The first of this year's 'Rat Races' - or urban adventure races - took place last weekend in Bristol, with a team from The North Face finishing top of the pile. Keith Byrne, Tom Gibbs and Maryann Howe established the company's adventure racing credentials by reaching the end of the course just over four minutes ahead of the second place team, with 450 competitors spreading out behind.
The 'Rat Races' are now in their third year, with two more weekends of racing to come this summer, in Edinburgh (15th - 16th July) and Manchester (5th - 6th August). They aren't quite your standard outdoor adventure race though. The mission at the outset was to "take adventure sports right into the streets, waterways and urban jungle of the UK's coolest cities". Sounds poetic, but what exactly does it involve? Well, there are the usual walking and mountain biking components that come as standard in most adventure races, but there are numerous additional challenges at checkpoints around the city. These range from scaling 12 foot sloping grease walls to paddling canoes across rivers. Specific features of the Bristol race were an abseil down the side of Bristol Industrial Museum and a climb around the outside of the Pride of Bristol Naval Craft.
Each race takes place over a full weekend, with an 'event village' providing entertainment, refreshments etc. for the duration. Competitors enter in teams of three, although there's also an option to join in on your own for the 3-hour Saturday night 'Mean Streets' Prologue, where individual racers clock up as many checkpoints at they can. The only requirement, other than reasonable fitness, is the minimum age limit of 18 (although there's a youth event for under-18s in Manchester). At the end of the series, prizes are given for the teams with the most points in the all-female, all-male, and mixed team categories.
For further information, and some inspiration to take up this weird and wonderful sport, have a look at the Rat Race website.
