Jen\'s UK Adventure Tour
Jen’s UK Adventure Tour
Jen Brown / 03.01.2006
In the next few months she race the length and breadth of the UK, probably competing in more races than other racer in UK season.
Now ‘retired’ back home to Tasmania, broke and recovering from overuse injuries, she looks back on a frantic and fantastic season of racing.
After arriving in the UK; where all the plants and trees look like Tassies garden weeds and they all say rucksack instead of backpack and Hiya instead of G’day. I’ve became completely immersed in race culture and made a brilliant set of friends and rivals!
I arrived in May - then raced 10 races in 12 weeks, one of those being the British championships and another being in Slovenia of all places. In the UK racing is so popular a company has developed out of racing, it’s know as ACE Races. Their series runs every year in the warmer months and teams, individuals and pairs race each event and accumulate points over the year, its all a big deal. This same company ran the British Champs, which I will endeavour to explain shortly.
The races I have done are: Irish Outsider Challenge, Ace Race x2, The Rat race x3, the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon, The Slovenian Adventure Race, the Polaris Mountain Bike Challenge, the Open 24 and finally the Wilderness ARC (British champs).
Rats in Town
The Rat race was by far my favourite race. It is what’s known as an Urban adventure race. Basically it involves collecting checkpoints that are hidden throughout a city. It’s usually a one-day race with a prologue of 3 hours on the Saturday night. This is where the teams of three set out on foot and run (super super) fast to as many checkpoints as possible. This prologue sets your starting position for Sunday.
SleepMonsters
