News
Brighton Beckons Brummies
24 June 2008
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. Birmingham Rat Race Reprise
Well, it's been along time since you were in the dark wet month of March, but hacking around the bright and liberating Rat Race course set by Shane Ohly on St. Patricks' Day. He truly liberated what turned out to be a great City - full of surprises, stadiums, bridges, greenery, canals and junctions of spaghetti, and many thanks to all those venues for letting the Rats in! There were great responses and welcomes for us all.
On that day there were prizes for podium winners, Radisson stair climbers and fast Land Rover runners. Everyone returning to the shelter of the NEC Outdoors Show and more vertical activities, then at the finishline, you had pretty decent thousand yard stares. You had been pushed, and very well done to you, and now we want to call you back for more!
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2. Brighton Beckons
With Late 10% Discount
Birmingham is not far up the road from the South Coast, and if you are looking for a super course like Birmingham Rat Race, but with the sunny side up, then come down to Brighton for Saturday 28th June, and we'll help you apply suncream and icecream for a top weekend away.
For the Brummie Rat Racers only, email info@ratraceadventure.com to arrange your special entry deal.
And take a look at the Rat Race website to see even more Rat Races that we added when you turned your head for a second. Belfast, Galway, Newcastle - it's all happening here at Rat Creative HQ.
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3. Birmingham Remembers
For those that wish to reminisce here is Shane's report. And see the SleepMonsters reports and photo galleries again here and the PhotoSales here. You will be there, but don't miss this last chance for purchase before the pics are lost forever.
It’s quite a daunting task gazing over the map of Birmingham at the start of the planning process. Having two venues, the NEC and Birmingham Coty Centre, that had to linked up both simplified and created difficulties in the planning process. After my first recce on the ground with Gary Tompsett it quickly become evident that the route you followed into the city centre via the Parks and Spaghetti Junction and back then along The Grand Union Canal was the logical route. That simplified things. However, I knew that the fastest teams could ride the entire route much, much quicker than the slower teams. That complicated things. 
We opted to cluster the Mean Streets checkpoints that involved activity close to BrindleyPlace. This we hoped would mean that the slowest teams would have the opportunity to complete as many of the ‘fun’ challenges as possible whilst still leaving time to return to the NEC. For the fastest teams, I wanted plenty of satellite checkpoints around the city centre that we use up the extra time in the city centre they would have from their faster cycling speed. Unfortunately I injured myself the week before the event and had to do some final planning using Google Earth!
I personally enjoyed the planning at Land Rover the most. In early February I ran the entire course myself and there was ice on the water obstacles so I didn’t feel sorry for any of the Rat Racers who had tropical conditions in comparison. Finally, I got to hang the tags to mark the course from the luxury of a Range Rover, which must be most planners' dream. I hope that you enjoyed the event as much as me.
That's all for now....see you soon
Rat Race HQ
