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iROC in County Durham

Rob Howard / 16.04.2009

It’s nearly time for the first ever iROC festival of adventure sport and the final preparations are now being made to welcome the competitors to County Durham. The Inov8 sponsored event promises to be challenging, especially for those who take on all 6 races in the weekend programme, and it is breaking new ground in many ways.

The combination of orienteering, enduro and night mountain biking and running is a first and unusually for adventure sport the courses are designed with spectators in mind. All of them will pass though the event centre at least once and there will be shorter ‘family friendly’ events starting at the same time for those who want to move from spectator to competitor. Choice is very much a part of the weekend, racers can compete in all, just one, or a combination of races, and there is free camping and a Saturday night bar at the event centre.

The venue itself and the course do literally break new ground for adventure racing. The area and venue have never been used before – for any kind of sporting event, let alone adventure racing.

The event centre is the Weardale Works in the Durham Dales at the old Lafarge cement works – which may not sound too attractive at first, but those racing have been promised an exceptional venue and virgin territory for technical riding and running. The site itself has been cleared, so there is extensive hard-standing for parking and an adjoining old playing fields, which is level and well drained, for camping. This makes the event much more ‘weather proof’ than most – not that it’s a particular concern this weekend as the forecast looks promising with sunny intervals and mild, dry conditions expected.

The site is in the midst of an area of extensive moorland and the event website sums it up like this:

This very unique site has great potential for adventure racing. The site itself has spoil heaps, old quarry workings and hundreds of interesting features and contour detail that make it ideal for orienteering. Additionally, there are numerous tracks throughout the site for mountain biking including potential for some very fast descents and technical ascents. The site has its own forest that while dense, can still be used for mountain biking, running and orienteering (this area will be particular challenging for the Saturday night races!).

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