlight for Men\'s teams Aztec Multipower, Turl 1 and veteran teams The Dark Horse and The Unlikelies, all of them scoring a very impressive 430 Questars out of 450. (The Unlikelies went on to win the Veterans Category.)

The race however, really belonged to the Overall and Men\'s winners – Aztec Multipower, who were Mick Kenyon and Mark Chryssanthou. There were a very large number of Novice teams in this event which was good to see, and they all did extremely well with the pretty skinny looking \'Bellys of Lard\' coming in first place with 415 Questars in total.

Results

Overall & Men\'s - Aztec Multipower - 630 Questars
Ladies\' - Batemill Mob 2 - 280 Questars
Veterans - The Unlikelies - 615 Questars
Men\'s Solo - Turl 1 - 600 Questars
Novices - Bellys of Lard - 415 Questars

[Full results are on the race web site.]See All Event Posts