Questars
Slick Racing on the Wiltshire Downs
David Hunt (Questars) / 16.07.2007
The event base was in the Hemery Sports Hall (named after the 1968 Olympics Gold Medal winning hurdler David Hemery) right next to the canal wharf at Pewsey. So there was no distance to the kayaking transition point onto the Kennet & Avon canal. With a 70 minute time allocation teams had to make some strategic decisions early on the kayaking course - whether to head east in an attempt to get to some very high value checkpoints, or to head west and pick up some nearby lower value ones. No team cleared the whole of the challenging paddle this time, but three of the Men’s Teams did get 170 of the available 210 points by demonstrating some power paddling.
Overnight rain had added to recent rainfall to make the bike trails especially wet and tricky. One track gave the nature of its terrain away by its well chosen name - Mud Lane - and it certainly lived up to this accolade. A lot of route choice enabled some avoidance of the worst tracks where nettles and other verdant undergrowth added to the challenge. Those that ventured into West Woods in search of the four biking checkpoints located there were greeted with some of the hardest routes. Special congratulations to the five teams that managed to clear the whole biking course and earn maximum points.
A lot of options were also available on the trail run stage. Encouraged at the Race Briefing to get up onto the chalk ridge above Pewsey many teams saw the intriguing crop circle visible from the checkpoint located on the edge of the White Horse hill figure. This ancient landscape is full of prehistoric remains including tumuli, barrows, the magnificent Wansdyke and a deserted medieval village. Racers may have missed some of these as they ran over the downs and the area certainly deserves a return visit. Four teams cleared the whole running stage and interestingly they are all Veterans showing that stamina grows with age!
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