"Adventure race"

Never mind this poncey triathlon malarky - I reckon the way forward with multi sports is adventure racing.
Reasoning: It's mountain biking and not roadie racing; it's in the hills and dales and not round towns, and best of all there's no 1500m swim so I can bin the training for that (Jeez, swimming is boring and I also won't need to fork out £200 for a wet suit). Really, who wants to swim round a dock anyway?

Sunday's 5 hour race was great fun. My partner, Will, I'd met once the week before at an LMC meet and he was a fine choice in that he is a Polaris veteran and therefore extremely well versed in the efficient use of time and resources on these things. And he's a fine navigator.
With neither of us that fussed on running we planned a one descent, one ascent trot to bag as many points as we could in about an hour and then get back for the bikes at the transition. And then I found the running desperately hard for no real reason so was very pleased to set off on the bikes after about 90 minutes. The Hebden Bridge area is VERY hilly and riddled with bridleways and therefore makes for excellent mountain biking territory. The great weather helped as well, but there were the inevitable mud and water obstacles along the way. We went hard but not stupidly balls out and got back to base just before the 5 hours were up, so we incurred no time penalties. A quick change and then free tea and coffee and some mingling with our fellow racers preceeded the prize giving. We'd come about half way in the male pairs competition which wasn't too bad I thought. The next one in the series in at Hamsterley Forest in March.
Any takers for the 24 hour effort at the end of July then? :-)
(See the Open Adventure link).