planetFear Open24
Overnight in North Wales
Karen McDonald / 27.07.2010
Team Haglof's (all four of us) took Friday off and went to north Wales for a few hours sea paddling the day before the race. Mainly to try our boats in some rough water and waves etc - the weather was like being in the med, sun and flat water. We paddled from a sea side cafe near Conwy and saw dolphins (porpoises) and seals, it was like being on holiday and we were all expecting this weather the next day for the start of the race. NO - it was pants! The sea kayaking was cancelled and another sea kayak section was added (Menai Straits), so we were bussed off to Anglesea for the prologue of an open water swim and some coasteering. This was coasteering with jelly fish - loads of them! I had short sleeves and panicked everytime I touched one - they are worse than seaweed on flesh!We also got a lift in a large RIB boat through some massive waves to the start - what a roller coaster ride that was at the front of the boat!
The start was changed to a bike ride with a short run in the middle of it. My legs were back and I felt good. We then got to play in our boats in the Menai Straits, with a battle against tide and wind to start with but then turned round for a superb surfing paddle all the way to Menai Bridge before a slightly better battle back against the tide to Port Dinoric for another biking section. Poor Alex wasn't feeling so good (must have been all the sea water he swallowed) so I did quite a bit of the navigating on the bike but we finished with a massive uphill to Ogwen Cottage at the top of Llanberis Pass - just to kill our legs off before the night stage over the Glyders.
After not eating and drinking enough on the Open12 I had some new sarnies, a mate had suggested banana and peanut butter, umm these work for me - loved them. My other race favourites were the cheese and home made pickle and parma ham with cheese. I managed to eat and drink really well.
We thought we had picked a good route - until we saw the path - or should it be a pile of rocks - we wasted a lot of time clambering and scrambling and we couldn't find one checkpoint of 15 points. Poor Alex had a big fall at one point and I thought he'd hurt himself badly but luckily there were just a few scrapes - phew - that would have been a major rescue.
We must have wasted a lot of time on that section and by the time we got back to some better running ground we were exhausted, but hooked up with mates Emma and Dave who had done equally badly and we all got back to transition about 9 minutes late - loosing 18 points (all because we were looking for a 15 point checkpoint!)
Next was another short bike ride, my legs stopped working here as it was early morning and I kept falling asleep. It was the same on the next run too but I got woken up by the time we got to a special stage in a mine. We had to navigate down a stream, then we were let loose to look for checkpoints in a whole section of tunnels and caves, then we had to get in an inflatable before more wading to get out - it was excellent!
Then we were onto our last biking section (with a special stage of some orienteering in the middle of it). My eyes kept shutting and I kept falling off my bike going up hill as I kept falling asleep. Loads of people overtook us . Not fair - I am not used to that so much on my bike! We did OK when we got onto singletrack (lots of the checkpoints were on the Marin trail at Coed y Brenin. This woke me up and I loved the riding so was happy again , until I hit a fire road uphill again I would fall asleep and loose all power in my legs. Eventually I ate some jelly babies and this did it - I was back, we plodded round the short orienteering route and then flew back down to the finish. (We should have done the medium course as we had about 10 or 15 minutes to spare and we came 5th and were only 15 points behind the team that were 4th!
[Karen McDonald was racing with Team Haglofs and you can read the team blog <a href="#" onClick="javascript:newsitewindow('http://www.teamhaglofs.co.uk/')" class="main">here</a>]See All Event Posts
