One-Tel Hebridean Challenge
Tour de Lewis
John Laughlin / 07.07.2005
The race set off with a 600m swim along a narrow sea loch that set off simultaneous land and kayak stages. Many teams have been relishing the swimming sections in the race, of which there are normally one a day, as bonus time credits are awarded to those finishing fastest, so it is a discipline that some have obviously been training hard for.
Our team, Macpac Smartwool, are most definitely not fans of swimming, however, with Gareth Craft picking up his injury yesterday and unable to compete on land today, he drew the short straw and was thrown in at the deep end. The hydrophobic runner managed to wave his arms about in a style that some may call swimming; locals may have been looking out of their windows wondering whether to call the Coastguard.
In the separate swimming competition Ade Pottinger of Hitchhikers is set to hold his fastest swimmer title from last year with storming fastest swims every day and only one more to go.
The land based section set off with a running and biking stage that required a bit of logistical thinking to pick the right logistical way of bagging three sets of running checkpoints separated by short road sections. I think every team did this in different ways but with swimmers setting off at various times it became difficult to see who had actually been fastest on land.
This was a big day for the kayakers, with two paddles, the first of which included two long portages requiring the assistance of the rest of their team once the first land stage had been completed. Some teams didn’t quite manage to finish in time to aid their kayaker, forcing them to single handedly portage the boat in and out of a couple of small lochs. James Block, Calum Urquhart and a few other lucky kayakers were using very light Kevlar-reinforced boats that presented little problem, but from those in expedition sea kayaks a few expletives were definitely muttered!
The second paddle was a more straight forwards affair with a put in close to Giosla on West Lewis and a straight paddle up the length of the 8km loch. Overall James Block still leads from Calum Urquhart but there is very little in it, especially as they had a dead heat on one of today’s sections. In third place is Simon Osbourne of H4, and not too far off the pace and surprising everyone is Ruth Pybus, who is almost embarrassing a good few of the stronger more experienced guys in the field.
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