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Hebridean Challengers A five day race on foot, bike and kayak, from one end of the Western Isles to the other. Simon Willis wonders if he’s up to it. When you’ve read this, please click here to sponsor TeamTGO on-line If Nicolai Machiavelli had been an adventure racer he’d have loved the OneTel Hebridean Challenge. Because along with the skills of biking, running and kayaking, successful competitors have a fourth ability, not taught by coaches and frowned upon in most other sports. They display a level of cunning that would make a weasel weep with jealousy. Not cheating, you understand, but an innate gift for detecting the more elastic regions of the rule- book, and bouncing on them until they bend. And when it comes to cunning, I reckon we’re a pretty strong team. We work in the media. ‘The Heb’, as it’s known, is emphatically not a normal adventure race. In most multi-day events, the team must stick together and tackle every section sequentially, whether it’s biking, running, or some bizarre mountain pogo stick race dreamed up by an over enthusiastic race organiser. The key difference is that ‘The Heb’ is a relay race, in which different team members can tackle different sections at the same time. Over five days, teams make their way, entirely self supported, from Eriskay to the Butt of Lewis and back to Great Bernera for a ceilidh on the last night. I’m still struggling to get my head around the subtleties of the race, and I have a horrible feeling that it won’t be until we’ve utterly messed up day-one that we realise exactly what this race is all about. The route and special stages are different each year and remain secret until the last minute to prevent teams practicing. This year and last, it has all been designed by Jon Brooke, who advises new competitors as much as he can be without revealing classified information. Jon was previously a member of several successful teams and assured me, “It’s not the fastest, fittest team which wins, it’s the smartest”. Apparently, competitors devise devious ways of covering sections that even the organisers had not considered. One year, a racer pulled a child’s metal scooter out of her backpack, and whizzed off down the road faster than others could run. “On some stages, you just have to get from A to B”, Jon explained, “so if your team can manage to leave a bike at the end of a road so a fell-runner can pedal the last ten road miles, then that’s fine.” Coming up with strategies like that takes real cunning. If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is. Deliberately. Teams must choose how to cover sections to maximise points and minimise effort. They must navigate over hills and through peat bogs where it’s hard to tell when the land ends and the sea starts. On the map, some sections look like a sponge that’s been chewed by a dog. They must make complex strategic and tactical decisions, when five days of physical and mental effort has reduced their higher body functions to the processing power of raw mince. Coping with logistics and exhaustion is the real challenge of ‘The Heb’. However, the immediate question facing our team of media-types is “are we up to it”? Our Team Leader is Robyn Frew, designer of the hiking magazine TGO-The Great Outdoors. Robyn persuaded her Editor to follow our month-by-month progress, so we became ‘TeamTGO’. Two fearsomely fit young men were recruited during another race; Dominic Scott is a TV cameraman and Neil Mathewson is a web developer. However, this will be the first event for me and for Jerry Spinks, the only one of us with a real job. Since journalism famously requires “a plausible manner, a modicum of talent and rat-like cunning”, I reckon I have one thing going for me. I’ll need it. The OneTel Hebridean Challenge draws some of the world’s best adventure racers. These intimidating creatures are all sinew and muscle, their bodies look like pieces of rope tied together by large knots. The contrast with what stares back from my mirror is striking, and the last time I was in a race, Jim Callaghan was Prime Minister. There are some seriously, seriously fit people out there, and they come in all sizes and ages. In my recurring nightmare I lie panting in a peat bog, while the five great-grandmothers of ‘Team Zimmer’ stroll past. That thought alone has me running, biking or kayaking almost every day and paying for personal trainer Scott Mathewson to push me past the point where I thought I’d snap, but the nagging doubt remains, “is it enough”? The man to whom we turned for an answer is Joe Faulkner. Joe trains adventure racers on the fells above his Lake District home, and last year tackled ‘The Heb’ the hardest way, as a solo competitor. Joe came third, and the fact that there were only three people foolish enough to attempt this toughest of challenges in no way diminishes his achievement. Joe has offered to hone our navigation skills in a series of weekend training sessions, but after our first brief day together, I wanted an answer to my burning question. “Are we going to finish this event, or should we just give up now?” Joe’s response came as a genuine surprise. “Oh you’ll finish”, he said. “In fact, I think you’ve underplayed your abilities. If you keep up the training, with the level of commitment you’re showing now, you could really enjoy this event”. I don’t know if he meant it, or whether it was just good sport psychology, but it helped. In a quiet moment, Joe told me he enjoyed himself so much he actually stopped racing. “On the second last day, on a long open road, I was enjoying the view so much, I slowed to gentle pace. I just didn’t want it to end,” he confided. “If the weather’s bad, there’s no better, wilder place to be. In good weather it’s simply stunning.” In this superb adventure playground, the people of the Western Isles are much more than bystanders. The call centre company in Stornoway is the title sponsor, land-owners allow their ghillies to work as marshals in remote locations, and the event is organised by a local community trust. Every night, the travelling circus of exhausted competitors rolls into a different community, where a field is cleared for camping and home cooked meals are served in the school or village hall. Stephanie Sargent has been an organiser for eleven years and told me that it used to take place in May. “That extended the tourist season and brought in more money because competitors stayed in Bed and Breakfast accommodation. But Scottish Natural Heritage believed the race interfered with nesting birds, so we had to move to July.” Apparently, that caused a few grumbles because it now coincides with the peak visitor time, but Stephanie can’t see a way around it. “We can’t go later in the year because the weather can deteriorate dramatically.” And it seems we’ll have plenty of competition this year. The single-track roads and small village halls mean there’s a limit of twenty five teams, and half the places are already taken. We’ve warned our equipment sponsors Berghaus, Smartwool and High5 not to expect any podium photographs and they seem happy with that. And between you and me, I’ll be delighted if we manage to finish ahead “Team Zimmer”. When you’ve read this, please click here to sponsor us on-line Travel Notes Hebridean Challenge www.HebrideanChallenge.com Adventure Race Training www.JoeFaulkner.com UK Adventure Racing www.SleepMonsters.com