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The One.Tel Hebridean Challenge – day 4 – Big Thursday

Jon Brooke / 09.07.2004

After a relatively (and I use the word advisedly) easy Wednesday, Thursday was a huge day for teams and solos alike. For the teams there were three time trial sections following on consecutively; mountain running, mountain biking and road biking and the solos were doing shortened versions of the first two and all of the road bike.

Before that though there were a few other legs to do. Starting at Scalpay Hall the teams road biked to Tarbert (9km) to tag their kayakers and the solos who paddled around 12km to Ammunsuidhe Castle, a fantastic building with turrets and castelations, perched on the coast in front of the most impressive mountains on the islands. Meanwhile a runner and rider did a parallel route with whichever arrived first kicking off the mountain running time trial – just 16 km and 1600 vertical meters of ascent.

The final placings won’t be revealed until the prize giving on Friday night but those in the frame look to be Brendan Bolland of 2x2, Adrian Davies of Wild Outdoors and Tim Lenton of All Over the Place.

The MTB time trial that followed was 21 km and 700 meters of ascent (and descent!) with John Houlihan of 2x2 and Kenny Riddle of Wild Outdoors vying for the prize. Finally these bikers tagged their team mates to start the road bike where bonus minutes were up for grabs with 10 for the winners down to 1 for sixth place.

Finally there was another running section that used shielings (small ruined buildings used by shepherds in times past) as control points in an area of grassy hills south of the island of Great Bernera before a short bike to the finish.

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