Nopesport

This year has seen a progression in Nopesport's ambitions with it managing to field two teams for last weekend’s rat race. The teams consisted of the following athletes.

Team Nopesport.com 1

Susan Sloan
Alastair Brunton
Andy Simpson

Team Nopesport.com 2

Rachael Majumdar
Stewart Caithness
Rory Findlay

The race itself followed a similar format to previous years with a 3 hour prologue on the Saturday night, closely followed by a day of racing kicking off early on Sunday morning but lasting for most of the day.

As I competed in the race, a personal account follows:

Prologue

Everyone was pushing on the start line, excited to get going. Time was ticking away past the 7pm start time due to some technical problems. Excitement rose... finally we were started. Stewart Caithness was jostling for position at the front of the pack and wiped out on the first corner almost getting trampled. He was quickly up on his feet again and I could see him as I grabbed the score points descriptions for Nopesport 1.

As is common at the start of these things, despite arranging a meeting point with my team mates, I managed to lose them in the opening seconds. They assumed that I had seen them and ran on ahead. I was left standing at the meeting point looking around like a lost child in a shopping centre.

Finally my team mates reappeared and we were able to move on choosing a change of plan due to SI Queues. What followed was a surprisingly tough road run throughout the streets of Edinburgh which I was not prepared for. Most of my running preparations had been on soft Scottish mountains with aggressive gradients. Long gradual hills at pace on hard tarmac played havoc with my legs and I had to dig a lot deeper than I expected to keep up with my speedy team mates.

We did various challenges from racing round bicycle speedways in front of the TV cameras to 'North Shore' style mountain biking at ocean terminal.

Overall, Andy Simpson did a great job navigating the streets and my local knowledge helped out in a few situations. Susan was solid and I forgot she was in fact a girl. Towards the end I could not maintain pace and it was me on tow. It was very embarrassing and I was jeered at by members of team compass point. But I was taking one for the team and it was all about the end result.

As we kept it together making only a few minor errors apart from the crazy chessel's land control we cruised into the finish with a couple of minutes to spare and I was back to the accommodation and in bed as soon as possible.

We didn’t find out until the next day but the overnight positions going into Day 2 were as follows.

Team Nopesport.com 1 3rd
Team Nopesport.com 2 23rd

Starting the Sunday in third position was exciting as was the television interest.

Main Race

The day started hot and we all knew it was only going to get hotter. I donned my super duper factor 10 Hawaiian sun cream knowing immediately that it was only a token gesture.

After a good nights sleep I felt fine having felt like death the before bed. The race started with a run around Princes Street Gardens to split up the field. There was a pacemaker to stretch us out but he wasn’t wearing a kilt like I did last year!

After the run we were on the bikes and we raced threw Edinburgh streets along a fixed route, down some steps then off to the marchmont where there was a bike orienteering course laid out. After that it was onto blackford quarry for some abseiling. This was relatively early in the morning ~9am and there was still a rave going on from the night before!

All the dazed and confused party goers watched in awe as fully conscious rat racers abseiled down the walls of the quarry. One party goer was overhead saying "that looks much more fun than taking xxxxxxx". I thought to my self "yep that’s true and the best part of abseiling is the come down!"

Onto braid hills golf course driving range for some golf, a couple of checkpoints then over the Pentlands starting from Dreghorn. This is where the heat started to beat down on us as we dragged our bikes up the steep gravel inclines. A checkpoint was punched (not dibbed) at the top and we flew down the other side. I was feeling strong at this point, fuelled by Jelly Babies and the love of descents.

In terms of placing at this point, we were very much in the mix and with the top teams in the competition. Next it was time for a "trail run". This can only be described as orienteering with a bad map and terrible descriptions. Apparently a luck element adds excitement to the race but I think luck removes race from the race. Next was where it went a bit wrong, a viaduct was described as a task for after the trail run and no grid reference was given. This meant that it was a valid assumption to think it was after the trail run itself. This was not the case. You were supposed to find the viaduct on the map beforehand or "know" where it was. This meant that we ran almost back to the bikes in the searing heat only to realise that we had to run all the way back to where we had previously been to get to the viaduct. The rat race is organised by Detail Events. We thought this name ironic.

After getting back on track we had lost 30 mins, North Face (the leaders after gaining full points on the prologue) even more time. Next we did a fun chilled out clamber across the girders of the viaduct whilst timed out. Then it was the same run back to the bikes and a section of biking.

Other things we did were Kayaking, Singing, Climbing and Photographs interspersed by sections of cycling. This was all entertaining and Andy Simpson again did a great job of keeping us all together and organised. Tour de France style slipstreaming ensured maximum efficiency.

We arrived at the finish area knackered and aware of one final challenge. This turned out to be a slimy wall with bananas and butter to be climbed as a team in front of a large crowd. We conquered this easily with a little bit of planning and delighted to be finished after seven and a half hours of racing in the heat. I drank 6 litres of fluid in this time and did not go to the toilet once.

In the end we ended up 4th overall. Just out of the prizes and recognition of the organisers.

Overall it was a great experience and we enjoyed being rats for a couple of days. If only the quality of the course can be improved in the future to allow for fair racing.

Team Nopesport.com 2 also produced a solid performance on Day 2 completing the entire course with no cutoffs and finishing a respectable 30th out of 154 teams. The adventure racing world has not seen the last of the nopesport.com adventure racing teams. Expect DOMINATION.