Billed as a try at "adventure racing" this Gary Thompsett-involved event was a mixture of mountain biking, hill running and canoeing. The Westies Wanderers 1 and 2 (Shona & Rob; Simon & me) decided to give it a bash and had a great day out at Carron Valley, just over the back of the Campsies. Our "Cask Strength" category involved us being out for a maximum of 8 hours, during which we had to "dib" as many checkpoints as we could. You got the maps and checkpoint details at the start and then had to devise your strategy to get round the various competition areas, which included the reservoir itself for the canoeing, North Thirdpart reservoir crags for some hairy singletrack biking' back at the event centre for some more biking on the forestry roads and mountain bike trails and then lots of checkpoints on and around Meikle Bin. The 4 of us headed off first on the road out to North Thirdpart where Simon and I went for the first checkpoint at a reservoir en route. Squeezing through a gate we hared off up the track only to be bemused by the lack of a checkpoint; it was back on the gate that we had squeezed through 5 min earlier! - not a great start. That allowed Shona & Rob to leapfrog us to the next CP, a "fun activity" involving re-arranging a hexagon of sticks into 3 triangles by moving only 3 pieces - yes, it bemused us so much that we didn't even give it a go. Then we headed off into the narrow tracks that lead up to the crags overlooking North Thirdpart reservoir. I didn't enjoy this as the tracks were narrow, muddy and rocky and I probably carried/pushed the bike more than I sat on it. Towards the ned of this bit it widened out and became a bit more manageable and enjoyable and we passed Rob & Shona coming out of the last CP, only a minute or two ahead. We then had a long undulating bike ride on the road back over to the reservoir, where the heavy bikes and wide tires made for hard work. The canoeing was a welcome relief from the bike, though for only 25 min it was still hard as my legs were sore from being pressed up and tensed up in the canoe. We passed on the chance of doing this bit twice, though Shona & Rob like it so much they went for a paddle right round the reservoir, having missed the CP. It was back on the bikes, collecting a few CPs on the way to finally dropping the bikes off near Meikle Bin. This part of the day was really score orienteering with CPs all over the place. We headed up Meikle Bin in the clag and down to Little Bin for the CP "on the big tree beside the two small trees"; problem was it was a flat summit, poor visibility and quite a few small and big trees! However, after a few minutes of wandering aimlessly around I heard the familiar "beep-beep" and saw another team nearby in the murk dibbing their dibber on a tree we had probably walked past only minutes earlier. We headed off back down horrible felled forest and contoured back to near the bike drop. It was then up on to the ridge where after lots of wet, boggy plodding we bagged a few more CPs before returning to the bikes with an hour left. Going down the stony track was hairy for a roady wimp loke me as Simon romped off, though it got better when we were on the wider forest roads. That just filled me up with false courage though as when I was trying to keep up with Simon I almost flew off a wide, fast, gravelly bend. As we were back near the finish with some time to spare we went for some extra points by going down two of the special mountain bike trails, finishing on the "fun park", a narrow, stony downhill track with lots of short, sharp bumps thrown in to try and unseat you. We cruised into the finish after 7h 45m, to be followed shortly by the other two Westies Wanderers coming in in a totally different direction from us. Simon and I pipped them by amassing 70 or so more points than them, though they undoubtedly won the muddiest faces award. Overall, it was a hard, varied but very enjoyable day out.
Race website here
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