Looks absolutely fantastic! Just had a look at the website, and it looks good value too.
If only we had a north based bike guide who also did a bit of running on here*..... 😊
*kayaking too, but that looked fairly east tbh.
I'm tempted.
Yup. Looked amazing. Bike choice looked critical, that salty sand would wreck anything nice. Agree the kyak bit looked a bit shoved in there to male it appear different...
Looks pretty good. I don't do the swimming thing so most "adventure races" are off-limits to me. I know a fair bit of the course too.
Any excuse for a visit to Uist frankly.
I'm the photographer for the event, and my Dad was one of the marshals - we both got wee cameos. NZCol off here raced the Heb previously, and various others including myself and aracer have raced The Heb's predecessor races
Stevemuzzy - the kayak isn't just 'shoved in', it's always been part of the race and is always a part of proper adventure racing. There's normally two kayak sections, one each day, but the weather meant the Sunday paddle got cancelled. It's a fairly easy paddle, but that's part of making the race accessible.
Good fun race , definitely recommend.
What bike did you use Col?.
Ideal bike is a cross bike with some decent knobbly but rolling tyres - I used Clement unmmmmmmmm can’t remember what on a Cx bike. In hindsight I would have been a tri w inker and our aero bars on as well.
First ride is road, then beach and salt water then road then road then the off-road bit which is fine if you mtv and can handle a cx bike. Day 2 is quite hard on the machar as soft sand and grass as well as rocky tracks then beach.
Aye, would be a trade off between using my cx bike (as I really canny be arsed with it for anything other than a half hour commute) or using MTB and accepting being a bit slower. Dunno if I'd want to subject my MTB to all that salt n sand, so prob cx bike!. 🙂
Just re-read and realised my last post came off quite confrontational, wasn't meant to! Apologies.
I love The Heb as a race, it's well organised, physical, technical enough to keep it interesting and in a lovely, wild piece of the world. As the Adventure Show put across nicely, it's a lot about knowing your own strengths and weaknesses and playing to them, making the right choices for you for that day and in those conditions - which can be as much of a challenge as the terrain! As races go, it's accessible but not easy, has a lovely low-key atmosphere and community feel to it, a cracking ceilidh at the end, and is a great, fun weekend. I'd utterly recommend it to anyone.
One thing on the training front is for the running/nav legs spend as much time as you can on untracked, rough ground like running around x country on moors between points as that's basically it and it's hard work. I'm experienced albeit old and fat and had also not done much training, having now done it i would do my run training in a specific way.
But do agree, well organised and good after party. Why not just do Itera and be done with it 😉
Why not just do Itera and be done with it 😉
Because I'm not stupid? 😉
saw that and looked good -- not that I'm any use at running though so that'd be out for a start. Liked the idea of the two brothers who dug out their £50 pub bikes for the beach stretch - that'd be my thought too, drivetrain suppliers would be rubbing themselves in delight at seeing that section.. 😉
kcal - all the running checkpoints are optional, as the program said. You can do minimal running and still finish, a good few people ditched the Sunday hill run entirely despite the fact the closest/easiest checkpoint is less than 1500m from transition. Same with the run on Eaval, it's about 2km to the nearest CP, and loads of people only go for that one.