Open24
Tri-ing the Open 24
Clive Hughes (Team Derby Tri Club) / 15.08.2007
To fill in a little detail, the Open 24 is billed as
\"So what does it include, well the core of the event will include mountain biking, trekking (or running) and paddling with navigation a key part of the event. Each of the stages will include a special stage or \'trouser filler\' - we have had white water paddling, canyoning, swimming, caving, abseiling - the thing is you wont know what these are until the event has started\"
Which certainly got Andy\'s interest and we signed up straight away for £100 each. That incidentally equates to £4.16/hour which I think you will agree compares quite favourably with the Typical open water triathlon at £55 – about £22.00/hour.
Unlike in triathlon, the course is kept a secret until you start, with the maps being published 3 days before with a number of checkpoints to be plotted at home. Not all of there are live and the points score of each is only revealed 90 minutes before your start time, which gives a short window of planning time before the off.
We started at 13:24 on the Saturday and finished at 13:19 on the Sunday by the way.
When the gun went, we had to run to a marshal and collect a map of the immediate area to complete a so called \'Micro Navigation\' stage. Anything used on this stage had to be carried on the mountain bike for about 8 hours - so expecting to do a short run around the grounds, Andy and I decided that we could do it in MTB shoes and not carry our trainers. Oops. The map was an 1867 edition of the local OS map with 6 widely spaced checkpoints and tracks and paths in subtly different positions to the present day. Luckily our feet held up well, unluckily we couldn\'t find number 202 – sorry to mention the detail but #202 will live long in our memories as we were convinced that we were in the correct place but still wasted 15 mins unable to find the checkpoint!!
SleepMonsters
