London has been ratified

04 October 2007

The rats have scuttled off to hibernate for another year as this weekend past witnessed the final Rat Race for 2007 andLondon's first. With close to 700 competitors the tenth Rat Race was the biggest yet, making it the largest adventure race the world has ever seen and the black clad masses were in for a 24 hour tour of the capital like no other. Instead of seeing the sights atop open top buses they abseiled over, cycled past and ran through and over everything on a tourists tick list, not to mention visiting a few more wacky locations off the beaten track. The racers tour guide for the weekend was born and bred Londoner Nick Gracie, and his course saw competitors notch up around 30km of running and 75km of biking, as well as some climbing, kayaking and swimming thrown in for good measure over the weekend. And still they were made to visit a gym!

The event village took over the riverside space of Potters Field, set against the contrasting backdrops of Tower Bridge to the East and the Mayor's gleaming offices to the West. After an afternoon soaking up the sun and the atmosphere in the event village, Saturday evening come 5pm provided competitors with plenty of other contrasts across the 39 checkpoints. Heading in all directions racers took to the city for the Mean Streets prologue where they ended up running and dancing in Ministry of Sound, climbing over guns at the Imperial War Museum, getting sweaty in sumo suits, eating jellied eels, writing postcards at the Tower of London and karaoke at the Crisis offices. Some may have visited the Ritz, and others may have tried to visit the gazebo in the palace gardens, but that was one of three dummy controls given to competitors along with one at the end of Downing Street, and another at Platform 9¾ at Kings Cross.

Those who visited the top of the course, off the map at the summit of Primrose Hill, were not only rewarded with forty valuable points, but a magnificent view across the city where they could see some of the checkpoints they had already taken in, or were going to visit, including the London Eye, Telecom Tower and the Gherkin. Elsewhere on the course they might have met some interesting characters ranging from Sherlock Holmes loitering in Baker Street to a Judge convicting competitors near Grays Inn. More active challenges saw teams get a proper workout at the trendy 3rd Space Gym, hit the bikes at Evans Cycles and do a spot of climbing at Ellis Brigham's Covent Garden Store, with the nearby Stanfords map shop providing a challenge on their huge ground floor map of the world.

When teams returned to the Event Village after anything from two to three and a half hours the scores showed once again that the sliding penalties for time back after 2½ hours had made things interesting with results close across the board. It was Urbanadventuregear.com who led the way with 427 points, 15 clear of Team Innov-8 who were the highest scorers of the evening but coming home in over 3 hours meant many dropped points. Aberdeen Asset Management were 3rd with 400 points and a whole raft of teams not far behind. On the Mean Streets course it was Ratatouille who took the honours with 312 points, well clear of El Gordo with 279 and Team Exped with 265.
Sunday morning saw teams up bright and early and faced with more running around the city, but this time the route along the river to the Tate Modern, across Millennium Bridge to St Paul's was a quiet one. Upon reaching Paternoster square teams were faced with getting back to Potters Field via a number of checkpoints dotted around the deserted financial district, given only rough descriptions and a couple of aerial photo maps.
Once back at the event village it was off on the bikes with a fantastic route that started off over Tower Bridge and back through the city streets before flying down some steps and speeding past the London Eye, Big Ben, Downing Street, Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace before visiting Hyde Park and Notting Hill.

Beer for once proved an acceptable challenge to brain and brawn (and for once that wasn't the challenge of getting out of bed) when teams hit Fullers Brewery and were faced with barrel rolling, an assault course and a Discovery Beer jigsaw before riding back out onto the course through a lorry. Competitors might have been upset that they weren't quite getting the traditional tour of the brewery, but the beers on tap at the race party more than made up for it.
From here racers headed to Richmond Park for the first of two non-urban orienteering sections, courtesy of South London Orienteering Club. While teams may have enjoyed feeling a world away from the bustling streets while roaming the vast parkland, they were reminded of the city when visiting the checkpoint on King Henry's Mount. Here they had to look through a telescope and would spot the dome of St Paul's, a reminder of where the race had started a few hours earlier, and the fact that there were many more kilometres to go before they returned.
From here they could probably also see their next target if they looked north west towards Twickenham Stadium where an impressive abseil off the north stand awaited. As well as this drop, teams also had to do some drills and score a try within the stadium. After their time on the hallowed turf teams made their way to the water, at the Thames Young Mariners Centre where a few more rope challenges were a precursor to the competitors getting wet, with a swim in the Thames water to reach a floating checkpoint, and marshal! Given the warm weather it wouldn't have taken them long to dry off again.

More great cycling followed, with a high speed route round Richmond Park and some off road riding through Wimbledon before another orienteering challenge, both of which proved technical in places. From here it was downhill to the Thames forsome kayaking at Putney (thanks to the Vesta Rowing club, Putney Bridge and Chiswick Pier canoe clubs), battling the tide and the plethora of other river users in the hunt for a couple of checkpoints on the water.
This activity closed at 5pm, coinciding exactly with the height of the highest tide of the year. As various teams took route choices that got them to the kayaking in time, there was an incredible compression of teams, pedestrians, cyclists and cars squeezing past, then the tide inundated the street, leaving only rat racers to ply the waters, actually kayaking DOWN THE STREET past half-submerged cars. Immediately after the punishing paddling stage, arms were further stretched on the rowing ergo machines at the Vesta club in order to reach the 1500m target.

After that it was a long haul criss-crossing the Thames on the way back to the event village and the final challenge of the day, finding three checkpoints on HMS Belfast. The grand ship was both massive and cramped at the same time as racers had to deal with a well deserved walk through the confusing corridors, up and down tight ladders and through awkward doors to find the checkpoints in the boiler room, arctic messdeck and compass platform. Once off the ship they could make a final run to finish under the Columbia banner at Potters Field, weaving through the tourists to reach the end of an epic London Rat Race.
The three teams who have dominated the podiums of this season's Rat Race series and have been locked in contention for the overall series prize, Team Inov-8, The North Face and Aberdeen Asset Management, were all once again on the podium. Having raced together for most of the course it was Aberdeen Asset Management's team of Warren Bates, Helen Jackson and Tom Gibbs who were victorious, crossing the line marginally ahead of The North Face in a time just over 6 hours. This was a repeat of their victory in Bristol but with a somewhat slender winning margin, their five minute advantage from the Mean Streets prologue proving enough to secure victory in an overall time of 08:40:28. The North Face had to settle for 2nd place for the third time this season while Team Innov-8 took 3rd place. Top all female team went once again to Team Columbia SALT, in 15th place.

1    8:40:28    MIX    Aberdeen Asset Management
2    8:45:26    MIX    Team The North Face
3    9:17:35    MIX    Team Inov-8
4    9:40:56    MIX    Sleepmonsters.com
5    9:42:01    MIX    Helly Hansen UK
6    10:18:51    M    Ajax Warriors

Full results can be downloaded here

This meant that the series standings were the same as the London podium, with the all expenses paid trip to Trinidad and Tobago, going to Aberdeen Asset Management, Team North Face settling for second and Team Innov-8 in third.

So that is it for 2007 but you won't have long to wait for news of 2008, the Rat Race 2008 series calendar will be announced this autumn in 3 waves. We will be announcing dates for our existing events and opening entries in October. and then we will also be announcing some new UK events in November. Entries for all events will open over the course of the autumn with the first events opening in October (Bristol, Edinburgh and London). Closer towards Christmas, we will bring you news of our first international events too. In all sense, the Rats are breeding for 2008!