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The Longest Day

Rob / 19.04.2005

The race notes had given fair warning, the first 2-day ACE Race of 2005 was to have a different format, with lots of running on day one and no afternoon break in the competition, and a longer mountain bike ride in the forests of Coed-y-Brenin on day two. The new sit-on-top canoes were in use, bikes would be transported to help with the complex logistics on Saturday, and the cold and wet weather didn’t make life easy either. This was the toughest 2-day ACE ever.

The first challenge was getting onto the sodden and churned camping field, set in the middle of the forest. Even the race van, which was one of the first to arrive, promptly got stuck in the deep mud by the marquee. It was to be a long night of towing and pushing for the marshals just to get everyone in. This was to be their toughest race too.

The briefing was more complex than usual, with Phil Humphreys explaining that pairs had to ride down to the car park in the valley, leave their bikes, and walk steeply uphill to the start on the far side of the valley. They began with a 10km trail run to reach a 90 minute X-country stage, which was followed by a second trail run of 7km, or 13km for those who chose the long option. As this involved crossing the Rhinog mountains he made the point it was for “whippets only�!

After that the pairs finally got off their feet and into the canoes for a lap (or two) of Trawsfyndd Lake, before an untimed 15km cycle endurance ride back to get back to ACE Base. The teams and solos rode to the lake to start, and completed the course in reverse.

Late Starts

Both sets of competitors started late. The safety boats were late arriving at the lake, delaying things by 5 minutes, and the pairs start was proving hard to find at all! It was just a Sportident box in an area of tricky forest trails, with no banner or marshal for guidance (he couldn’t find it either!), and although it was in the right place it proved to be an early navigational test.

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