SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - Yeh, my knee doesn’t do that either. An amazing, photo sequence pointed to by The Mountain World blog. You can see the entire sequence here.

17yr old Pete Whittaker with mother and father on belay duty, and sister Katy watching on has created a stunning set of photos from the first accent of E9 Dynamics of Change on grit in the UK.

You need to go and read Hot Aches Productions account and photos…

From here, miles above his gear, he then swings a heel up between his hands, and gradually rocks over on it. Rocks over on it. How? But somehow he was managing to. What remains ahead from this point is the final crux section of Brail Trail, but without any of the gear. Effectively soloing from this point.

And yes, the exposure really was massive… unreal!

Good man Pete!

-Robin.

Still though, having seen the above photo, I can see why it’s so easy for them to situate the artificial wall there. Perfect sheer walls into an old quarry lake.

Can anyone think of a location in Ireland that might suit this sort of situation? Any of the scuba divers out there know of one? I’ve an old memory myself of diving in an abandoned quarry somewhere in the midlands but I was only a youngster back then so the name escapes me. Throw it in the comments if so!

Considering it was Channel 4 who funded Touching the Void when that was made into a movie and it was excellent, here’s hoping they do just as good a job with this one!
It’s on Channel 4 in the UK and Ireland (I’m sure satellite also) at 9pm on Monday, October 22nd.
Courtesy of The Sunday Times (Oct 14th).

- Neal :) -

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Rumour reached us last night via Stephen (DCU Rock Climbing Club) that Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame is to undertake a new stunt infront of a live audience at the MPH ‘07 show.

[Jeremy Clarkson] will be racing a rock climber up a 40-foot tall, man-made mountain in a Land Rover Discovery. The steel construction took over three months to build, and will pit Clarkson and the climber against the clock in an indoor arena.

The event will be taking place in two different locations, on November 1st through 4th in London’s Earls Court and 8th through 11th at Birmingham’s NEC.

Here’s what happened the last time they tried something similar (outdoors):

Thanks Stephen.

-Robin-

NEWBRIDGE, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - A bit late but Irish climber Dave Ayton, currently pushing hard on sports routes, has ticked his 2nd 8a/5.13b. The route, ‘Highway’ at the crag Dinbren in North Wales, involving crimps - lots of crimps and monos, seems to have been a pretty quick ascent.

I think Dave’s comment on his blog says it all: “I was all set for a full days battle and I sent it in one!”

Photo credit: Dave Ayton preparing himself for his 8a ascent. Photo by Caroline

- Neal :) -

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - TGU did it! We finished (just with a few technical mishaps) the London 2007 Rat Race. The Rat Race is an urban adventure race, taking all the activities of the outdoor arena but set in a city. Results are in, and we’ve come 150th out of ~190 teams in our class.

Arriving on the Saturday for registration it hit us - this event was big. It turned out to break all records and was the biggest adventure race ever held in the UK. There were over 750 competitors racing! Saturday at 3.45pm we were given our checkpoints for the prologue and spent 1hr before the race plotting them on the super scale map of London and fitting the best route around them. For a warm-up this was no mean feat as we set off at 7pm on a lap of London, aka a half marathon.

Here’s some video I took:

Saturday night was designed to disorientate & challenge you all on foot. Each ‘rat trap’ included an activity. We visited the Ministry of Sound and had head-torches out to find 3 different promotional leaflets in a flashing smoke filled maze of thumping music! On to the Imperial war museum and climbing cargo nets strapped over the large battle ship guns. Some parkour on the South bank, and up to a gym near Picadilly circus where we had to do 250m on a rowing machine, while other team mates went at it with press-ups and a cycle machine. Down to Stanford’s map shop where we got a bearing to Columbia from an atlas, then to the Ellis Brigham ice climbing wall which they’d set a cargo net up to reach and ring a bell. From here we hot footed it up to the City for some sudoku challenges and some hidden marshals around the Gerkin and tower of London. We got through the finish line after 2hrs 34mins of full-out running and scored 206pts which put us in 149th place out of 190 teams in the Adventure Class. We were pleased. We were given a map, and checkpoints for the Sunday race and after our free pasta re-fueling we headed home for 2hrs of map plotting into the night. The route was completed by midnight, but it was alarms set for 5am.

