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Autumn Polaris Challenge 7/8th October 2006 The Autumn Polaris was held in the North Yorkshire Dales, based at Grinton, very close to Reeth where Jeff and I did our first ever race - the inaugural Open 5. This event was to be our first team training event with Paul, Jeff, Sabs and myself. Paul took the three Cambridge residents up while Jeff joined us in the morning having had the extra drive from Worthing. Sabrina's mountain bike only just arrived a couple of hours before we picked her up, so she had had a hectic time assembling it. It was also going to be her second outing on a mountain bike! Despite having both Jeff and I on route planning, we both seemed to have an off day and didn't pick a very good route. We covered 68km amd 1800m ascent but the points didn't reflect this. The route we had would have been OK but we had to abort some high pointers to get back in time. Sabs started slowly on the descents but was soon getting the hang of it and then powered up the hills. She managed to cycle some of the peak tracks that others were walking. 'If I can do this, surely you can', she said as she passed one guy, only to be followed by a spectacular fall just in front of him! Paul learnt that weight is key factor and spent half the day wishing he had lighter gear - that is until Jeff swapped rucksacs with him. To add to this, Paul's cleat bolts sheared off near the end of the ride. As we stopped at one of the points, he just laid over on the grass. We thought it was some new type of stretching exercise at first as his legs attempted to escape form the cleats, but as the fittings twisted he was completely trapped on/under the bike. Eventually we took the shoes off and managed to snap them off of the bike. After reaching the camp we swapped shoes and I rode my flats in running shoes. For the normal competition, you arrive at camp, get settled in and start eating and looking forward to the bonfire to melt your socks on, but we had other plans. Having put the tents up, snacked and left some of our gear, we rode off again up the hill across the valley, locked the bikes and set off hiking. The weather was quite windy, a little drizzle and occassional mist on the peaks - pretty good training weather. Jeff gave us each a turn at navigating. As we arrived at the first point in the dark, we sat down to choose the next. 'What a lovely seat this would be in the day' said Paul. As we looked at the map, it was indeed called 'Lovely Seat'! Paul's poor luck continued as the next point (beacon) we set didn't appear to exist despite back tracking 3 times to look for it in the dark. Finally we abandoned and I took us to the next easier point of a shooting lodge, unfortunately all closed up. Most of the routes were straight across heather moorland, so good scottish training. Next to a beacon on the top of a hill which was easier to spot and back across via a bothy to our bikes. Paul returned to camp to get some sleep for day 2 while Sabs, Jeff and I continued for a short night ride of 24km, partly off road. It was great fun. We arrived back into camp about 3:30 to grab some sleep before day 2. Despite the night activities we all felt pretty strong although we were a bit slow on the uphills. Again I don't think we took the best route, but we did choose one which got us back on time. 51 km 1200m ascent. We covered a total of 160km on bike and foot - 100 miles and all got to know each other a bit better. Some great tracks and excellent views on the Sunday. Sabs enjoyed it enough to suggest doing the French Poalris! |
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