I’m nearly finished with the preview of the AR World Series events for 2010; I’ve now moved on to the late August race in the Lake District of the UK called the adidas Terrex race.

The Lake District, or Cumbria, is along England’s Western coast; nestled between Wales and Scotland, the Lake District is a popular tourist destination and home to all  of England’s tallest mountains.  The Terrex organizers have been planning races for 5 years and know this region intimately, so the event should be an exceptional 3-4 day tour (August 27-30) of all the area can offer.

The story behind the organization in the UK is that they’ve primarily held “score” events, or “rogaines.”  This Terrex race, learning from the experience of the 2009 World Championship course in Portugal, will deliver a mostly linear course that allows slower teams to skip points and incur a time penalty.  In an email with race organizer James Thurlow, I asked about the race format for Terrex and he explained:

“It is our expectation (and I say that carefully after Portugal) that for the top teams there will not be any question they will have to visit all of the controls – the penalty will be too punitive.  However it does mean slower teams can still be ranked and get around.”

The Lake District Has Inspired Artists for Centuries

This should make for a fun race that is accessible in ways that the Portugal event was (with teams racing clustered together within a few hours of eachother), but not make it too confusing so that elite teams constantly debate which points to visit and which to skip . . . in Terrex, the elite teams can focus on getting every checkpoint and winning the race, while slower teams can consider bypassing points and just staying in the race.

Besides trekking, paddling, ropes, and biking, the race hints at some stages that “competitors in the UK have never done before” — I don’t know the UK racing scene well, but I wonder if this means the official “carving vehicles” of Trikke are making an appearance or if stand-up surfing is coming to Cumbria?  Fun to speculate…

Mountain Biking in Cumbria

Another interesting angle here is their stance on kayaks.  The race offers some standard rental tandem kayaks, but is allowing racers to bring their own tandem kayaks and based on their requirements I think I know some serious paddlers from the surfski world who could create a “bring a gun to a knife fight” situation (see the Bullitt tandem for example).  I expect the race organization to edit/tighten their boat standards between now and the race . . . but maybe not, perhaps the paddling is in tight conditions not suited to super competitive boats, or maybe they don’t care and you can bring your kevlar rocket to this race?  I know in New Zealand, kayak choice is often wide-open and can be as varied as mountain bike choice, but in New Zealand all the elite teams are racing with high performance boats.  This may be the situation in the UK and I’m just oblivious to it, but I know in the US racers would get up in arms over one or two teams having a vastly superior kayak to race in.  We’ll have to keep an eye on this.

Bruce Duncan, of the Helly Hanson/Prunesco Team

I can’t conclude this preview without mentioning how the reigning AR World Champions, Helly Hansen/Prunesco, are contributing to the Terrex race organization.  Helly Hansen racer Bruce Duncan is doing course design for the 2010 race, and the 2012 edition is set for Nick Gracie (also on Helly Hansen’s race team) to design.

As the proud home country of the 2009 “AR World Champions,” I expect this Terrex event to be a bit of a celebration of UK Adventure Racing.  They have a free and open to the public prologue to kick-off the race, and it’s been a few years since they had a race of this magnitude in the UK, so expect a festive atmosphere and well-attended event.  The time of year is perfect, too, as the August/September boundary time is known for sunshine in what can be a wet and gray region.  All-in-all, it sounds like a fun return to the AR World Series for the UK and it will be fun to watch it develop!