Sunday the 25th May saw competitors arrive from all over UK to compete in The Falcon North Lincs Adventure Challenge. The Falcon North Lincolnshire Adventure Challenge is an adventure race which is run annually on the last Sunday of May. There are three disciplines consisting of: a 36 kilometre cycle race on the roads around Brigg, two laps in a canoe or kayak around the Brigg 'Island' and a 10K trail run finishing in Brigg Market Place. The weather once again proved to make for a difficult race, with strong winds battering the competitors on the cycle the 1st of the three disciplines.
Last years winner Keith Longney once again returned to defend his crown with some tough opposition ready to challenge him for the top spot. Joe Andrews - VOtwo.co.uk set his stall out by posting the fastest bike leg with an impressive 53:46 over nearest rival John Parker - Worcester Canoe Club with 54:35 and local challenger Steve Clark - Lincsquad with a 54:48 leaving Keith Longney down in 4th place. Next up it was the Kayak leg and John Parker dominated the 2nd leg with a 47:41 with only Andy Grimwood managing to post a sub 50 minute kayak leg. This put John Parker into1st place with Joe Andrews 51:28 pushed down to 2nd position by 3 minutes, Keith Longney took 3rd spot from Steve Clark now in 4th place. The final run saw Joe Andrews push hard to try and claw back his lead and posted the fastest run of the day with 40:43 and John Parker 43:27 which meant that John Parker took the victory by just 14 seconds!! John Parker also won the £100 for smashing the course record by nearly 4 minutes posting a total time of 2:25:43. This left the battle for 3rd place and Keith Longney managed to hold off Steve Clark who pushed hard on his run but missed out by just over a minute. So the top 5 are as follows
1st Place - John Parker - Worcester Canoe Club - 2:25:43
2nd Place - Joe Andrews - www.VOtwo.co.uk - 2:25:57
3rd Place - Keith Longney - BQA - 2:30:03
4th Place - Steve Clark - Lincsquad - 2:31:27
5th Place - Peter Connolly - Lincsquad -2:37:27
1st Lady - Jean Ashley - Lincsquad - 2:56:16
1st Team - Five Training Regiment - 2:52:31
Race Director Ken Collier thanked all the competitors, marshalls and sponsors for making such a great race. He also thanked the committee for 2008 Debbie Drinkall, Jason Frary, Andy Veitch, Paul Armstrong, Steve Clark and Paul Carvill, for the planning and execution of the event. This was especially challenging as most of the committee also competed.
Andy Veitch from Lincsquad also raised over £2500 for Brigg Breast Cancer Support which is an amazing effort.