Questars – Race 2
The weekend started off with us putting the bikes onto my car before heading off to the hotel in Swansea.
Paul's car with bikes
On the way to the hotel (which was a 3.5 hour drive away) we got a big hungry, so we stopped off at a pub in Gloucester for some dinner. Upon arriving there we got out of the car and checked the bikes – they were still with us, but the rear bumper (which was holding up the bike rack) of my poor Alfa Romeo looked a bit squashed!
After a nice dinner, we got to the hotel at around midnight. We waited around for 5 minutes for someone to come to reception to allow us to check in! Eventually someone came – and as they are friendly and more relaxed in Wales, they let us keep our bikes in our room!
Bikes in hotel room
We finally unpacked and went to bed at around 1am.
The next day we got up at 7am, loaded up our gear and headed off to the event which was a 1 hour drive away.
The event was held at Christ College, Brecon, Powys, Wales. It was a large college in the middle of green, hilly countryside. The green bit was nice, but the hills were looking very steep!
College Grounds
At the initial briefing we were given maps with all the checkpoints, then a short time to prepare. Dave and I quickly rushed off and planned the most efficient route to get the most number of high-value checkpoints in the allowed amount of time. There were 4 stages – a short run, kayaking, running and mountain biking. Dave and I were confident that we had planned each of the stages well and we were looking forward to the event.
It started well with the initial run, we got to the kayaking stage on time. They we got in (and got a little wet) and discovered that it was a lot harder than it looked! We got a bit ambitious by going for the most didtant checkpoint and went 8 minutes overtime – which cost us 50 penalty points.
Once back on dry land we were in the running stage. We started off at quite a fast pace alongside the canal, but soon found some very long, steep hills! Again we found that we were too ambitious, we kept going for the running checkpoints – tempted as the next one was always just a couple of km away. Unfortunately we ended up running out of time and didn’t get onto the biking stage (which cost us a whopping 100 points)!
Once the race was over we met up with Steve (who finished within minutes of Dave and I), then handed in our dibber (electronic tool used to record the timings at each checkpoint), then sat down for an hour before loading up the car and heading home. On the way back we found a really nice pub – the food was superb, really tasty and huge portions (after running around for 5 hours, none of us could finish the plate!). We finally got home at midnight, tired but happy.
Once the results were published we saw that we came 16th out of 27 teams – which I was happy with. If we didn’t get any penalties we would have come first! If we did even just 1 bike checkpoint, we would have been 5th. So (especially as this was just my 3rd event) I am really happy! My fitness has improved tremendously and we know where we can improve our strategy. I am really looking forward to my next adventure race (Ace Race – 12th July in Bracknell Forest).