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ACE Race 2-day Exmoor Sept 17-18th 2005 As well as Jeff and myself competing in the pairs, we had a Cambridge team'Alm Oehis'. Hamish, Andreas and Margit who have done well in the 1 day events joined with friend Liz to have a go at a 2 day event. The event was on the East side of Exmoor Park and as ever the format was different again. Saturday started with a 10 mile cycle Endurance i.e. timed road race which hasn't been a part of the other events this year. Jeff and I were second in the series coming into this last 2-day event. We knew we would have to beat the first placed team by quite a margin to beat them overall so we had to go for it from the start - there were £250 Snow and Rock vouchers to win! We started only a couple of minutes behind the leaders in their distinctive yellow jerseys and we overtook a lot of teams sensibly pacing themselves for the rest of the day but despite me helping tow Jeff up some of the hills, we didn't see the yellow jerseys again. At the end of the cycle, we descended to a transition point where we had 30 minutes to change into running kit (which we had had to carry) for the start of a 7 (yes, seven!) hour combined foot and mountain bike section. The first part was a foot section to collect as many points as we could before returning to the bikes to collect more points and return to finish back at the campsite. We could choose how much time to spend on each section. Our plan was to collect all the foot controls but once we got going we realized that some of the heather was very slow going although coupled with this were some lovely streamside tracks. After almost 4 hours we decided to skip the final few points and get onto bikes. From here it all started to go a bit wrong! All the hills seemed bigger and longer than we expected and we soon realized our ambitious route was going to take far too long. Maybe the tiredness kicking in from starting out too quickly as well. Then I got us completely lost by heading up the wrong bridleway using up more time until it became a race just to get a few points and make it back in time. We made it with a few minutes to spare - many people weren't so lucky and lost points from misjudging the time to get back. As the evening results came out it was clear that time spent getting more foot controls would have been more productive and everyone had found the biking tough. We were in 7th place which wasn't going to win any prizes. Once dark, we had the 90 minutes of night foot navigation starting and finishing from the campsite. The controls were closer than usual, so we set out to collect them all. Some were quite hard to find with groups searching around the features and we again made an early navigation error of a few minutes. This caught us out on the final point when we were already late and had to decide to head back rather than search for it. This performance hauled us up into 3rd place overnight but the pair behind us in the series ranking were just ahead of us. Alm Oehis also did well on the night run and moved up the placings having perservered despite one of the team suffering from illness. Day 2 seemed easy in comparison - just some kayaking and a run around the lake. We had the 14km run first which had a kick in the tail after going around the lake of climbing up the hill we had been up the night before and then another climb into the finish. The pair in 2nd moved a little further ahead and it was again down to the final kayaking to determine the outcome. The kayaking is often our best discipline but we didn't know how many points we could beat them by. There was a lot of scambling in and out of the boats up muddy banks to the control points but the change was welcome from the hard paddling. We beat them by 9 minutes over the 14 km course but it wasn't enough. We finished with 2408 points to their 2431. Alm Oehis also did well in the kayaking making good use of a tow system for the two boats, despite some unusal seating positions! They pulled up several places to finish around half way down the results - very respectable for a first event and for keeping going with a person feeling ill. Jeff and I were 3rd in the event. Jeff also won one of the Snow and Rock £20 lucky dip vouchers which anyone can win and we held on to our 2nd place in the series. Our series prize is a new Exposure Lights high power lightweight LED light each - or at least it will be when they have manufactured them! These things retail at silly prices to the extent that it'll be worth more than my mountain bike! So a very successful conclusion to the ACE race season.
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FURTHER PAGES Cambridge Adventure Race Group 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001
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