PHOENIX LONG ORIENTEERING RACE

Dave Rogers, Keith and I went down to the Cheviots in Northumberland for one of our regular forays into the world of "mountain orienteering". The Phoenix is basically like a mountain marathon in terms of running, terrain and navigation/route choice except that you run on your own, with a bum bag only and returning to campsite at the end of day one - no sharing a tiny tent in the middle of nowhere. It was based this year in the tiny hamlet of Alwinton where i first did the Phoenix all of 10 years ago. The terrain on day one was pretty dire in places - head high bracken, mega stingy nettles, impenetrable forest - and a bit better in others - open moorland, forest tracks. Sunday was more open and runnable and fortunately largely free of nettles and bracken. Tim Lenton cruised to a win in a pretty unbelievable time, whereas us Westies plodded round behind him. A good low key event, well organised, testing your map-reading and navigational skills, your patience and your legs' ability to recover from third degree nettle burns!

A COURSE - 46KM straight line/@2500m climb

1st - Tim Lenton - 6h 23m 56s

14th - Dave Rogers - 8h 57m 12s

16th - Keith Adams -9h 38s 48s

18th - John Donnelly -10h 20m 36s

27 started and 20 finished

Check out the website :-

http://www.geocities.com/andrew_nicoll/phoenix.html

Posted by John Donnelly on Tue 2 Sep 2003 | comments are closed

Category races