The Sting in Stirling
The Leaders at Mar Lodge
Rob Howard / 21.08.2012
The leading teams have continued to maintain a fast pace into the second night of the race.
Team adidas TERREX arrived at Mar Lodge at 19.31 ... at a time when some short course teams were still in the canyon at Bruar – a 90km cycle ride away. This left the leaders with 90 minutes of daylight for the orienteering challenge and it turned out they needed that and more as the orienteering took longer than expected and they returned well after dark at 21.45, just as Mountain Hardwear arrived into transition.
It’s an unusual transition as they have access to a gear bag within the long cycling stage and also because of the location – it is one of the strangest transition areas they are ever likely to visit. Alongside the impressive main hall for the Mar Lodge Estate is a wood panelled function room which the race is using, and the vaulted roof is covered in thousands of mounted stags heads and antlers – it’s both eerie and impressive – the sort of place only a tired adventure racer could walk into and not notice – which they did! (Though it was no surprise to Bruce Duncan as his brother got married here.)
Here the teams split up into two pairs to go and collect the checkpoints, so Bruce Duncan and Nicola MacLeod set off together, while Tom Gibbs ran with Chris Hope. Duncan and MacLeod were first back and not happy with the distance. “That was supposed to be a 10km diversion to break up the long ride,” he said, “and Nicola and I have run 20km. It was ludicrously long!” Chris Hope was more phlegmatic, just saying, “Well, I wasn’t expecting that to be honest!”
As they left to continue the ride the met Course Planner and team mate Nick Gracie and made their feelings known about the orienteering stage – though Tom Gibbs did add that the ride had been fantastic. It is a route he’s wanted to do for some time. (Gracie said he had no sympathy for their moans!)
Team Mountain Hardwear were more concerned with the midges they’d encountered, which are not usually such a concern on a bike ride, but tonight swarms of them were even getting inside their glasses and Sally Ozanne’s face was swollen from bites. The team still had problems with their bikes, this time with the disk brakes wearing out in the rough conditions, though they had some spares. They split up and set off quickly and Anthony Emmett said there was little they could do to match the pace of the leaders, but added, “We’ve raced long enough to know that in these long races anything can happen, so we’ll keep on chasing.”
The third team to arrive were no 16, Lakeland Terriers, who have taken the shortest possible route so far, and maybe because of this they walked into the hall and were stunned at the sight in front of them, letting out a collective ‘Wow!’ They had really enjoyed their ride up Glen Tilt and are making the most of their experience in the race – they are just running a shorter race than most. True to form they opted not to go out orienteering and asked if the hot food was available – the van was still on its way but not too far off.
It will be a busy night in the hall as the short course teams catch back up to those on the long route and the field mixes up again. (By 8.00 am tomorrow the hall has to be cleared ready for a wedding so the teams are being kept off the carpet and hurried along!)
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