Wonderful Wimbleball – An ACE on Exmoor

Rob / 01.08.2002

Over 300 racers, the biggest field ever, enjoyed the best and most competitive ACE Race so far over the weekend of July 27/28th. The camping field overlooking Wimbleball Lake was an idyllic spot, hidden amidst rolling, and surprisingly demanding, hills down a dead-end single track road. Even the weather was cooperating, Saturday was cloudy but dry, so conditions were ideal, and Sunday was blisteringly hot, not so good for racing, but great for sunbathing at ACE Base afterwards.

The big entry was in part due to an entry of 22 teams looking for a British Championship qualification, but a late injury forced one of the main contenders, Team Wales, to withdraw. (Aled Rees and Adam Haynes switched to the pairs class). There were 42 male solos and a mixed pairs class where half a dozen of the 27 teams stood a good chance of winning. It was going to be fast from start to finish with mistakes heavily punished.

There were still plenty of first time ACE racers there too. Jonathan Wickham had come of age, in Adventure Racing terms, and was ambitiously going straight into the solo class for his first race. James and Lisa Thurlow were new to it all too and Lisa looked around and said; “Everyone looks superfit.� This pair had a secret weapon though, their Canondale Tandem. Team ‘Up Yours’ had all met on an ACE training course and this was their first race. Like many they arrived late due to some horrendous Friday night holiday traffic, and woke in the morning to find they had a view down the hill and across the lake.

There were a few minor format changes, starting with a leisurely 7 mile ride to ‘Transition Area 1’, where the bikes were left in the forest while everyone set off on the 3 hour X-Country Challenge. From the ‘give-out’ for the checkpoint values at the trig point on Withycombe Common there were extensive views of forests and ridges further north, the Somerset coast and across Bridgwater Bay to Wales. The checkpoints were spread northwards to Dunster but most were in the surrounding forest. Phil Humphrey’s warnings about trails being marked where they weren’t, and being there on the ground but not on the map soon proved true and left some confused competitors.

So did the description of the compulsory ‘activator’ control, supposedly NW of a pond, but actually in it! Fortunately, it was dried up, but like many parts of the woods there were swarms of flies so it wasn’t a good spot to ponder over the map. Team ‘Up Yours’ admitted to being “all over the place� in the first half hour, but while they were showing their inexperience the elite racers were going at high speed. Wearing the series leader’s yellow jersey Marc Laithwaite was back first in a mere 1 hour 55 minutes, and all the top teams cleared all the controls well within the time limit.

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