Wan Dae Adventure Race
Wan Dae in the Hills
Marty Lee (Team Top Bananas) / 24.09.2009
For those who know the area, this brought the event much closer to the city and started things much lower down the hill! There are no easy paths from Dreghorn up in to the hills. Top Bananas were represented by a male pair of Chris+Jon and then Anna and myself in the solo categories.
With a new base for the event, the race itself shift more towards the Northern end of the Pentlands and took us to some new parts of the hills, as well as some old favourites. With a 'Cask' strength race of 8 hours and a 'Simply Blended' option of 5 hours, there was a good turn out of competitors, eager to see what Stewart Caithness and Gary Tompsett had in store for us.
Not only was there a new base, but a new way to start off the race; although the maps were pre-marked with the controls, neither the maps, control descriptions nor points were going to be given out until the start. Every minute of planning was going to be on the race clock.
With about 30 minutes to go before the start, a race briefing was scheduled to give us any last minute information; the arrival of a local farmer with a couple of hundred head of sheep did make us wonder what the initial starburst task was going to be; as it was, the sheep were just a coincidence and Gary led us on a warm up jog.
Although 8 hours seems a long time at the start, once we got the maps and control descriptions, the dilema was really whether to run or bike first. The run looked like it could be a hefty distance, but with a limit on when we could kayak and the fact we needed to bike to the kayak stage, the most sensible option was to bike first and then come back for the run.
The bike stage didn't just take us in to the Pentlands though - with Edinburgh right on the doorstep, some of the controls were more urban than rural; bringing the complexity of urban navigation on 1:50000 maps into the equation. No street names on these maps!
With a large number of people opting to bike first, it always amazes me how quickly people disperse and for the best part of my tour of the Pentlands, I rode alone without seeing that many other racers. Although I did bump into Jon and Chris on a number of occasions, and met Anna twice - always going the other way.
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