MidWTRA Ceri Hare & Hounds Nov 2008
Results on enduronews.com
Report from James Wilden
Sunday morning 6am and Steve, Wayne and I were setting off to the MWTRA's Ceri Hare and Hounds. It started off as quite a pleasant warm morning, that couldn't last!
The Ceri is a 4 hour Iron man or 2 man team Hare and Hounds event. Steve was entered in Expert Iron Man, I was in the more sedate Sportsman Ironman and Wayne was chief goggle cleaner. We arrived in the forest in good time to get signed on and scrutineered which was a breeze although the marshals took quite a bit of interest in Steve's bike (Obviously a bit of KTM love going on). Steve made sure his award for winning the Colstey previously was on the way to which they replied "it must have got lost in the post", so he's expecting a big plaque now for the mantelpiece.
10am saw us all lined up in our respective classes, hands on helmets and ready for the off. It was about this time that the first drops of the wet stuff started to fall. Steve had trouble getting his hands off his helmet which saw him leave the start almost last in class, I was more fortunate to get a good start but from then on it went downhill for me.
The first tricky section took us down a long straight path through a pine forest which was almost pitch black. You just had to keep it in a straight line and hope for the best. Once we left this onto some fire roads the heavens opened up and it chucked it down. I had to abandon my goggles and glasses after a couple of minutes as I couldn't see a thing. We than had a few little wooded sections and more fire roads which didn't give too much trouble and onto a nice little downhill section. Because of the rain, the down hill got quite rutted and there was a steady stream of slurry washing down with every bike which made it interesting. Again onto more Fire roads and a whoopy up hill section of about 500 yards in length towards the end of the lap.
The first hour was relatively OK with lots of clear lines to take, after that they unleashed the Quads and sidecars. On their first lap I caught 2 quads on a piece of muddy single track where they had managed to completely block the way. I took an alternative route through some trees and ended up to the axles in a bog, stuck fast. I spent 5 minutes trying to free the bike when another rider had the same trouble, we then had to work together to free both bikes. This seemed to be the case for the rest of the race with quads and sidecars stuck around every corner, those guys with the outfits must be totally mad. Steve had a mishap on his last lap when a whoopy uphill section threw him down a steep bank, he though that might be the end of his day but he managed to get it back onto the course for a finish.
Steve ended up 3rd in Expert for a gold Finish, I was 14th in sportsman with a silver.
Wayne did a top job fuelling the bike and keeping goggles clean throughout the day, many thanks to him.