planetFear Endurance Series 2011 Review

James Thurlow (Open Adventure) / 19.08.2011

Whilst many racers are now preparing for the adidas TERREX Coast to Coast race a few are still nursing exhaustion after the planetFear Endurance Series. The question at the finish of many events is "what next?" But we at Open Adventure occasionally like to stop the bike and enjoy the view, so here’s a review of this years Endurance series;

<b>planetFear Open5+ [Anglesey]</b>

Yours truly was the planner for this event – Open Adventure now typically has guest planners on our events; they bring fresh ideas and local knowledge to our events. For this event whilst I was the planner I had advice from our water safety advisor James Stevenson who runs Sea Kayaking from Anglesey.

First impressions as a planner on running an Adventure Race on Holyhead Mountain was – is this really possible? It’s a small area – popular for climbing and sea kayaking but bordered by some urban areas. The real crunch was that there was no off-road cycling – could we run an event without mountain biking? - With so much else on offer we decided to give it a go.

We used a 1:10000 map of Holyhead mountain from OS – the colours needed a little tweaking to make it workable, but it did a great job of providing some technical orienteering on the event. We then added a big abseil with a sporty scramble along with a kayaking section using sit-on-tops. As it turned out the weather gave its best and what was a benign holiday beach turned in to a cauldron of sea water with yellow boats bobbing around.

We had to leave one of our buoys out in the bay as the weather got so rough after the event – the local lifeboat popped out the following day to pull it in.

I like to think we showed off a great part of the country that many of us would think twice about visiting – those who made the trip won’t forget it and if you are thinking of honing those kayaking skills give James Stevenson a shout at <a href="#" onClick="javascript:newsitewindow('http://www.adventureelements.com')" class="main">Adventure Elements</a>.

<b>planetFear Open12 [North York Moors]</b>

Now then! As Wayne Elliot would say, local to the North York Moors Wayne was keen to show off a little of his back garden. A regular Adventure Racer he's also known for his insane behaviour of riding 24 hours on a singlespeed mountain bike. Wayne’s plan was to make use of the local steam railway <a href="#" onClick="javascript:newsitewindow('http://www.nymr.co.uk')" class="main">www.nymr.co.uk</a> to get competitors away from registration in Pickering and on to the moors.