Red Bull Northern Exposure
Wet, cold and confused. (Start to daybreak)
Rob / 14.04.2002
Only minutes after the start it began to drizzle lightly, and for the rest of the morning it rained, never hard, but enough to keep everybody wet and cold for the first stage of the race.
They were often confused too, none more so than Team Seven Days, who had set off as a threesome after Matt Carr’s withdrawal. The lead teams reached the first CP in under an hour, but Seven Days got totally lost, returned to Glenmore Lodge, and finally made the CP 3 hours and 11 minutes later. They weren’t the only team confused though, the leaders were having problems of their own.
As expected Parrot-Lythgoe and Goretex Golite set off at a fantastic pace but against specific instructions took the wrong road into the first CP, incurring an hours penalty to be served out later in the race. Team Boogie Knights did the same thing Things were even worse at CP2, where instructions said arrive from the South and leave via the North road. Only Golite Goretex and Cannonball succeeded in doing this seemingly simple thing. So by CP2 every team had at least one hours penalty, except Cannonball.
The riding on forest and country roads was fast, much faster than the organisers expected. The leaders reached CP6 at Loch an Eilen in 3 hours 20 minutes and were already 80 minutes up on the expected times. Not surprisingly the marshals were barely ready, they were frantically rushing to get into position, and to blow up inflatable lilos! They just made it.
The lilos were for the first mystery discipline where one team member had to get 100m across to a ruined castle in the loch, retrieve ‘a gift’ and come back. It was dark and the water was cold, and there was some understandable hesitation when teams realised one of them had to volunteer, or be volunteered! Whoever went would get soaked to the skin. They stripped off to varying degrees, Richard Montague, going the ‘Full Monty’ and setting in his birthday suit and a buoyancy aid.
For Team Total Adventure the irrepressible Keith Byrne leapt in and said ‘I’ll go’. When he came out shivering violently he said: “That was freezing, the water was so cold. Volunteering was a stupid idea!� All the teams got a pack of Mars Bars for their pains and moving onto the second challenge. This was to have been using a GPS device, but these were not ready so it was just a hill climb.
It was only a short ride to mystery no. 3 though, where the GPS were used in combination with an orienteering course. Being a cunning chap Gary Tompsett has planned things so the leaders arrived at this in the dark, as a means to slow them up. He described what happened. “Parrot Lythgoe and Golite Goretex arrived together but had totally different techniques. They had to calibrate the GPS for this latitude then use it to find a checkpoint. Parrot got in huddle and in the 15 minutes available totally failed to solve the problem. Golite punched a few buttons and raced off, then came back, raced off another way and came back, then complained, and finally started to figure it out. In the end both found the CP together, but I’d slowed them up!� Later teams had an easier time in the daylight, including 3rd placed Bridgedale Ireland who have an international orienteer with them - Steve Birkinshaw.
By this stage the race field was already well spread out. The leaders left CP8 just after 6 am but the last 2 teams didn’t leave until gone 11 am. These were Boogie Knights and Seven Days. Rathro Quarry were also near the back and starting to feel the damp, cold conditions. Mark Harrison in particular needed to be warmed up by the medical staff at one point before moving on.
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