News

26 July 2009

Ben Green won the pair of Numa Optic LoPro shades that were the main lucky draw prize at the Kinetic Urban Adventure Challenge.

the Numa Optics team didn't quite do as well as they had hoped, but the did finish a credible 3rd mens team in a field of over 50 teams.

the full results are available here.

Numa Optics tackle kinetic #3

Piers Pirrow, Ryan Hodiern and Jeremy Green competed as team Numa Optics in the third Kinetic Urban Challenge at Benmore shopping centre on the 23^rd July. Ryan and Piers had experience from the previous races in the series, but for Jeremy this was the first taste of this type of race format. It certainly is a challenge to race against yourselves and not have any idea of how you are doing in the field until the very end.

At the start everybody headed off in different directions, as they had a choice of one of four legs that could be completed in any oder, as long as there was a transition between disciplins between legs. Either bike to run, or run to Bike, with a fun obstacle course at the end. The rule of onlyone team on an obstacle at a time meant that the race was finished as soon as a team member starts the first of the three inflatable obstacles.

Team numa chose the cycle orienteering first, hoping that the map might give them an advantage with the route book leg later on (it didnt ;-)). The team immediately took a wrong turn. Jeremy expected to be able to cut through round the back of the shopping centre, or round the block to get onto Benmore road. The map didn't extend that far however and so it transpired that 4 mins after the start, Team Numa Optics were back past the start. They recovered well and still managed a respectable time for that leg.

The run orienteering went mostly smoothly, a visit to the fountain at Nelson Mandela square instead of the Michael Angelo hotel fountain cost precious minutes. The result of a bit of miscommunication with trying to read the questions to the team while on the run and unable to complete a sentence in one breath.

Then the paw paw hit the fan. The route book leg was a disaster, immediately going wrong out the gate (again), the Team were once again back at the start a couple of minutes after they had started the leg. CP 3 however was the real undoing. When required to get the name of the park on the left, there was no park in sight. So the grid search method was employed to find the park, and then the team went backwards in the route book from the volleyball court to find the children's playground and the special task. The error was too much to recover from and it was only a bit of bad luck for team xxxx, who got a question wrong and incurred a 10 minute penalty, that saw Team Numa Optics sneak onto the podium in third spot for the all male teams.

Well done to Team Asics that made it 3 wins from 3 races. Thanx must got to Numa Optics for the sponsorship as well as to the Kinetic team for an excellent event with a difference. Hopefully the remaining 2 races in the series will go better for the Numa Optics team.