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Spring Polaris Challenge 25-26 March 2006 This event was held just to the South-West of Salisbury on a pretty wet weekend. Teamed up with Jeff again for our first event of the season. We didn't have to prepare too much as having done several KIMMs together and last years spring Polaris we pretty much knew what we each had to bring. Jean and I took friday afternoon off so got down there pretty early. Jean was straight in to helping on registration while I put the tent up. Had a good bit of time being able to look at the map and attempt to mark some optimum routes between controls. Jeff turned up about 10pm and we had a quick natter before bed. Saturday morning dawned sunny and cool. Met up with Lawrence again from Full Monty with a very slim backpack as a solo rider. Jeff had quite a few things to sort out and I finally decided to take the lighter sleeping bag and leave the heavier trousers. We were a bit too slow getting off, so that it was raining by the time we got to the give out. As usual both pens quickly gave up writing on the map covering, so we just had a quick look at the points and came up with a rough route. Even the description sheet was rapidly falling apart despite being in a bag. The course was very well planned by Jon Brooke with no obvious best route (to us anyway). We wound our way all over the map with a lot of choices of taking tracks or longer road routes. The weather cleared up enough to take off waterproofs on the way to the third CP. We steadily picked off more CPs, often changing the route plan. The rain came back in the afternoon and the tracks started to get slower and slower - the ones in the woods were particularly bad. We went for a last 30 points in the final hour but then realised we didn't have time, opted just for a 10 pointer and had to abort that on the way as well and head straight for the finish camp. We were 10 minutes within the 7 hour time limit, so probably we could have squeezed the extra 10 and/or a 10 pointer ditched earlier in the day. We felt 200 was not too good a total but most people had had similar days and we were 15th which was about what we expected. The day didn't flow very well and the end especially was messy, probably due to the non-functioning pens and poor planning at the start despite making an effort to take a reasonable time over it. The campsite was on a small hill which meant we weren't camped in a marsh and there were even a few trees to provide shelter for the Sup Air city - we camped next to Tom and Pete and Ifor. We'd cycled 93 km, an average of over 13km/h, up on what we expected. Sunday was a pretty similar day weather wise, fairly dry in the morning with rain later. We headed for the big points in the corner of the map. I made one poor route choice early on leaving a fairly good track for a longer road route but we kept the speed up on the road, partly by putting Jeff on tow for parts. The decision made early on, the route was much more straightforward. We were just that bit too slow though, so with an hour left we had to bolt for home missing about 50 points of fairly easy CPs. It was a tortuous race for the finish on the main road, looking like we would be late right until the end but made it 4 minutes inside the 5 hours, so should have gone for at least a 10 pointer. We averaged 24 km over the final hour for a total of 73km for the day, 150 points and moved up one place to finish 14th in the senior men's. Interestingly if I'd found a female Vet to do this with, our score would have won the class. The only real downer was damaging the car on the drive home and waiting around in the rain to get transported home. The only real thing we need to sort out for future events is marking wet/greasy maps and for Jeff to get a bit more peddling practice...
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FURTHER PAGES Cambridge Adventure Race Group 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001
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