adidas TERREX Swift
Terrex Swift Race report – Team Tri-Adventure
Tom Davies - Team Tri-Adventure 2 / 11.06.2012
It was a long drive up from the south of the country for the Tri-Adventure team, as we appeared to encounter most of the country’s roadworks, traffic jams and idiots towing caravans along the way, but eventually we arrived in Settle on a sunny Friday evening, spotted the Terrex banners outside the old theatre, and popped in for registration and a chat. The race wasn’t starting until 9.30am on Sat, but ahead of that there was a mountain of kit to sort out, bikes to box up, and maps to mark up.
The team was made up of regular Tri-Adventure teammates Tom Davies, James Brown and George Neville-Jones, along with Rob Smart who had kindly agreed to step in at short notice to replace Nicki Adams, who sadly had to step aside due to an ongoing back injury problem. Not wanting to miss out however, Nicki came along anyway and volunteered to marshal, and ended up running two of the transition areas, so we saw her at regular intervals throughout the race.
At 9pm the theatre filled with racers to hear James Thurlow and Dave Johnson run through the course, explaining the rules and safety measures in place and answering any questions about the route. Teams were listening intently, with many choosing to take the opportunity to eat dinner at the same time – the local chippy did a roaring trade in cod ‘n chips that night! Some teams came better prepared than others, with one in particular deserving bonus points for bringing glasses of red wine to accompany their dinner!
James and Dave were followed by the canoe safety officer, whose information was a little more direct – along the lines of “follow the direction of the safety staff on the river – or you’ll get swept over the weir and you’ll die.” OK, point made! Briefing over, we retired to the football pitch which was to be our home for the night to finalise our kit packing, waterproof our maps with sticky-back plastic and eventually to get a few hours sleep ahead of the 6am wake-up call.
Down the Lune and Back Again
Predictably, 6am rolled round all too soon, but it was a beautiful sunny morning and the field was soon full of racers rushing about carrying bags, boxes and searching cars for elusive bits of kit that “must be in here somewhere”. Transition bags were weighed and handed in (a 20kg weight limit meaning that several had to hurriedly lose some weight from the bag – although usually the cake stayed in there!), bikes were packed in boxes and loaded onto a lorry for transport to a later transition, and finally the racers boarded a coach after the usual team photos were taken.
The coach took everyone from Settle to Kirkby Lonsdale, where the race start was held in the village square. There was a large crowd present, which we all assumed was there to watch the start of the race, until we found out that they were in fact assembled to have a Jubilee photo taken, and that we had gate-crashed their celebration due to a double-booking of the village square! With this in mind, the start was moved forward a bit and after a few words from Race Director James Thurlow, the race was started at 9am and we were off at a run on the first of 6 stages of the race, with the slightly bemused locals cheering us on.
SleepMonsters
