| |
|||||||
| |
|||||||
 |
FURTHER PAGES Cambridge Adventure Race Group 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001
|
2-day ACE Race Galloway, Scotland 23-24th Sept 2006 With the change of organiser to Detail Events, the focus of venues appears to be slowly moving North. It's a long old drive up to Galloway, so we arranged to share Paul's car with Mike and Owen and to share the driving. We left at lunch and got there with a little light left and pitched Mike's large family tent. Paul and I were still leading the series and got the yellow jerseys again. It looked like we should at least get second place if nothing went seriously wrong but with only a 119 point lead we would definately have to fight for 1st. The saturday started well with my first prize - A 10000+ pts T-shirt for passing that milestone in only 5 events. This was John Laughlin#s first ACE 2-day as director. Despite having Phil's scripts, he missed a few things but there were enough 'old hands' to remind him about everything he forgot. Makes you realize quite how organised Phil is - but then he had been doing it for many years. The area was a bit spread out with not that much choice on the biking routes. This was shown as we got the details for the saturday 8 hour stage which involved a half hour ride each way between the bike course and the run transition. This time the run was open from the start though. We did plan on getting a couple of CPs on the way to the run but their points values turned out to be so low that we headed straight for the run together with Team Sleepmonsters. John had told us that some of it was rough and it had taken Gary 5 hours to put the controls out. However seeing as this time the points split was 600:400 run:mtb, clearing the run alone was going to be a reasonable score. Being first to the transition, we caught the marshals slightly on the hop and in all the confusion, I managed to leave my cycle helmet on until I realised quite a way to the first control. As I'd only got my bum bag, Paul ended up carrying it for the rest of the run. Thank you Paul. The start was rough but once on the hills it wasn't so bad apart from all the climb! The big pointers were up the tops of Curleywee and Millfore, North of Drigmorn Hill and we cleared the course in just over 3 hours, which was a bit of a shock - we were going to have to bike quite a lot after all. Compasspoint managed to clear the lot in closer to 2:30. There were a couple of bits of singletrack thrown in but the bulk of the riding was forest tracks, so we went on a big loop of those, only missing 2 low pointers and one at the top of a hill. John had also added a short hike-a-bike section which included carrying bikes in a strem under felled trees. Most people enjoyed it (!). We almost came unstuck taking the scenic route between our last two rather than going back out to the road as it was very slow and we were lucky to only be a couple of minutes late. Compasspoint cleared the whole course. Hats off! We were in the lead by just 3 points ahead of Andy Simpson, but more importantly were ahead of Andy and Chris our series rivals by a further 77 pts. Now the night navigation hadn't gone that well in the first two events. Not especially down to navigation or speed, mostly due to poor route decisions. Unfortunately this one proved no different. It looked like we could clear most of the course and we were reassured when sleepmonsters headed off on the same route as us, albeit a bit faster. However half way around the tracks started disappearing and being in a very poor state which really cut the pace and we had to abort some high pointers. We were 30 pts down on Andy and Chris and 150 on the winners. Sunday was still going to be important. Saturday had been good weather, but Sunday was drizzly and later stopped pretending and turned to straightforward rain. It was an either/or choice. Kayaking plus either MTB time trial or hill run. We'd both felt the biking yesterday (45 miles after the run) so opted to run on that basis, especially as most of the ride was on tracks we'd ridden on saturday. It was a ride up the road first for the start and then we were first off on the run. Didn't start too badly, until Andy and Chris overtook us on the way up. After the first point it was cross country and really tough tussock hopping to the summit of Cairnsmore up in the mist. Andy and Chris disappeared and we thought they must have local knowledge or really put on a spurt of speed, but on our descent, we saw them still on their way up, presummably having taken a wrong route. We were much happier knowing that! There was now also a good path from all the people struggling up which helped the descent (and the later competitors). We did 1:46, 4th in our class. We just had to hold it on the kayaking where Andy and Chris were much stronger than us. It was two laps of Clatteringshaws Loch. Not a good start when we went aground on the way to the first control as I followed a boat that made it through fine! The marshals were amazing. The water levels were low, so they waded out with the checkpoint every time a kayak approached. We had a good day though and it came together a bit at last, we were third in class and less than 5 mins down on Chris and Andy. We had done it! Just the cycle back down. We were tired and wet! We won the series by 6310pts ahead of 6136pts but were pushed off the podium by 25 pts. My first ACE 2-day not on the podium, but the series win made up for it with an Exposure lights joystick and £200 Cotswold Camping voucher. We scored a total of 2121 points bringing my career points to 12353. |
