Nopesport

The Rat Race Urban Adventure Series of 2006 came to a close in Manchester this past weekend. Just when racers thought things couldn’t get any more bonkers and bizarre, some cult checkpoints were thrown into the race by the planning team of Gary Tompsett, John Houlihan and Craig Zielinski which will have people talking for ages about another classic Rat Race. As far as hair brained schemes go, this one was certainly up there!

Saturday night saw the prologue kick off at 6pm and tactics for this stage were affected mainly by a number of time limited checkpoints which dictated when teams had to reach them by. Many teams headed straight away to the biggest scoring checkpoint of the night, a nearby barbers shop! Here they were presented with a choice of a haircut with the clippers ranging from a "Bonehead" zero cut, worth 100 points, to a perhaps more socially acceptable, but worth only 25 points, grade two cut. Over 30 of the 85 teams went for the bonehead look with a number of other teams going for the lesser options. The all female teams weren't too happy with this checkpoint regarding it as unfair.

Other wacky checkpoints along the way included more female friendly ones such as poledancing and cocktail making, while further afield found a checkpoint at a bmx track for some chopper racing. Some of the checkpoints were located in more "interesting" parts of the city, with a few in the gay district of Canal Street, while marshals were warned off from hanging around where their checkpoint by the Police as it was such a dodgy area!

Team Accelerate, led my Ifor Powell, lived up to their name clearing the prologue in an awesome time of less than 2 hours. This was 10 minutes clear of Bruce Duncan's team Superfeet while 3rd place went to the 2nd Accelerate Team, all of whom cleared the course. Edinburgh winners Sleepmonsters.com, with Janine Hensman & Chris McSweeny joined once again by Eddie Winthorpe also cleared the course in a time of 2 hours and 16 minutes.

Sunday morning saw teams dispersed at 7:30 to find 3 controls on a map without streetnames before setting off on the bikes. One of the teams taking part on Sunday contained a couple of the cast members from Hollyoaks, the female one doing her makeup before setting off on the course!

This time round teams had much more route choice compared to Bristol and Edinburgh, with a free choice between controls for much of the course. The City of Manchester stadium was the first stop for some ropework. Here they faced an abseil and a climbing challenge before carrying on with the biking.

After a loop round the north it was down to Salford Quays to abseil off the Lowry and visit a number of checkpoints around the Industrial Museum before some kayaking round the Quays. Sleepmonsters made the most of their timeouts here to refuel and plan ahead before tackling the Museum where they quite quickly located the tank and the number of bombers used in the Dambusters raids!

After the kayaking round the Quays teams were faced with a quick blast along the canal to the finish. After which teams had to return to the event village where they were treated to an impressive zip slide from the 5th floor of a building across the event village.

Fastest on Sunday were Sleepmonsters, but it wasn't quite enough for them and they had to settle for 3rd place. Just a few minutes behind them were Team Accelerate who's Day 1 lead was doubled giving them 1st place ahead of Superfeet who were less than a minute ahead of Sleepmonsters. Sleepmonsters did however take the overall series title and with it a trip to Interlaken for the Powerade Games courtesy of Columbia.

Full results can be found here.

Racers starting the prologue