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Time and trials

Pyro / 03.07.2006

This years Heb started in a slightly different fashion to the previous few years: Yes, there was the normal map-wrangling, “you do this I’ll do that�, old-face meeting and tea drinking on the ferry (evening meal courtesy of Calmac); the same panicked “what does that mean?� from the newer teams while reading the route descriptions; the same idyllic campsite – they manage it every year, Tangusdale machair has been no exception; even the same teams nipping off for a swift ‘soft drink’ on Saturday night. No, this year’s change was the introduction of a Prologue stage (which, I’m told, hasn’t been done since the days of the Western Isles Challenge, the Heb’s forerunner).

The teams were faced with a simple split. Starting from Castlebay School, one member of the team would road bike anti-clockwise round the island, tag the other members at a col (the climb to which, I’m told, was a stinker) and continuing off on their speedy way. The others meanwhile would pick up 6 orienteering checkpoints between them then run back to Castlebay School. The runner’s time would be recorded as that of the last team member, which added to the biker’s time gave the team’s total time for the evening. Simple enough? Anyway…

Lots of route choices were available to the teams: six CPs for three or four people left some with short, steep runs, others with longer, flatter runs, and the unlucky runners in the pairs category had to collect all six checkpoints themselves!

The cyclists started in reverse numerical order, putting the pairs first (as they had the biggest running job to do) then the four-man teams, then the fives.

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