The adidas Terrex Adventure Race
Team adidas Terrex are the Winners
Rob Howard / 30.08.2010
Arriving at the Orienteering section at Hawes End Outdoor Centre they had to stop and sleep. Steve Birkinshaw said Nic Gracie was at a real low point and could hardly stand up, so with time in hand, the team slept. The originally asked to go into the hut used by the marshals but when this wasn’t allowed they huddled together for an hour in a bothy bag outside, sleeping despite the biting early morning cold.
Birkinshaw said the 1.5km orienteering stage seemed more like 10, and despite his orienteering expertise and the fact he’s actually planned an ‘O’ event there himself there in the past he could only lead the team around slowly, taking much longer than expected. Their final stage was the open canoe orienteering on Derwent Water, with numerous checkpoints scattered around the shore and the islands but it took time to get ready to go in the dark. One of the comments Gibbs made on the finish line was that the fatigue makes taking even simple decisions a much longer process. “You might spend 5 minutes deciding which pair of socks to put on,� was his example. Once ready the team set off in the dark and enjoyed watching the sunrise on a perfectly calm morning, before finishing on the outskirts of Keswick and walking into the finish.
The marshals on the finish line (which was set up at midnight), had been expecting the team from around 2am so they’d had a long wait through the cold night. They’d put up with the pubs and clubs turning out and revellers running through the finish line or asking if they could take them home in the race Land Rover, then sat through the quiet of the night and by the time the team arrived the town was waking up ,with street cleaners and bakery vans the first signs of the new day breaking.
SleepMonsters
