Questars Adventure Race 3 of 4 – 18th July 2009 – Pewsey, North Wiltshire
Another early start as we headed over to St. Francis School, Pewsey in North Wiltshire for round 3 (of 4) of the 2009 Questar’s Adventure Race series. Once again it was a nice location with great scenery and lots of hills!
I had forgotten to take my Camelbak with me (I’d left it at home) and it was all prepared with 3 litres of water (with Go powder mix), bike tools, pump, inner-tube, first aid kit, whistle, energy gels, etc. Luckily they always sell bags with bladders at events, so £80 later I had a new bag and 3 litre bladder, I was confident(ish) that as I had tubeless tyres, I wouldn’t need an inner-tube, pump or the bike tools.
The race didn’t quite go as planned as Steve left something in the car so he had to rush back and get it, so we wasted a few minutes at the start. Then we had to queue for a few minutes at the kayak stage (our first stage) while a few teams in front of us slowly put their kayaks into the canal. As we paddled our way along the canal, we were looking out for the checkpoints. We couldn’t see the first one, so we kept paddling as fast as our paddles would take us and took the next few. With 1 more to get along this route Steve wanted to go for it, but I objected thinking that it was a bad idea – maybe my experience of Dave and I going stretching ourselves in a kayaking stage in a previous race had taught me a lesson; so we turned around and headed back to the start of the kayaing section. This turned out to be the correct decision because we didn’t have too much time left once we had reached the end of the kayaking stage.
On the way back we kept a look out for the first checkpoint which we had missed on the way out but again we couldn’t see it so Steve wanted to turn around and look for it again. I objected to this too and thought that it would be better for us to just carry on and use the time later on in the race – this proved to be the correct decision because as we reached the end of the kayaking course, the marshal told us that the first checkpoint was missing!
Apart from being held up at the beginning, we were quite happy with the kayaking stage, we progressed onto the running stage (we decided to do the running stage before the mountain biking stage). My new rucksack wasn’t as comfortable at the Camelback as it jiggled around quite a bit and an hour into the running section it was really rubbing against my right shoulder, but I wasn’t going to let that bother me too much, I tried to put it out of my mind. Overall the running sections went okay – despite us getting a bit lost a couple of times and having to roll under electric fences (something that happened in our last race too!).
Then we jumped onto our bikes and tackled the mountain bike course. The ground was mostly dry and it was a nice day so the weather conditions were not a factor this time (unlike in the New Forest race where we had virtually every type of weather Blighty could throw at us!). The only issue we had was the issue that had plagued us in this whole series (races 1 and 2) – punctures! In race 1 I got 2 punctures (which then prompted me to get Specialized tubeless wheels and tyres) and in race 2 Steve got 3 punctures. In this race, Steve got… well he got at least 1 puncture, 1 split valve and lots of valve issues which meant that his rear tyre was never really inflated and was always losing air. So the cycling section didn’t go too well and we ended up at the finish about 2 minutes over out 6 hour time (which cost us a few penalty points).
If it wasn’t for the puncture problems I think we would have done okay, but as it was we ended up near the bottom of the score-board. Oh well…