ACE Race Dirty Weekend!

It was advertised as a dirty weekend, and that’s exactly what it was! Steve & I had entered the 2-day standard race, starting at Traquair House, near Innerleithen in the Borders. We set up our tent on arrival and got registered, ready for the fun to begin. Unfortunately the weather was miserable and rain forecast for both days – a long weekend ahead! An 8-hour race on the Saturday turned into nearly 9 - we made a silly decision to go for an extra checkpoint on the run and it was a lot further away than we thought. A lot of biking up hills and through mud, carrying bikes over gates, stiles and unbikeable sections, kayaking against a nasty headwind, trudging up hills and trying to run through long grass, heather & a few bushes – whose idea was this?!

The checkpoints are small electronic boxes, and we both have a ‘dibber’ attached to our wrists that go into the control points. They also have a random 3-letter code attached to them but I began to wonder if it really was that random after I’d seen the following at the top of some hills - WHY, SAD, EAT, CRY!! I didn’t feel too great on Saturday – managed to hang in there, but hadn’t eaten enough in the previous couple of days (hadn’t been feeling well) and after 6-7 hours I really started to hit the wall. Steve was fantastic – his navigation was really good, and he never seemed to get tired (bit annoying really!) After returning to the tents and having a few hours to get warm, dry and have some food, we set out on the night orienteering section. I felt a lot better (thank goodness) and was glad to have a bit of energy back in my legs.

We biked to the starting point (approx 6km), collected the orienteering map and set off. Partly on foot and partly on bikes, we did pretty well on both – once again, Steve’s navigating was pretty much spot on… I was just happy to go where I was told and try to keep up!!

Sunday’s section was 6 hours, so it was a race against the clock to get as many checkpoints as possible – you get penalised heavily for going over time (as we learned on Saturday) so decisions on which checkpoints to go for are based on how fast you think you’re going to cover certain sections of the map – often very difficult to predict if you don’t know what the terrain is going to be like. I think we made good decisions on Sunday, and probably got as many points as we were capable of that day. There were some really fun sections (the descent through Innerleithen on the single track mountain bike trail!) and quite varied checkpoints, including a cave in the middle of a very dark tunnel, and a short flying fox ropework section! All in all it was a good weekend, we would have done really well if we’d been a bit smarter on Saturday but it was enjoyable all the same. Went back to Steve & Jo’s for a well-deserved Roast Chicken on Sunday night – thanks Jo!!

Tips for next race:
1) Get much better bike lights + head torch for the night section
2) Wear non-goretex running trainers because once the water gets into goretex its really difficult to get out – feels like running with weights on the end of your legs!!