The next step on the Adventure Base UK promo tour took us to the countryside of Herefordshire for the Original Source Mountain Mayhem 24hr Mountain biking race, and what an event it was! Set in the hills around Castnor Castle the event village covers over 45 acres of land, providing camp ground and entertainment for the 4 000 competitors and the hoards of supporters.

The race is done either solo, or in laps in groups of 5. I never found out the distance of each lap, this crucial piece of information was not provided to me when I agreed to the carnage, but judging on my exhaustion each lap must have been approximately 15k of fairly technical riding with a large proportion of uphill. This went on from 14h00 on the Saturday to 14h00 on the Sunday, during which we managed to squeeze in 17 laps. The winner of the event squeezed in 24 laps solo!

Our team of highly tuned athletes included our partners from Detailed Events Dorota and Jim Mee, our Iron Man director Andy, and our good friend Charlie, personal trainer, yet mountain bike virgin- what an introduction to technical terrain! After a quick lesson in tire changing, we set off for 24hrs of Mountain Mayhem!

Our Adventure Base stall provided us with a base camp for the event, and a 24hr cook up of tartiflette made us the most popular folk around, as hungry competitors swarmed to our camp to sample our Alpine delicacies and find out all about the fun that is to be had over the pond.

We finished a respectful 75^th, with the fastest lap of 01hr01 set by the Iron man himself. To celebrate our strength and prowess, we continued the 24hr challenges with a night time drive back to Chamonix, luckily with the help of our Buff support, and back in time to start the festivities of the Fete de la Music, an all night street  music festival that takes place throughout France.

It took us about 3 weeks to recover from those 3 nights, just in time for the next Rat Race, this time set in Edinburg’s beautiful Prince Street Gardens. The teams set off Saturday evening for a 2.5hr orientation run of the beautiful city, and then tackled a 90km cycles into the countryside around Edinburg on the Sunday, with challenges to test their nerves along the way. Adventure Bases participation was somewhat curbed due to the hospitality of the local bars, and a slightly over excitement of nightlife in a rocking city. I now remember why I moved to a small village in the middle of nowhere, just not grown up enough to say NO!

Adventure Base will be touring the UKs summer sporting events promoting summer and winter accommodation and courses in Chamonix Mont Blanc. Come and check out our great deals at the events or get in touch for more information at info@adventurebase.com.