I think this screenshot of a post-race WhatsApp conversation is a pretty good place to start this one. Green text is me, White is Rachel, who very graciously agreed to race with me again for this year's Open5 despite some early misgivings.
I haven't had the best of starts to the year, with dental surgery and a niggling hip injury to deal with, but this race was far less of a trial for me than it was for star teammate Rachel: she broke her ankle very badly in August '21, and is still trying to get back to the sort of form she was on that summer. While she's back on a bike and in a boat, she's still struggling to run without the ankle seizing up or a fair amount of pain. On top of that, the last time we raced together three years ago, we spent a day trying not to get swept away by floodwater in the Yorkshire Dales, so didn't exactly have the best induction to the AR world even when uninjured.
1st February I was on her side of the city for a dental appointment, so messaged and we went for an hours potter around the local fields, putting the world to rights and generally just having a (slightly slurred, in my case) good old chinwag. We both bemoaned a general lack of fitness for our respective reasons, but the Open5 actually didn't crop up in the conversation - I was supposed to be at the National Student Rodeo as a photographer the same weekend, so hadn't originally factored it in. Then the following day, the cancellation of the NSR was formally announced and thoughts turned to the Open5 as something else to do that weekend. I knew Raff was entered, so I messaged him saying I probably was too and he chimed up with
"Reckon you can convince Rachel if you do a more bike-heavy day?". Ooh, now there's a thought... I messaged her and over the new week or so the conversation went a bit like this...
Me: Would you race Open5 with me if we walk to a single run checkpoint then go play on bikes?
Rach: I've not been on my bike for months so I'm not sure I have the fitness for 5 hours at the moment.
Me: We can take a picnic...
Rach: I could be up for it as long as you really don't mind being slow
Me: Like I say, we can take a picnic, and try not to slide down a flooded road on our asses this time...
Rach: Ah, I don't know. I feel like I should and I do want to but I haven't done more than 2 on the bike since ankle-gate.
Me: Two on the bike, plus an hours gentle walk?
Rach: As long as you are absolutely sure that you don't mind being slow, and you promise me we aren't white water swimming with our bikes this time.
What can I say: I wanted a fun day out with a mate who I thought could use a fun day out. I also thought it would be a laugh to enter the pair of us as 'Team 3-Legged Race'...
We headed up on Saturday evening and stayed just south of Coniston at Moss Side Farm, in a 'Railway pod', their old guards van styled camping pod type things. The aforementioned Raff and his teammate Simon (who I'd met at The Heb back in 2019) were there as an advance party, Simon sharing the Pod with us and Raff in his van, so they'd checked in, had dinner and got the wood burner on to warm the place up as it was set to be a chilly night. We had our dinner and a look over the map from
last time there'd been an Open5 in Coniston, back in 2017. I was hedging my bet on the bike area being similar, north and east of town, up past Hodge Close and over to the Langdales and Loughrigg, with Hawkshead and Grizedale as southerly options. The run back in '17 was south-east of town, up onto the Old Man, but there's so much fell side to the east that it was fairly obvious that it would be that way.
After a good but chilly night's sleep, briefly interrupted by a cockerel at 5am and an owl hooting not much after that, it was time to get up and sorted. Base layers on while still half in the sleeping bag, just to try and get some warmth into things quickly, stove on for porridge and the mokka pot - though as I nipped out to the loo Raff was wandering towards the pod with a large cafetiere in hand. We got ourselves packed away and headed up to race registration at John Ruskin school. The usual mass of friends to greet and chat with, the usual jokes about me seemingly knowing everyone (not quite everyone, but a lot - AR is a small and friendly community!), but we got signed in and sat down with the maps to put together a plan. The bike section was almost exactly as I'd pictured it, with the run section slightly further north than last time, but that all worked out okay. There were four CPs making a nice looking low-level run loop that I reckoned would be about an hour, even just at a decent walking pace, then a good bike loop through Tilberthwaite and over to Little Langdale and Elterwater with some good options - either longer or shorter - for the return. All pretty good, and with kit packed up to suit, we dropped our bikes and a transition bag in the pen and were ready to go.
Run: 7.07km, 111m ascent, 01:08:18
Picking the control descriptions and values up from Jim as we started, we crossed off the 'dummy' controls and hoped that our route plan was pretty much intact. All four of the run CPs we were aiming for were live, so that was a great start. We hiked up the road to the junction, turned right, and Rachel starts jogging... I thought we were just walking this bit?! Turns out she can do 30 second-ish jog intervals as long as they're on decent surface and with a couple of minutes walk between them. Brilliant!
So we jog a bit, walk a bit, head up past Holly How YHA onto the bridleway/cyclepath just to get off the road, and do some more jog-a-bit-walk-a-bit intervals along the gravel track to our first (and furthest away for this bit) CP. We hadn't seen many others heading the same way as us but that was fine, as we turned back towards base past Low Yewdale farm and up to our next CP in Guards Wood more competitors - presumably on far longer loops than us - headed past us the opposite way. We said hello and kept trotting steadily on, back down to town and down to Water Head pier and the lake shore for another CP on a little bridge, then a little jog up Lake Road for an out-and-back to our last run CP. As we punched in to that and headed back, Rachel tried a jog and quickly stopped - "I just pushed it a little bit too long on that last run interval. It's frustrating, the rest of the leg and the lungs and the head are fine, but the ankle's not there yet". The way it goes, and no sense wrecking anything for the future, so we just walk back to the school and through transition to head out to bike. We'd covered 7km-ish in a touch over an hour, which was bang on plan so even with a nearly 10 minute transition, we're still in a really good place.
