Nerves of Steel
John Orton, Wootton Bassett Hounds / 04.08.2009
I’ve got this list of things to do before I die. Not a mental list, a real list.<br />
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Every year I try and do a few of them. It’s a bit of an eclectic list that I’ve had for about 5 years now (and interestingly it’s now longer than it was 5 years ago) and there, tucked in between “Walk the Pennine Wayâ€Â? and “Go to the balletâ€Â? is “Do an adventure raceâ€Â?. It’s been there for a while now, just sitting there irritating and threatening me, so when Eddie rang me up and suggested that we get a team together for the Sheffield Rat Race, I was just obliged to say yes. (Note to self for future reference, check out what it’s all about before you say yes).<br />
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“We’ll need a womanâ€Â? he said, which proved to be easier to fix than I thought it might be: I asked Michelle and she just said yes. (Note for Michelle, check out what it’s all about before you say yes).<br />
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To put this into perspective, Eddie’s a very good adventure racer, Michelle and I are both runners - but not cyclists - and were both recovering from injuries and therefore not really very fit. On a positive note, I’ve orienteered for many a long year and in doing so I’ve done a few things that, as it turned out, were a bit similar to a Rat Race.<br />
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We kind of agreed that we’d enter a couple of months before the day, but for all sorts of reasons found it hard to meet up and talk it through or have a practice (Eddie wanted to put on a whole mini event for us) and in fact Eddie and Michelle didn’t meet up until the day of the race! Michelle and I did manage to get out for a couple of bike rides but that just told us that we were both no good at all once we got off-road, but the injury recovery was going OK: we were running 7 or 8 miles. <br />
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So when we arrived in Sheffield on the day of the event, I think you can safely say that we were not fully prepared. We’d decided that Eddie would make all the decisions, I would navigate and Michelle would, well, just hang on really. We both had instructions to “do whatever Eddie saidâ€Â?. That seemed good to me - it’s always good to have someone to blame in these situations. It was also suggested that I ought to carry the dibber. I never quite understood that logic until I was half-way up a tree sometime later! <br />
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We (Eddie) also decided that it would be good to tow Michelle - even though Michelle had never heard of this concept.
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