Now there is a contradiction in terms. Adventure Base, the epitome of flexibility and fun, hitting the Rat Race, which Wikepidia describes as ‘a term used for an endless, self-defeating or pointless pursuit.’ This particular Rat Race however was not your usual nine to five!

Detailed Events have been bringing urban adventure races to the streets of Britain’s coolest cities for a number of years now and they are proving to be hugely successful amongst the swelling numbers of weekend warriors who look for more than ten pints of larger and a packet crisps to float their boat!

The Rat Race is a totally unique adventure challenge in which teams race in a multi-sport test of endurance, skills and guts on a course that is only revealed hours before the event begins. The event runs over two days, with day one providing a running orienteering challenge, followed by a full days biking, abseiling, kayaking, orienteering blur on the Sunday.

The first stop on our UK events roadshow was Bristol, the location for 2010s first Rat Race. A token Challenge Anika set up, but the camp was up and running for Day one, with participants entering our Extreem Wii Ski game as part of the Rat Race challenges, and taking comfort in a bit of Alpine Tartiflette to recharge post run.

The temptation to join in the fun got to us on Day 2, and an Adventure Base/ Detailed event team was created to check out the course and show these contestants the athletic prowess of the people behind these events/holidays! A 70 mile bike ride took us over the Seven bridge into the motherland, where we abseiled into quarries and paddled our way to safety in Rat Race Kayaks. Luckily our orientation skills matched our athletic prowess so no wrong turns were taken on the return journey to Bristol, and we definitely didn’t go 30K out of our way down a farm dirt track, no no we didn’t! We pedalled our way back into the city, panting and dripping, only to have to scale to the heights of a multi story car park and James Bond style abseil back down the spiral access way. Return to the event village, for a last piece of humiliation on the slippery slide, and then it was tartiflette time!

Photos to follow!

Join us for Mountain Mahem 18^th – 20^th June in Herefordshire. We will be entering the 24hr mountain bike challenge and would be great to see you all there!