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Northward Through the Isles

John Laughlin / 06.07.2005

The race finally got under way this morning with a mystery stage, only revealed to teams on Sunday. The weather was sunny but with a strong wind blowing from the south, so the first kayak of the day was cancelled, which fortunately for us meant our kayaker suddenly took on a new role as a swimmer for the very first section a 500m swim along Eriskay beach. I don’t think he expected his first TV appearance to involve pulling his belly in while wearing a 3mm thick rubber suit!

Exiting the swim in 20th place or so we were just pleased our paddler John had volunteered to do it so our squad of land-lubbers could concentrate on our mini running and biking section on Eriskay. The plan worked and by the time we arrived in Lochboisdale, South Uist we were in the lead by two minutes, although many teams had chosen to send extra runners on an 8km hill run to bag some points, while we decided to unleash our whippet runner Tim Lenton on his own.

At this point teams had to split into two parallel legs involving running to checkpoints in a loop to the North of Lochboisdale and mountain biking along the sandy beach and machair on the West South Uist coast. The slowest of the two legs counted for the team time, so synchronisation was key to ensure that both legs arrived as close as possible at the end checkpoint. The complication in the stage was that checkpoints could be collected in free order and points were available, so deciding which controls each leg should go for and which five consecutive controls the points were to be collected on, added to the headache.

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