Sunshine All The Way

Rob Howard / 15.03.2005

For the second weekend in a row it was sunshine all the way, with two busy races taking place at opposite ends of the country in superb winter weather.

The new Open5 series began opening up adventure racing in the north with it’s first ever race starting from the village of Reeth in Swaledale. There were 80 competitors for the inaugural race over the Yorkshire Dales, and they faced some tricky riding conditions with settled snow making progress slow on the higher parts of the course. As a result those who chose to run first and clear all the available controls did well.

The competition was strong too, particularly in the mixed category where James Williams & Sarah Noot (one of 3 CompassPoint teams taking part), finished on the same points score as John Allen and Louise Wilkins and won with a 3 minute faster time. In the Male pairs Jeff Powell Davies and Russell Ladkin just stayed ahead of Richard Wren and Andy Simpson, and in the solo classes the most intense competition was between the male and female class leaders Heather Dawe and Eddie Winslow! Dawe put in a powerful performance (showing no signs of fatigue after her recent win at the High Peak Marathon with Team SleepMonsters), and finished with a score just 10 points behind the Male solo winner. Full results are on www.openadventure.com.

Further South Dynamic Adventure Racing were starting their season in the New Forest, again in glorious sunshine, and had their biggest entry ever. Entries were turned away from the standard race on Sunday where 80% of the competitors were new to adventure racing and Race Director Simon Thomas said, “they blasted the run, were too tired on the ride and blew out of the night navigation altogether – they learned a lot about pacing!” There were also 5 teams from Marsh, a company preparing for the Microsoft UK Challenge later in the year.

Courses were in the north of the Forest, an area not used by DAR before, and those who did tackle the night navigation had to beware of spooked horses galloping across their path in the darkness – the stallions get frisky at this time of year! Tom Gibbs got the best score in the DAR Plus race, followed by Team SleepMonsters, who won the team category.

Full results will be available shortly, and we’ll have reports and pictures of both races to follow soon.