What a great new event this was ! The food at the checkpoints and at the finish was the best I have seen and I have done a few of these type of events. It is standard to get sandwiches and/or cake but at this event they also had vegetarian wraps and at the halfway checkpoint we had an ice cream with strawberry topping 🙂 The ice cream was also available to finish off the lovely meal at the end. All of this for £10 ! The ice cream was very welcome on a hot day with the sun out for the first 20m. One of the refreshment stations also had cut up watermelon which was just great 🙂 The organisers also provided an extra refreshment station because of the heat.
One thing that could be improved was the route description. It was a bit concise and relied at lot on grid references. Luckily, the organisers also provided a gpx file which we downloaded to our Garmins. This meant that we had few problems, but we kept coming across people who had gone off course and others who kept having to stop to consult maps. Small parts of the route were flagged, but the majority of it had no markings. I think we would have made some major mistakes without the gpx file. But the possibility of making a mistake is part of the fun with these events and it certainly keep you concentrating on where you are going rather than fretting about your pace.
If you have done any of the Ripon 10m, the Jolly Holly Jog, the Fountains 10k or the Round Ripon Ultra, parts of the route will be familiar. I underestimated how hilly it was and assured Melanie that it wouldn’t be too bad. The heat made the many short climbs a bit tougher and there seemed to be more climbs in the second half.
The course follows the Ripon Rowel footpath for some of the route and it also goes through Brimham Rocks, an interesting collection of rocks stacked on top of each other. There were hordes of people swarming all over the rocks (and an ambulance was there presumably helping someone who had fallen off one). It was a bit tricky finding the checkpoint there as there were so many people about.
At one point we had a bit of an encounter with some bullocks who came trotting over to look at us. I had to try some bullock scaring techniques which seemed to work (wait for them to stop, wave arms, make a noise and advance a little). There were a few other fields with cows and bullocks in but they just ignored us or got out of the way.
We kept up a reasonable pace in the first half, but the heat and sun was sapping at our energy levels and we struggled a bit in the second half. After the meal at the finish, we went round the corner to the pub and finished off with some lovely cooling refreshment.
A great event, we shall be back