The upside is that due to puncture issues on the biking stages, we weren’t going to win any trophies, so it doesn’t really matter.

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…

Last year I competed with Dave in the 5 hour version and Steve did it on his own (6 hour version). This time I teamed up with Steve and we did the Masters trio (6 hours, 3 events – running, kayaking and cycling).

On the Friday night I picked Steve up from his house in Northampton, then we headed for the nearest Subway for dinner. After eating that, we drove deep into the foreign land that is Wales and headed for the Premier Inn hotel in Pentrebach, Merthyr Tydfil. I had phoned before I booked to see if it was okay to bring out bikes into the hotel room and they said it was, when we checked in the girl said that she remembered talking to me about it

So we settled in and unloaded all our gear. Then I attempted to fit 2 new wheels that I had bought and received 2 days before. I replaced the front wheel okay, but didn’t know that I would need some additional tools for the rear wheel, so I ran the race with a new tubeless wheel on the front and my tubed wheel on the rear.

Working on Bikes in Hotel Room

While flicking through the TV channels, Starship Troopers appeared. Amazingly Steve admitted to not having seen it before (he isn’t a true geek), so we sat and watched it until 01:30 – we should have learned by now that it’s not good to watch TV until the early hours the night/morning before a race!

The next morning we got up and it was a 25-30 minute drive to the event. It was a hot day and I ended up with just a dribble of water left in my 3 litre Camelbak after the 6 hours. We did most of the running stage before the kayaking (it was nice to go kayaking to cool off a little). We got a little lost on the running section – we even stepped over barbed wire and crawled under an electric fence! We didn’t do that well on the biking stage either – we rode past a couple of checkpoints and Steve got 3 punctures (which beats my 2 punctures in the last race!) Plus Steve lost his saddle bag which contained his toolkit – doh!

Straight after the race, we headed to the local pub for a lemonade. Then from there we headed to another pub (which we discovered last year) and had another fantastic dinner.

Steve (left) and Paul (right) waiting for Dinner to Arrive

So overall although we didn’t do so well, we had a good time, got a little bit fitter, wiser and more experienced; so it was a good day

I think the punctures were just a result of bad luck as I was using good wheels, tyres and inner tubes (all of it just a few months old) and the area wasn’t rocky.

Anyway, always eager to buy new kit and have good equipment, I’ve just placed an order for all this:

Item: Specialized 09 Roval Controle SL Disc

Quantity: 1

Item total: £479.99

===========================================================

Item: Specialized Sauserwind S-Works 2Bliss (Pair) (26 x 1.8″ black)

Quantity: 1

Item total: £44.98

===========================================================

Item: Stans Notubes The Solution Tyre Sealant (32fl oz refill – no cup included)

Quantity: 1

Item total: £17.99

===========================================================

Item: Stans Notubes Tyre Sealant Injector / Applicator

Quantity: 1

Item total: £7.49

===========================================================

BASKET TOTAL: £550.45

===========================================================

DELIVERY: £0.00

===========================================================

TOTAL: £550.45

from https://www.freeborn.co.uk/.

]]> http://blog.techboy.co.uk/index.php/2009/05/23/going-tubeless/feed/ 0 http://blog.techboy.co.uk/index.php/2009/04/12/questars-race-1-28-march-2009-new-forest-hampshire/ http://blog.techboy.co.uk/index.php/2009/04/12/questars-race-1-28-march-2009-new-forest-hampshire/#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:37:13 +0000 Techboy http://blog.techboy.co.uk/?p=150 I entered Race 1 of the 2009 Questars Adventure Race with Steve. We entered the 6 hour Questars Trio format as mens pair team, so it was mountain biking, running and kayaking.

Mine and Steve's bikes - ready to race!

The morning started off very cold. I looked around and I was the only person in shorts and t-shirt, so I nipped over to the car and put on my waterproof Gore-Tex jacket that I had recently bought (which proved to function very well throught the day – I was very impressed with it).

Then the day warmed up quite a bit, to the point where Steve stopped to take his jacket off – only to put it back on again 5 minutes later when it started to rain! The weather kept changing between hot, cold, wind, rain and hail! The hail really hurt as we cycled though it and it hit us like a million ball bearings on our arms, legs, face and head (through the bike helmet).

It was also my first true test of my new bike – and it performed really well. Steve was envious of my rear suspension at one particularly bumpy section of track The only downside to the whole day is that I got 2 punctures – one in each wheel… Firstly I got a puncture in the front tyre (a small thorn), so I replaced the inner-tube and started to pump it up, only to find that the top of the valve had somehow broken off! So I borrowed an inner-tube from Steve and got under-way again. Then 40 minutes later I got a puncture in my rear tyre! As we didn’t have any more inner-tubes left, I repaired it with a puncture repair kit.

