Yeo dudes,
Reading all the race reports on here make me slightly regret not giving the bull a go last weekend. I could have, but a uncharacteristic attack of common sense told me to give it a miss and take some R&R...
So, Latest news from the EPIC Adventure Racing wing: I was in British Columbia recently racing in the Raid The North Extreme. This is a 6 day non-stop adventure race. And man, was it some race. The Gnarr in this one was dialled up to 11. You just can't get a race in Europe like this. The wilderness over there is unbelieveable. You can go days without getting a trace of human civilisation. Some of the areas we went through are hardly ever visited (Apart from feck-loads of grizzlies, apparently), and our speed was as low as 0.5km/h, since we had to hack our way through pure wilderness bush. Man, it was hard... so hard that barely one third of the field (a field made up of some of the toughest cnuts you're likely to find in any race) made it through the wildest section (The fantastically named Valhalla).
The mountain biking was the best I've ever encountered in an AR. Massive massive climbs of over 1500meters in one go, followed by huge descents. Even the fireroad descents were a blast (and sketchy as feck) with that much descent and speed. But being BC, there were some super technical trails as well. We hit the most technical one at night time in the pouring rain. Tight singletrack, with the downhill side being multiple hundred meter drops, so no room for error. Lots of wet rocks and roots, and unexpected deadfall ready to take your head off. trickiest bit was crossing a very very steep snow slope at one point (you could see a track where some poor feck had messed up and gone sliding down the slope god knows how far). I rode about 50% of it... which turns out to be about 40% more than a lot of the other teams managed! There was another massive trail, called the seven summits, which took about 6 or 7 hours... a massive single track trail over slightly more than 7 summits! Real alpine stuff built by canadian trailbuilders... class! Nearly fell off at the top where it would have been about 500 meters to get back up :o (if I lived).
Multiple times on the race you just had to think how fecking mad the whole thing was, how if anything happened we were basically fecked, as we were so remote, and so far from any hope of being quickly rescued. Had a plenty of "One mistake here and I'm dead" experiences, including using fallen trees to cross raging rivers, to scrambling up steep rockfaces with feck all protection.
All for 6 days non-stop. Man, I loved it! Still on a high. Race website has us down as finishing 5th, which is hilarious, since we didn't even finished ranked (The English lad on my team ran out of energy in Valhalla on day 3... we managed to keep him going for another 2 days with a lot of pushing, shoving, towing, and Richie style motivation and tough love, but in the end he had to give up). Still, 5th sounds good :)
Anyone who thinks Gael Force or WAR is an adventure race has no idea :)
Reading all the race reports on here make me slightly regret not giving the bull a go last weekend. I could have, but a uncharacteristic attack of common sense told me to give it a miss and take some R&R...
So, Latest news from the EPIC Adventure Racing wing: I was in British Columbia recently racing in the Raid The North Extreme. This is a 6 day non-stop adventure race. And man, was it some race. The Gnarr in this one was dialled up to 11. You just can't get a race in Europe like this. The wilderness over there is unbelieveable. You can go days without getting a trace of human civilisation. Some of the areas we went through are hardly ever visited (Apart from feck-loads of grizzlies, apparently), and our speed was as low as 0.5km/h, since we had to hack our way through pure wilderness bush. Man, it was hard... so hard that barely one third of the field (a field made up of some of the toughest cnuts you're likely to find in any race) made it through the wildest section (The fantastically named Valhalla).
The mountain biking was the best I've ever encountered in an AR. Massive massive climbs of over 1500meters in one go, followed by huge descents. Even the fireroad descents were a blast (and sketchy as feck) with that much descent and speed. But being BC, there were some super technical trails as well. We hit the most technical one at night time in the pouring rain. Tight singletrack, with the downhill side being multiple hundred meter drops, so no room for error. Lots of wet rocks and roots, and unexpected deadfall ready to take your head off. trickiest bit was crossing a very very steep snow slope at one point (you could see a track where some poor feck had messed up and gone sliding down the slope god knows how far). I rode about 50% of it... which turns out to be about 40% more than a lot of the other teams managed! There was another massive trail, called the seven summits, which took about 6 or 7 hours... a massive single track trail over slightly more than 7 summits! Real alpine stuff built by canadian trailbuilders... class! Nearly fell off at the top where it would have been about 500 meters to get back up :o (if I lived).
Multiple times on the race you just had to think how fecking mad the whole thing was, how if anything happened we were basically fecked, as we were so remote, and so far from any hope of being quickly rescued. Had a plenty of "One mistake here and I'm dead" experiences, including using fallen trees to cross raging rivers, to scrambling up steep rockfaces with feck all protection.
All for 6 days non-stop. Man, I loved it! Still on a high. Race website has us down as finishing 5th, which is hilarious, since we didn't even finished ranked (The English lad on my team ran out of energy in Valhalla on day 3... we managed to keep him going for another 2 days with a lot of pushing, shoving, towing, and Richie style motivation and tough love, but in the end he had to give up). Still, 5th sounds good :)
Anyone who thinks Gael Force or WAR is an adventure race has no idea :)
