Blog: EMEC team race success
EMEC Engineering Technician Chris Casely reports on EMEC’s participation in the multi-terrain adventure race, the Ythan challenge:
Max Carcas, Graeme Busfield, Chris Casely, Morna Brown, Neil Brown, Jenny Norris, Keith Dampney and Donald Sinclair took part in the race on Sunday 16 June. Weather was superb, if even a little hot!
It was an incredibly well run event with marshalling throughout for the 472 competitors who left in 4 waves every 5 minutes. The main sponsors are Xodus, with EMEC also sponsoring for our 10th anniversary.
The race consisted of almost all cross-country rough paths and forest areas with steep slopes, mud, 2 river crossings, hay bales, tyres, crawl tubes, gates, and cargo nets to negotiate. The actual distance was 12km and the fastest runner Kevin Harper, running in seniors finished 51:42secs which was incredible.
There were many groups entered, including running clubs, services and corporates who fared well, but we didn’t disgrace ourselves at all with the fastest corporate team (Xodus) finishing in 3:10:50 combined, and EMEC in second place with 3:16:18.
Max Carcas left it late to arrive at the course start and kept us guessing a little, however he got to work quick and set off at a blistering pace slightly worrying the also very experienced fell-runner Graeme Busfield who kept up with Max until the river section, where Max managed to somehow ‘run’ in the water (or over the water?) and overtook several of the front group. With his orienteering skills in play he was at home in the tight forest sections and Max kept a good pace finishing as strongly as he started with a superb time of only 1:00:35, 9 minutes behind the winner and 35th out of 470 runners overall. Well done Max.
Graeme closely followed and finished strongly only 3 minutes behind Max. I ended up doing far better than I thought possible coming home 9 minutes later than Graeme, with Father and Daughter Neil and Morna finishing with only seconds between them 10 minutes after that. Jenny followed on shortly after and finished a very credible 7th place in her own category out of 13, and Keith (running in the quick and strongly contested younger seniors category) managed to stick to his pace and came in unscathed behind Jenny – it should be noted if there had been monkey bars and a climbing wall Keith would have overtaken us all though! Donald after very careful preparation and training unfortunately suffered a re-occurrence of an old injury to his calf muscle and Achilles Tendon so sensibly retired to a sunny spot and shouted ‘encouragement’ at us all as we returned!
EMEC were made very welcome at the event, thanks to all the organisers and volunteers – well done to everyone who took part.
Race statistics:
Race results: http://www.racetecresults.com/results.aspx?CId=33&RId=265
Team results: http://www.racetecresults.com/Teams.aspx?CId=33&RId=265
Race details: http://www.racetecresults.com/Default.aspx?CId=33&RId=265
