The Wilderness ARC
The Adventures of ISO The Bicycle Works
Rob Howard / 26.08.2005
Tompsett told them they been out on the course just over 4 and half days, and in that time they’d had more adventures and misadventures than most! They were the last team to reach the big river crossing on the first cycling stage, and finging it was much too swollen to cross they turned back to the town of Kinloch Leven … and checked into a hotel, but didn’t ring race HQ … or Grigor’s Mum!
When they’d not turned up at the transition 4 after a night of appalling weather searches were about to be mobilised and Grigor’s worried mum was on the phone! (She was watching our leaderboard.) It was only when organisers rang the hotel to ask about help with the search that they were told the team was there. By the time they’d ridden back to Fort William they knew they were in the sin bin, but they were not giving up and wanted to go back out onto the course. In fact, they wanted to reverse the course from T4 to the side of the river they’d failed to reach so they could still do it all!
Logistically, his wasn’t possible, but the organisers let them continue as a ranked team. They were still far behind, and dropped further back on the long and rough trek along the shore of Loch Arkaig. When Tompsett offered to run and get them a beer at the finish Wallace said, “Can you run through thick bushes for 10 hours to get them!� Asked if he was holding a grudge he smiled and added; “You bet I am.�
At the end of the trek the team were in poor condition and needed extensive bandaging on their feet, particularly Kevin Kealy, and though they wanted to press on the organisers told them they had to cut a bit of the final 130km cycling stage short. They reached the final transition, rested, replaced their bandages added more to their hands and set off for the finish line.
Let’s hope Grigor Wallace rang his mum when they got back to HQ!
SleepMonsters
