Open Adventure on the South Downs

Open Adventure / 10.12.2012

The 2^nd race in the Open Adventure Haglofs Open 5 series headed south to the Hampshire & West Sussex borders to race over the South Downs.

The day didn’t disappoint, with glorious blue sky, sunshine and some crisp early morning temperatures. Starting in the grounds of Hollycombe Steam Museum, competitors started amongst the steam of railway engines before heading off into the surrounding forests and rolling hills for 5 hours of mountain biking and running whilst navigating to collect as many of the 30 controls as possible.

The course planner Alex Davies, being local to the area ensured that competitors were given some great views of the surrounding countryside, with controls on the top of Black Down and Woolbeding Common.

Conditions proved to be tough going, both the mud and the navigation proved testing, and meant that no competitor was able to clear the whole course. However there were some high scores – Kim Collinson from Team Mountain Hardware came home as 1st male solo with 551 points and maintained his lead in the series table.

The female pairs winners were Rosemary  Byde & Lucy Harris who lost  45 points due to being 14 minutes over the 5 hour time limit, however the extra time enabled them to gain a massive final score of 465 points, which matched the 2^nd place men’s pair score.

Surrey based, Julian Hempstead in the male solo category, had a brilliant result finishing in 14^th position with 425 points. Julian being one of our older competitors (60+), showed his younger contemporaries a trick or two.

Results:

Female Solo:

Female Pairs:

Male Solo:

Male Pairs:

Mixed Pairs:

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