Bike: 28.72km, 665m ascent, 03:33:36
First order of the day on the bikes is to head out of town the same we did on foot, up the cycleway north - and I rode this way recently with Ben and Ele so I'm pretty happy with what we're planning right now! First CP is hanging under a bridge that we must have run over earlier without noticing, and it's a good high point scorer, not that we're paying much attention to the points. We head onwards to the next one, overlooking the 'Touchstone Fold' at Tilberthwaite - I have a bit of a dither trying to work out if this is a bike or a run CP, turns out I'm just reading the grid number rather than the CP number (yes, I'm an idiot...). The CP marked on Slater's Bridge is a dummy, so we take the higher track round Great Intake over to the end of Little Langdale Tarn, going cautiously on the loose slate descent, then pausing at the gate onto the road for a quick bite of food.
CP 6, just off the track I know as 'Ullett Nest', is an obvious goer, and I'd planned to pass close to Elterwater on the basis of knowing a good cafe there - if we were having a bad time, were struggling or cold there was a chance for a coffee and some hot food. As it is, we're both okay, warm enough despite the chilly air and good to continue. We pick up CP 6, there's another that we could out-and-back just along beyond Baysbrown Farm but it's only a 10 pointer so we skip it, and say the same for the one just round from the old school at Skelwith Bridge - that would be a long descent and climb for not many points. There's a 25 on the bridleway that runs back towards Hodge Close, and we head to that - it's at the top of the first steep ramp, and we bump into Ian Furlong and then Paul McGreal there, and have a brief chat. "Where you headed next?" says Paul. We've still got a good two hours on the clock at this point, so we've discussed heading to 12 up above Arnside Intake/Iron Keld. "I've just come from there. It'll be a haul up, 50/50 rideable, but it's great once you're up there." Seems like sound advice and we're okay for time, so we climb up to the main road, head left then pull into the gateway where the bridleway climb begins. We push for a while, it's not horrendously steep but it's quad/land rover track, loose in places and we might as well just take it steady. Once we're higher up there's more rideable sections and we're pretty soon looking at a cracking view back across the Langdales and posing for pics.
We pick up 12 and start looking at our next options. The finish sequence is pretty obvious, CPs 16 and 18 are a 35 and a 40 pointer, and one of the pre-race briefing emails had said
"Since printing, the route between CP16-18 is acceptable on bike (mapped as footpath, signposted bridleway)" - meaning an off-road descent and flat road to finish. There'd be a couple of steeper climbs to get there, but they were both on road so a bit less hassle than trail. We still have decent time in hand so after a lovely piece of descent down from Iron Keld we added few k's of flattish out-and-back to pick up CP 11 for an extra 25 points - this turned out to be at the bottom of the horribly steep trail I'd slithered up in the ice on the last race here that I really shouldn't have bothered with!
As we started the climb towards Tarn Hows, I think we were both starting to feel it. Rachel was pushing her hardest and climbing really well, but I think we were both flagging and glad that we were nearly done. She admits she's not got a lot left in the legs, but these road climbs are okay at the moment. A solo racer came alongside while we'd paused to check nav on the climb, worried that he was short of time - we had 40mins on the clock, he only had 20 - and he thought he was going to have to descend and climb again for 18 as he hadn't seen the briefing email. We had a brief frantic search together for CP16, and pointed out to him that the track was legitimate. We dived into the woods and had a whale of a time on the funky trail down through the trees, limbo-ing one fallen tree and crawling under another, until we came out at a junction. Another quick search and we found our last CP, then dropped down some more excellent trail back to Boon Crag and the road back to Coniston - Rachel obviously rallying on the descent to take 9th on the women's leaderboard for that Strava segment. On the flat at the bottom, I took the front for a pace line back to base and asked about the day:
"How have you found it then?" There's a pause, and the response comes back
"Definitely more Type 1 fun than last time." That, to be honest, will do - and makes a nice headline for the day.
We roll in to the finish with nearly 10mins to spare on the clock, and as Jim approaches with the SI box, the gent who'd been with us and short on time rolls along side, so I point his way and tell Jim to "Dib him in first!". We're well in time, and both, I think, very happy. We'd pushed ourselves a little bit further than we'd originally planned, picked up some extras over our base loop, pulled a respectable score together, finished without penalties and in my case, kept the arse of my trousers intact, so that's one-up on Cracoe. We're both still smiling, and it's been a pretty awesome day. Raff and Simon finish just behind us, also within time and happy, they've got a few more points than us and are both grinning from ear to ear. The ever-lovely James Kirby grabs a few pics of us, we ask nicely for a group shot and of course I have to have one looking angry at him (for that seems to be my natural expression when racing). We get changed, download, grab some food and a cuppa and applaud all of the category winners - while neither pair is challenging the podium, we're 9th out of 11 in Mixed Pairs and Raff and Simon are 10th out of 22 in Male Pairs, so respectable enough for us all. We have a quick coffee, pack shit up, then sort ourselves out for a couple of hours drive home...
Huge thanks to Tri-Adventure for continuing to put on the Open5 races, and apparently continuing to maintain the Open5 Lifetime Points database - I'm a couple of races off my 5,000 going by current averages. Massive thanks and admiration to Rachel for being talked into pushing herself out of her comfort zone for the day and doing it all with a smile, and to Raff and Simon for making the weekend a good one. And, as always, big thanks to James Kirby for the official photos (though I'm not posting the angry one on here...)
Till next time!
Pyro
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