Author Topic: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series  (Read 5359 times)

Offline mickfarrell

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Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« on: November 07, 2010, 05:13:24 PM »
Team event - Mountain Biking, Trail Runninng, Kayaking, Navigation & some team challenges mixed in.
4 races in total, http://www.causewaycoastar.co.uk/
Rose and myself were at the first one yesterday, good turnout, stiff competition.
Plenty of mountain bikers, though nothing technical.
Well worth a shot if anyone's up for it, we'll probably be doing all four.

Offline mickfarrell

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2010, 07:27:39 PM »
CCAR Rd.2 coming up this Saturday 4th December in Bangor, easy to get to and Trail Quest Rd.2 on in Lady Dixon on the Sunday.
Motorway all the way to Belfast, and they know how to clear snow properly up there so no excuse.
CCAR is pre-reg only, had sold out but they've opened a few extra places.
We're heading up for the weekened, plan is to do the Trailquest on the Sunday too if we're not too tired, you can register on the morning.

Offline mickfarrell

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2011, 06:09:39 PM »
So Rose and meself took part in CCAR Rd.2 yesterday in Bangor, all in all a great day out!
42 teams of 2 competed in a mix of trail running, kayaking, biking, orienteering on foot and bike, and a few team tasks thrown in.

Started off with a trail tun, at the end of the which we were close to last position (we actually hadn't done any running since Tuff Trax in November).
Once we got on the kayaks we started pulling back a few places, and continued passing people on the bike sections.
We managed to hold our position on the next couple of running sections and pulled away again on the bike sections.

Over the course of the day there were 22 controls that we had to visit with an additional optional 3 on foot and an optional 5 on the bikes.
There was also an additional 5 foot orienteering and 11 mtb orienteering, which were given as secret tasks when we arrived at certain control points.
Time penalties applied for missing any of them or for missing cut-off times.

Tough work, definitely feeling it today, but at the end of the day we finished 7th overall (although possibly 6th as official results haven't been posted yet).
But we were the 1st mixed pair with a time of 4hrs35, about 30 mins behind the overall winners, so we're delighted!

CCAR Rd.3 is on 5th February in Derry City for anyone interested.

Offline Paul

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2011, 11:05:47 PM »
Well done guys...!!! 8)

Great report....

Offline Steve

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2011, 11:19:26 PM »
Well done guys!!great result..

Offline KornDuffy

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #5 on: January 10, 2011, 09:54:04 PM »
Well done Mick & Rose, Great result

Offline mickfarrell

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #6 on: January 12, 2011, 02:37:02 PM »
Results just been posted, we actually came 5th overall, 2 of the teams that finished before us incurred time penalties for not visiting all control points, Woo Hoo!!!

Offline mickfarrell

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #7 on: February 07, 2011, 07:48:04 PM »
So Rose & meself took part in CCAR Rd.3 in Derry on Saturday.
The usual bit of running, biking & kayaking in and around the city and it's numerous parks, cycle ways, etc.

Started off with a short orienteering event on foot around the grounds of the place hosting the event, took about 30 mins including a task where we had to burst balloons.
Onto the bikes then to visit a number of locations around the east side of the city, had to build a polystyrene plane and fly it, easy peasy!
We had a couple of teams close to us at this stage so we had to push hard to try and catch some while dropping others.

More controls, we had 3 or 4 teams on top of us at this stage and ended up taking a slightly longer route than we should have, but the others followed us so at least they didn't get ahead.
After that we met a marshall and were given a running task of counting the number of canons on the town walls, 20 in total for those interested, varying answers given by teams, one team got 7 and another got 24, not sure how?

After this we were onto a bike time trial, out and back in 16 mins or less, if we didn't make it our TT time would be doubled, we made it in 13.
Not everyone was so lucky, one team managed to get two punctures, poor chaps, cost them a lot of time.
We did have one team pass us on it doing the whole draughting thing, but we managed to get past them again on the next stage to the kayaks.