More pasta in the morning, and off to the race start at 7am. Sunday required massive effort and based on the recommendation of the race director we joined the other non-elite teams and took a 90min time penalty to skip the morning foot stage and get on the road straight away. It went something like this… a ~50km cycle out to near Heathrow and back including activities such as flights of steps, keg carrying, climbing over lorries, cycling over lorries, stripping off and jumping in the Thames to swim around a pontoon, flying-fox, rope bridges, abseiling off the highest part of Twickenham Stadium, a 7km foot race around Richmond Common, mud tracks, boarding & searching for checkpoints on the HMS Belfast battle ship and much more.

The whole course was tracked by fantastic wrist bands that tracked your time in/out of every checkpoint. These were then downloaded on return to the finish and we were all given print-outs.

Flickr Set

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Despite the bike brakes failing through a pedestrian crossing and one of us putting a scratch down the side of a car with the handle bars, things went better than expected.

The blinding reflective t-shirts of TeamGearedUp.com were out roughing themselves up a little bit with a 20km cycle in heavy London traffic and a trip to Mile-End Climbing wall for some vertical confidence. Why? Charlie, Tanya & Robin are representing TGU at the London Rat Race which kicks off next Saturday night with a 3hr footrace and ~50km on Sunday by Bike, Foot, Kayak, Abseil, Climbing & Parkour.

Training Route Map:

View Larger Map

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - The Great River Race paddled past my flat on the Thames today. The annual river race lets competitors race down the Thames for 4hrs to Greenwich. Racers use any form of canoe, dragon boat, kayak, paddle boat, skiff they want… and many seem to dress up in costume for the day.

What is special about this race is the handicap system. Each vessel is given a start-time that is offset by their expected speed. This means that all boats arrive at the finish-line at the same time (in an ideal world!) and gives a magnificent view as they power down the Thames in a massive flotilla through the city. I caught an Irish boat in the photo below!

Meanwhile back in Ireland, today is the Liffey Descent.

-Robin-

(Image Credit: All photos by the author.)

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Remember this offer (Evert, Charlie & Darran got them)? Well we now have another 4 sim cards to give away! I think each card has free calls built into them and 300 free texts a month for the first 3 months subject to topping up etc.

I will post one to each of the first 4 UK readers to leave a comment below!

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - The Rat Race is where teams of three race in a multi-disciplined challenge of navigation, endurance, skills and guts running, climbing, mountain biking, kayaking, abseiling, and tackling a course that’s only revealed hours before they begin, all within a concrete urban environment - London City on 29th/ 30th September! Watch the Promo Video!

Adventure Class
This is the full throttle full fat fully loaded Rat Race: a 3 hour evening “Mean Streets” prologue followed by an all day race on the Sunday. ANYONE can take part (subject to general fitness requirements) and any team will have equal chance to shine on the differing activities in the course. There will be fantastic prizes for first, second and third places and spot prizes throughout the field. The Saturday night event is the same as below (so read about it there) and on the Sunday this is where you draw from your adventure arsenal your bike, your climbing gear, you map and compass and your slickest lycra. Because you are going supersonic on a rampage across the city by bike, boat, foot and rope. You’ll finish some time in the afternoon and you will have absolutely loved (nearly) every minute of it. And you will have seen the city in a totally unique and different way.

Mean Streets Class
Again, the entry for the Mean Streets Class is open to ANYONE too and is designed to give a taste of the event atmosphere and of adventure racing in a bite sized chunk! OR you go all out and run for miles collecting as many checkpoints as you can. It’s fast, it’s furious and it’s absolutely hilarious. The Mean Streets Class is also the 3 hour evening prologue for the above Adventure Class entrants. Most of the event is based on foot and you may walk, run, crawl or hopscotch round the course, depending on what you like, as the format allows for fun, exertion and entertainment over lesser distances. There are plenty of prizes allocated. The object is to achieve as many points as possible by visiting as many checkpoints as possible; some of these may be in famous (or lesser known) places, there may be activities or there may be special tasks to complete.

I’m planning on entering a team.

-Robin-