Dromara Trail Quest League Round 2
[Lady Dixon Park]
The second round of Dromara Cycling Club's 2010 Winter Trail Quests took place on Sunday 5 December 2010 from the event headquarters at the Stables café in Lady Dixon Park in Belfast. The event attracted 66 participants despite over a week of wintery weather which has left snow and ice and all untreated roads, footpaths and even the café car park. Thirty two teams had pre-entered with a few dropping out at the last minute but they were replaced by more signing up on the day to give a total of 34 teams taking part. As always there was a great range of age and experience across the riders who are attracted to the fun nature of these mountain bike orienteering events. The proceeds from these leisure events help raise funds for the Children's Cancer Care home located in Shimna Valley.
As per the first round, the sky was clear, blue with hardly a breeze, perfect weather for cycling. The first team away at 10:31 am were team "The Losers" who had won the round 1 event. They were followed one minute later by a new team "Gooners Forever" with all the other teams separated at one minute intervals. At the allocated time the teams were handed a map, a clue sheet and a pen. The first job was to decide on the best route choice to maximise the number of markers that could be collected in the set time. The majority of the teams went for the 3.5 hour event with just two teams doing the 2 hour event. There were 28 markers laid out which covered an area from Lambeg, Dunmurry, Mary Peter's Running Track, and Malone Road. The object was to return to the headquarters on or before the end time as penalty points were then incurred the longer it took the teams to return.
When the riders did return to the café they left in their answer sheet and were given a voucher for soup, rolls and tea & coffee. Lots of stories about getting lost, not finding certain markers and the conditions of the trails were swapped over the steaming hot soup. Winners of this round were the Dromara team Star Fangled Nuts, Geoff Brown and Phil O'Neill who achieved 398 of the 430 points on offer. Second was team "Red Star Galwally" who got 390 points, third was "Last Minute" who made the mistake of returning 22 minutes early but still achieved 380 points. Solo orienteers Ivan Millar and Paul McArthur, teams "Lucky Red Sox" and "Average Joes" were fourth and fifth respectively with 370 and 360 points. Team "Mick & Rose" had travelled up from Dublin to do the event and they finished joint 8th overall with Graham Boyd of team "The X men". Well done to all competitors.
Round 3 of the league will be held next Sunday 12 December 2010 from the headquarters at Daft Eddies restaurant in Killinchy. See website for more details.
Many thanks to Trevor Annett for organising the event and to the staff at the Stables café for taking care of us.
