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| Members Prize Draw |
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Petzl Nao Head Torch
RRP £135 |
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Please register your email below:
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| Paul Mann |
| Current team | Nellie's Rats |  | | Occupation | Photographer & draughtsman | | Home town | Skipton | | Country | Yorkshire UK | | |
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| Firstly I'm a caver with a liking for the high hills - The Edinburgh Rat Race '04 introduced me to AR.
I love adventure & physical challenge, but it needs to be fun to get me off my backside, jogging round the block just doesn't do it.
I also have a taste for the mad & absurd, (dragging my first 3-geared bike over Dartmoor, through a cave and down an abseil).
My strengths are navigation and physical stamina. Despite my poor attitude towards physically preparing myself my body normally finds reserves and keeps on going whatever I throw at it.
I was blessed to belong to an extremely active scout group as a kid, and spent every weekend out on the hills, rivers & cliffs, or into the woods, caves or sea. Just occassionally we'd take to the playing fields to build giant catapults...
At college I found caving was the only real outlet for this sort of hard play, orienteering always seemed a bit tame by comparison. Why find things marked on a map when you can find the things to make the map? Why race for a day or two when you could go steady and keep at it for months on end?
Time moves on, and I've traded my former globe trotting freedom for a bit of stability (home & steadier job). Now I can focus on quality rather than quantity, so plenty of long weekends and the occassional focused week holiday provide plenty of fun. Events like the rat race provide me with a convenient bite sized chunk of pleasure (more like stuffing a whole Mars Bar in my mouth at once).
I am blessed that Joanne, my partner, is equally up for such challenges, and is capable of organising things like entry forms. | | | | Best AR discipline | Navigation | | Worst AR discipline | Technical mountain biking | | AR ambitions | To be enthused enough to want to train | | AR bugbear | Too few weekends, out of date maps | | AR best moment | The supportive spirit between the tail end teams enjoying a great day out | | AR worst moment | Waking up with cramp | | My AR best results | Finishing the Rat Race | | 39 seconds up the ladders at Ratho (about 2 rungs per second) | | My next AR events | No idea, but will find another soon. | | Favourite AR race | Edinburgh Rat Race | | Favourite piece of kit | My new bike - if I didn't know better I'd say the Union Canal was downhill all the way to Edinburgh | | Advice(tip) for other racers | Know what your tools do. Your eyes and mind are the most significant of these, followed by your map. You should use your compass only to support these. GPS are more often a hinderance, blinding you to the obvious; but are great if you do get lost. |
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