Round 2 winning team 'The Losers'
It was a dry day with a noticably cool North-wester blowing in off the icy North Atlantic. It was March and it was the first event of the Trailblazers spring trailquest series in Claudy. In theory the weather could only get better as the series went on….NOT.
I woke early on Sunday morning to the sound of rain on the bedroom window, Oh Shit!! Good job I had spent a couple of hours the night before putting out a few controls.
Van loaded, gumboots (wellies) on and it was off to Delamont to see how many other mad trailblazers where going to sacrifice their warm and dry Sunday at B&Q or watching the masses suffering heat exhaustion at the London marathon.
As it turned out 22 teams had made the sacrifice, Well done all!! Mind you it had stopped raining by the 11am starts. (not soon enough for the poor organiser though).
Although the area used around Killyleagh, Killinchy, Crossgar does not provide much off road riding and there is almost no forest – there is a great network of quiet country lanes that offer plenty of route-choice and testing navigation. The area is flat and fast, perhaps suiting those with more of a road biking background.
Some very high milages where reported from the teams.
In the end it was the Dromara cycling club team ‘the Losers’ who were winners on the day.
They clocked up a very impressive 550 points out of a possible maximum of 600.
There was a real depth of competition with no less than 10 teams within 100 points of the winners, 5 teams scoring 500 points or more.
Winner once again on the 2 hour course was ‘Soloeffort’ with Gordon Moore putting in all the effort…riding solo.
Thanks go out to Gordon Stephens for swinging the Finnebrogue access, Greg for helping with Delamont access, Mandy for helping out at registration and Joan and Des for helping to collect controls afterwards.
It was great to see some new faces giving trailquests a go for the first time – and enjoying it.
So, roll on May 17th when Ivan Park of CCAR fame will be laying on his organisational skills for us with Round 3 being held in the beautiful surroundings of the lower Sperrins. The event centre is to be the An Creagan visitor centre. See you there.
