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The One.Tel Hebridean Challenge – day 1 – Barra

Jon Brooke / 04.07.2004

Eight teams and three solo competitors have assembled at Vatersay community hall over the weekend ready for the start of the fourth One.Tel Hebridean Challenge, a staged week long relay race for teams of five or five mammoth daily efforts for solos. Pre-race favourites are probably team Flapjack, featuring mountain runner and three times Heb vet Brendan Bolland and last year’s top kayaker James Block, or maybe Wild Outdoors a team that probably covered the ground faster than any other last year, but which was let down a little by its grasp of some of the logistics challenges – maybe this year with a little more experience it will all come together.

Other teams include the extremely competitive young team All Over the Place and a team made up entirely from staff from sponsor One.Tel. Heb virgins this year are Friends of Ghengis and the Hitchhikers. Pyro and the Vets and the Hebridean Hash House Harriers complete the line up. The solo competitors are brothers Mark and Pat Blythe (so no grudge match there) and Outdoor pursuits instructor Joe Faulkner.

Day one, Monday starts with the teams running with their kayak across the small connected island of Vatersay where they wave goodbye to their paddler and rush back to meet him or her on the other side. Then there is a swim along a beautiful and pristine beach in the crystal clear, if somewhat cold water. A series of short runs follow where the teams may choose to double up on numbers to gain a few of the 150 points they need to collect over the course of the race. The Heb cognoscenti among you may already know that teams not only need to put in quick times to win this race, but also to work out when best to deploy extra team members in order to gain their points, quite a logistical challenge.

Once teams reach the main island of Barra they split into pairs (their kayakers meanwhile will be completing two further paddling sections) in order to bag another ten checkpoints in free order with one pair visiting each one and the clock stopping when the second pair arrive back at base. It doesn’t sound much but expected finish time following a 9:30 start (very late by Heb standards) is around 5 p.m. The solo race starts with the swim followed by a kayak with a free order section using some of the controls that the teams are using.

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