last weekend I took part in the Helly Hansen 'WEAVERS DOWN AUTUMN ASSAULT' adventure race at Longmore Camp in Hampshire. I was a very last minute entry filling the space left by a friend of mine who had to pull out. As it happened one of the other team mates dropped out on the morning too, leaving us as a pair.
The day started pretty early for me (0600 hrs!) in order to grab a lift from my other team mate, Chris, in Wimbledon. I was very pleased to find out that we both live on parts of the underground system that will accept bikes. It would have been a very chilly and dark ride otherwise!
So we arrive in time for a 1000hrs start with frost still on the ground (Checking when I got home told me that most of the race was sub 10c!), and clear blue skies - it was going to be a beautiful day. The gun went and we were off , first on a 3km or so run which gave us a good idea of the terrain for the day - lots of sand, water and wooded hills. Into transition we swapped woolly hats for cycle helmets and were off on a 25km ish two lap bike route. It was an awesome ride through a whole variety of country side - water, hills, lumps, bumps and mud! For some reason though my lower back started to ache quite considerably, but could be eased with 30 seconds of stretching every 10-20 mins or so. Rather frustrating for Chris I'm sure, but he was very accommodating. Worryingly my gears also started to slip from quite an early stage. It's a new bike (less than 6 months and only my second proper trail ride) so I was rather annoyed that they needed to be adjusted already. It was only when I got home at the end of the day that I noticed that one of the chain links was actually broken! What would have happened if it had given up completely doesn't bear thinking about. Happily wiggle have now replaced the chain for free :)
Back into transition and it was on to the next run section. A roughly 5km route through what seemed to be a mogul field of bumps down through a giant sand pit, gorse shrubs and finally a marsh to the inflatable kayak section where we had to paddle a lap of a small lake, then back onto the last 5km run to home. By this time we'd been on the go for nearly 3 hours and sitting in a puddle of cold wet water for the 15/20 minutes or so that it took to negotiate the lake had left my quads far from impressed and I was fighting some pretty bad cramp on the way back up towards transition. However, I was far from the only one - there were people all around me having to stop and stretch out.
The last time through transition and it was onto the 'challenges' in another giant sand pit including a three legged race around a hill. Finally we ran to the finish line, but could only cross after crawling under netting in 8 inches of muddy and sandy water (ensuring that anywhere that had remained dry or free of grit, now wasn't!) and over a steep 6' high slope covered in vegetable oil... which was nice.
We finished in 03:29:42. Unfortunately as we were now only a pair we didn't actually place, but would have come 56th out of 237 if we had counted.
Happy with that... :)
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