adidas Terrex Coast to Coast (C2C)
Accelerating to the Finish Line
Rob Howard / 28.08.2011
The day began with the same format as yesterday, restarting back on the high street of Kirby Stephen from 06.00, with the slower races going off first and the rest at 3 minute intervals. The first stage was a run across Nine Standards to Keld, and it was just what the Accelerate team needed to start their day as the running stages are where they gain significant time over team adidas TERREX.
Brothers Matt and Dan Haliday had won the team contest for the King of the Mountains on days one and two, and set off in expectation of pulling more time out of their rivals, which they did, gaining around 30 minutes on the stage. As I waited for them at a ford on the descent, I talked to their team manager, Stuart Hale, about the team and the racers.
Accelerate are a very unusual team, unique in the UK, as all the athletes joining the squad make a contractual commitment not to race with other teams, and they commit to long term team goals and a race programme together, working towards them with a structured and scientific training schedule.
Hale explained how they came to be in this race. “For some time our team goal has been to complete expedition races with the ambition of winning the World Championships in 4 or 5 years time, but Dan Halliday came to me after last year’s adidas TERREX expedition race and said that kind of racing was not really for him and asked should he leave the team. We discussed what he wanted to do and he said he’d like a crack at stage racing – so we all agreed to pursue this as well as xpd racing and set this race as the first target.�
“Dan has been working towards this race ever since and it’s been his project, with help and advice from the team from time to time. He’s a former GB orienteer and his adventure racing skills have come on in leaps and bounds in his time with the team. He wanted to bring in his younger brother Matt, who is also a GB orienteer and former European Junior champion (long course), which was a bit of risk given his lack of experience, but one thing the team does do well is to bring young athletes into AR from other sports, and knowing Dan, we had no qualms. Matt has only completed one other AR race (an Open Adventure Open5) before this event and knows he has work to do on his mountain biking and paddling skills and his upper body strength. But both the brothers are superb runners and navigators.
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