Helly Hansen X-Challenge/Commotion in Cumbria
Countdown to Victory at X-Challenge
Bruce Duncan (Team Aberdeen Asset Management) / 07.04.2009
The first ever Adventure Decathlon involved 19 of the top 3 man/women/mixed teams in the country competing over 10 contrasting outdoor events for the top prize of £2500 and to be crowned the inaugural champions.All the teams assembled at 7.30am Saturday morning after arriving the previous night and camping or arriving in the morning after early starts. Trailplus impresario, Paul Magner, gave the initial briefing, explaining that teams would be put in groups for the first five stages and the results would be a closely guarded secret, to be revealed after the fifth event. Four more events would happen in the afternoon and new groups, based on overall position would be formed.
Most of the teams knew each other, so there was some good chat and banter as we walked to our first challenge, the Climbing Wall Traverse, but as soon as we were in and given our instructions it was race mode. The challenge was to traverse a wall as far as possible in 3 minutes. As you got around the wall however the height got lower and lower and holds smaller, making it harder to go just that little bit further. We worked well together and once the results were published got a credible 2nd place for our efforts.
The challenge was short, so we were quickly back at base chatting again while we waited to head off to the Adventure Biathlon. Thoughts of rifles and ski’s were dashed as this turned out to be a short running loop followed by an Archery shoot, the run was enough to really get you out of breath, especially as you only had 5 mins to get round 3 times and shoot 3 arrows on each lap. We were solid on this one, with Tom starting out with a bull’s-eye, sadly not something he’d repeat, but it did scare the other teams. Another 2nd place and we were off to a good start.
The assault course then beckoned. As with the other challenges the details were secret so we had no idea what lay ahead, and as we were the first team off in our group we had no advantage of being able to see what others did, not that you could see much. We set off fast, knowing that we needed to make no mistakes, and working as a team we quickly polished off the wobbly bridge, bosons chair, high wall and balance beam to post a solid time, which later turned out to be only 1 second behind the fastest team, and 2 seconds ahead of the 3rd placed team, these short events were proving to be very close run things.See All Event Posts