Strong flow on the river, tide was on it's way out too, so of course we flew down to the control point but had a hard push on the way back against it.
We kept in close to bank to avoid the worst of it, took 30mins, which was a good time, flow took a few teams by surprise with one team managing to fall out, definitely felt sorry for them!

3rd run section up next, orienteering map in hand we headed up hill, managed to go a little off track after the first control costing us a minute or two, but got back on course and flew around the rest.

Back onto bikes for an optional bike section, easy spin out on road, then a good push up a long hill, then into the best bit of off road of the day, but it wasn't long lived and we were back into town and on our way to the next CP.

Another secret task, this time a traverse around an indoor climbing wall, then onto an optional run section of 5 CPs around another park, got it finished in double quick time.
Then onto the bikes and pushing hard again to ensure the teams that had been on our tails didn't catch us on our way to the last CP and finish.
We had been battling with a couple of teams in particular all day so we were glad not to see them.

3 teams had finished before us in the end, but only 2 had completed the course, leaving us 3rd overall for the day and 1st mixed pair.
Finish time was 4hrs 30ish (official times not up yet), a good 30mins off 1st place, but hopefully a bit of training between now and the next event will help us close the gap!

CCAR RD. 4, Castleward, Co. Down, 5th March.

Offline mickfarrell

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2011, 06:40:03 PM »
Rose and myself took part in the 4th and final round of the CCAR Winter Series in Castleward, Co. Down yesterday.
Great turnout, about 50 teams in all which meant it was to be very close competition.

Started out with orienteering on foot, a bit of a mix-up in maps meant a lot of people were running around like headless chickens, we copped it pretty quickly and managed alright on this.
After 13 controls and a couple of map changes we were on the bikes for a short spin down to the kayaks.

Easy enough kayak stage, a little bit of a wind on our broad side but we kept her lit and managed to make up a couple of places.
One of teams we passed being a mixed team that's we'd end up toing and froing with for the rest of the day.

After the kayaks we were onto the bikes again, this time to visit a number of controls, which eventually led us back to the kayak transition.

A mystery running stage next, we had to visit the next four controls in order, these gave us a code which gave us the location of a fifth.
When I plotted the location I nearly cried, we'd been on the go for nearly three hours at this stage and the control was a good way off.
I checked and rechecked, but what I was seeing was correct, another long run was ahead of us.
A couple of teams decided it'd be a good idea to tuck in behind and follow us, including that mixed pair, they told us later they didn't know where to go.
Eventually we made the control point, a quick bit of map reading and we took an alternative route back to the bikes to hopefully throw our tail, but unfortunately they kept with us.

Onto the bikes again, we had to visit one more control before the optional bike loop.
The optional bike loop carried an hour penalty, we did it in 40 minutes but got passed by the two teams that were following us on the last stage.
After this we had only 6 more controls before the finish.

At this stage I made a bit of a nav error, we ended up a farmer's lane, he wasn't too happy to see us, we were only about 100 metres from the control but had to back track and take an alternative route, lost at least 10 mintues, we weren't happy and we definitely weren't going to catch those two teams now.

We got back on track as quick as we could, we were tired and cramping a little at times, but pushed as hard as we could and finished in 4 hrs 22, this put us in 6th place for the day, although we were 2nd mixed pair. We had set ourselves a goal of being in the top 10, seeing that there were so many teams, so obviously we were delighted!

So overall for the series we finished 1st mixed pair (3rd, 1st, 1st and 2nd)
But even better we finished 3rd overall for the series (8th, 5th, 3rd and 6th)
Great events, really well run and good old banter with the other teams.
Well worth trying out the next time round.

Offline Paul

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2011, 06:47:10 PM »
Great report Mick...!! Well done guys on the results, it sounds tough going.  :)

You'll be flying come MTB season..!!

Offline Joe J

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Re: Causeway Coast Adventure Racing 2010/11 Winter Series
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2011, 09:11:28 PM »
2nd that,well done 3rd overall.great result.
we should get a few teams together for this next year.sounds like a great event