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Open 5 - Visit the Lakes in December

Marty Lee - Team Top Bananas / 19.12.2008

December delivered the 2nd event in the newly revised schedule for the Open Adventure \'Open 5\' Series, visiting Staveley and the surrounding hills. Staveley also being the home to \'Wilfs\', the perennial favourite of adventure racers stomachs, so it was fitting that \'Wilfs\' did the event catering. The recent cold snap to hit the North of Britain also contributed to a challenging race, with large quantities of ice on untreated roads, and enough snow to make a difference once you started to climb up from the village.

Top Bananas managed to put in 3 solo entries; Chris Morgan, Ali Wright and Marty Lee making the early morning raid from across the border under the cover of darkness; another opportunity for some winter training and for some of us to practice our navigation skills. With bikes unloaded and registration done, we joined the steady stream of people heading towards the start/finish area. This in itself started to highlight the challenges the weather had caused - sheet ice on the back roads, thin veneer of snow in places. Biking was going to be much slower than usual; high scores were going to be for those who were brave!

Starting at about 10:45, I opted to head into the hills on foot; although I prefer the bike, my theory was that the bike was going to be slower today, so I should concentrate on collecting running points and then cherry pick the bike check points. Fine if you can adapt to either discipline, for those that know me, running is still a work in progress.

As I climbed out of the start area, the conditions slowly degraded until the road and then bridleways became more inhospitable - couple of centimetres of snow over hardpacked ice. Mental note #1, stay low on the bike where possible. The visibility was also less than perfect - the high pressure giving us no wind and mist/fog. By the time I climbed higher and onto the moors the combination of snow and mist highlighted why things like a compass and a whistle are part of the mandatory kit.

The hardpacked ice was also interesting on the shins; actually, just replace \'interesting\' with \'painful\' - as my foot broke through the crust, the crust retaliated by abrading my shin until it drew blood. Nice.

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