Because of the 2 punctures, my poor navigation (missed a road to a checkpoint so we went back for it) and also because Steve injured himself playing football the Tuesday before we ended up 17th out of 23 (quite respectable given the circumstances). If we didn’t have the punctures I think we could easily have been 8th.

Despite the small issues, we had a great day – lots of fun. The location was really nice too as it was in the New Forest and there were a lot of wild ponies all over the place – and they weren’t phased by us nutters on bikes whizzing past them in the wind and hail!

Then the next day, I headed off to Spain for a weeks rock climbing holiday!

I carefully unwrapped it, took it to work and charged it at my desk. Then I called O2 and got the on the ‘special’ number discussed here http://www.modaco.com/content/blackstone-blackstone-modaco-com/278122/unlimited-web-on-o2-can-you-use-for-other-apps/. I was in a queue for about 30 seconds, then someone answered. I told her that I would like to change my bolt on from texts to Web and she put me through to someone else.

I then told this new person the same thing and she sorted it out for me straight away, no questions asked. It will be done tomorrow. I was on the phone for about 5 minutes in total.

So I am very happy!

All I have to do now is transfer my number from my current O2 phone to the new one (I already have the PAC code) and raise a support call with Quidco because it says the £40 refund was declined.

The other exciting news today is that I’ve entered the 6 hour Questars adventure race (round one of a series of 4 races) with Steve (as a pair) which is on the 28th March in the New Forest, Hampshire. This will probably be my first race of the year – and my first real opportunity to try out my new bike

We have gone for the hardest category which is the Questars Trio, 6 hours (I did the 5 hour version with Dave last September):

Questars Trio races have three stages – trail running, mountain biking and kayaking. Within each stage there are a range of checkpoints to visit. Each checkpoint has a value and the winners are those that have accumulated the most points within the time limit. The race is continuous. Transition between stages is all part of the race. Teams choose in which order to do each stage.

Navigation between checkpoints is straight forward, with the course set so that you can make use of the many cycle tracks, footpaths and bridleways in each area.

Then a week later on the 7th September (the day before my 30th birthday), having only jsut recovered from the Ace Race, dave and I did the Dark and White race in North Derbyshire. We went up the night before and stayed in the Springfield Hotel which was really nice. I did a Photosynth of my hotel room which came out quite well – I’ll take more photos next time.

We were amongst the first people on-site at 8am and it was pretty cold! There was no formal brief, no safety talk, etc. we were just given an electronic dibber each, a map and told to get started at 9.15am! The weather kept changing throughout the day, it started really cold, got warmer, then rained. We thought we did well on the day but somehow the results show that we only came 6th out of 8th in our group (male team of 2 with an average of under 40) so we are not too sure why yet, we will need to go through the results in detail. I guess the other teams just made better choices in terms of which checkpoints they went for. Still, it was a great day and we had a lot of fun!

My next race is the Birmingham Half Marathon on the 26th October 2008!

A few days after I got home, I took the handlebar stem to Evans Cycles who told me that it would cost £60 to get the one thread repaired (helixed)! Leaving the shop very disatisfied I told my dad, who then got an engineer he knows to get it repaired for free – result!

The engineer did a really good job. I fitted it tonight and all is well again. I’ll clean and oil the bike tomorrow to make it race-ready.

This Saturday (30th October), Dave and Steve will be joining me on the Ace Race round 3 of 3. This round is in Queen Elizabeth Country Park in South Downs. It looks nice in these photos – although rather hilly!

On Sunday 7th September (the day before I turn 30 – if I make it!) Dave and I will be competing in the 6 hour Dark and White ‘Skins 6 in the Peak‘ event. Which will be starting at the New Mills Football Club in North Derbyshire.

Team Feeling SAPped (Paul, Dave and John)

As well as the usual running, biking and orienteering stages, were some ‘interesting’ challenges:

• Carrying a bucket of water (supported on a wooden tray, supported by ropes) around a lake
• Transcending a rope ‘bridge’ (harder than it looked!). At one point Dave was almost at 90 degrees – and THEN John told him how to do it easily
• Me leading Dave and John through a course in a wooded area, while they were blindfolded
• All 3 of us wading chest deep through a cold lake with our bikes above our heads!
• All 3 of us on a single set of wooden ‘skis’ where we had to walk synchronously around a course (harder than it sounds!)

I recorded the GPS stats on my Garmin Forerunner 305.

The results show that we came 69th out of 102 overall and were the 24th team out of 39.

We all had fun – and all got very wet and muddy! As you can see from the photographs.

The only downers were that the Ace Race organisation was very poor (like the last race) and we know that other teams cheated (e.g. they missed checkpoints, then found out that they still had time left, so went back and completed the missed checkpoints), so because of this I wont enter any more races that don’t have electronic means of scoring (e.g. electronic dibbers).

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).