Manchester is About to be Rat Raced

Rob Howard / 03.08.2005

The third and final Rat Race of the year takes place in Manchester on Saturday, and this one, called the ‘Urban X’ is a little different! There’s no separate Elite class and the race takes place on Saturday only, including both Rookie and Adventure sections.

All competitors will race together on Saturday morning for 2 hours on a course that is running based, though it will of course have some of those unique and bizarre Rat Race checkpoints. This will take competitors under, over and through the city, reaching places even local competitors will not have visited before. Then in the afternoon the ‘Adventure’ teams will race on a more demanding and complex course for a further 3 hours.

While all this is going on the event village at Piccadilly Gardens in the town centre will be busy with displays, hand-on activities, bands & DJ’s and a big screen covering the race action. During the afternoon there will also be a new, and unique climbing competition, called the ‘Bruntwood Aerial Assault’ and within the village it’s planned to construct, for one day only, the highest artificial climbing wall on earth. Once the route has been set, the 335-foot ‘City Tower’ will serve as the highest vertical climbing wall in the world.

The ‘Bruntwood Aerial Assault’ is like an aerial Rat Race for the countries top climbers, who will compete in pairs for £2000 of prize money on routes set on buildings varying from ageing Victorian factories to cutting edge architectural masterpieces. Not all of the routes will be vertical, highly exposed ones, however. Several low-level technical challenges and possibly even a few statue problems will feature in the contest and competitors will find their buildering (rather than bouldering) skills tested to the max.

The whole event is sure to be a great day out and all the details are on www.ratraceadventure.com. Anyone who wants to take part can still do so and should contact the Rat Race via the website asap.