Race News

Birmingham Rat Race 2008

This weekend, 15th March, sees the Rat Race arrive in Birmingham for the first time with a new one day format.

The race will form part of the activities at The Outdoor Show being held at the NEC and will head off into Birmingham City Centre on a course crammed full of activity and planned by Shane Ohly. Urban Adventure Gear will have their shop there to help out racers with last minute kit and to sell to the wider public  so if you're in the hall come over and say hello. If you're racing, then best of luck!

Published: Wednesday 12 March, 2008

Rat Race Early Birds 2008

Here's the latest news from Rat Race HQ about Rat Race events 2008....

Our 2008 Rat Race Series is GO! Here's the low-down on the first wave of 2008 dates to be released - with some epic early bird deals in the offing to ensure we can continue to reward you Rat Race aficionados with great early-season deals.

In this FIRST wave, we are opening our EXISTING events of Bristol, Edinburgh and London, run on our traditional Mean Streets and Adventure Class formats. We are also re-running the Business Class in London for company teams and those wanting an upgrade; it proved mighty popular with its introduction this year.

So, the dates:

    ·    Bristol               14/ 15 June
    ·    Edinburgh         19/ 20 July
    ·    London             27/ 28 Sep

And now for the prices....REMEMBER REMEMBER THE 5th of NOVEMBER!!

We have an explosive "Gunpowder plot" special rate for Early Birds this year of £79 for Adventure class entries - saving £20 on regular prices for 2008 events. On the Mean Streets, the price will be offered across all events at £29 vs the regular price of £35. These prices will be offered on a first come, first served basis until 5th November 2007. After that, we are putting the price up to £89 for the adventure class (same as early 2007 rates) until the end of the year. On 01 January, the regular 2008 price point will kick in and all events will be £99 until a month beforehand, when they will go up to £109 per person in the adventure class and £39 in the Mean Streets. For Business class customers in London, the regular price point of £159 will be cut in line with the Early Bird prices to £139 per person from now until the end of the year.

So, to recap:

    ·    Oct 17th - Nov 5th: All events at £79 per person (Adv class). Mean Streets at £29
    ·    Nov 5th - Dec 31st: All events at £89 per person (Adv class). Means Streets at £29
    ·    Jan 01st - 28 days before event: £99 per person. Mean Streets at £35
    ·    < 28 days before event: £109 per person. Means Streets at £39
    ·    Business class offered at £139 per person vs £159 per person from now until Christmas

As a special treat to those who sign up on the early bird deals before Christmas (Adventure, Means Streets and Business), the first 50 will also receive a limited edition "Rat Mat" for your office.

Sign up here www.ratraceadventure.com  

Published: Monday 19 November, 2007

London Rat Race Success

By all accounts the London Rat Race Urban Adventure was a tremendous success and a worthy event to be the 10th Rat Race staged in the UK. 750 racers of all ages, shapes and sizes, lined up on the South Bank on Saturday evening to get it all off and running for the Mean Streets Prologue and thankfully 750 came back in again after 2.5 hours. In between they'd been all over London's famous streets and landmarks in the usual random Rat Race fashion
.

Saturday night winners were none other than UrbanAdventureGear.com! The team consisting of Iona Robertson, Rich Wild and James Williams, ran the legs off everyone else and crossed the line ahead of all the favourites including Aberdeen Asset Management and The North Face. The main race on Sunday also went very well for them apart from one small, eency-weency little problem...they missed a checkpoint in an orienteering stage, meaning that despite coming third on the day, they were ranked behind every team that completed the whole course! Eventual joint winners were Aberdeen Asset Management and The North Face, with Aberdeen taking the series title and wining a trip to Trinidad and Tobago.

You can read race reports and see some of the pictures that bring it to life here  

Published: Wednesday 10 October, 2007

London Rat Race This Weekend

The first ever London Rat Race kicks off this weekend and it is set to be incredible. Best of luck to all the UAG customers taking part and remember to stock up on Nuun, take it steady on Saturday night and enjoy every minute of it. If you see the UrbanAdventureGear.com team out there, then give them a cheery wave from us.

Good Luck and Enjoy!!

Published: Friday 28 September, 2007

Raasay Rumble

The month of September has been an extremely busy one at UAG with events on each weekend to keep us out and about and out of mischief. This weekend is no different with us packing up shop and heading to the West Highlands of Scotland to a wee island called Raasay, sitting between Skye and the mainland.

The race on the cards is the first Raasay Rumble 10 hour mountain bike event and comes hot on the heels of the World Mountain Bike Champs which have just wrapped up in Fort William. It is set to be a super technical course and will probably be the most technical endurance mountain bike course ever held in the UK. We'll be back at the desk on Monday with some big smiles hopefully!

Published: Friday 14 September, 2007

Edinburgh Rat Race 2007

The Edinburgh Rat Race 2007 has been and gone and what a race it was. Another classic event in the Scottish Capital and UAG's local Rat Race, in which shop owner John was racing once again. The UAG shop was there too at the event centre in the village sorting out racers with their last minute Nuun and Clif Bar purchases, as well as the many member of the public passing through the Princes Street Gardens site.

The race itself was fantastic with the usual random assortment of checkpoints around town on the Saturday night including a barber shop head shave, a Deep Fried Mars Bar eating challenge in a chip shop, biscuit racing, beer mat flipping and so on. In between there was some hard running for 3 hours and John and his Aberdeen Asset Management team managed to finish in 2nd in the main Adventure class.

The Sunday race was billed as the longest and hardest yet, and it was probably a good claim. It was a long day involving lots of biking, kayaking, climbing, abseiling, fort storming, rubber ring spinning, orienteering, dry tooling, and so much more. Yes there were some random events in there, but here's not the place to explain them, check out the report on Sleepmonsters here.

The London race is going to bring the Rat Race into the mainstream big time and the launch this week was the usual Rat Race style of tongue in cheek. Check the pics below of kayaking outside Parliament and Tower Bridge. I wonder if we'll be back here again...

Published: Friday 20 July, 2007

London Rat Race 2007

Great news for all the Rat Race fans out there. We can now tell you that the long anticipated London race is set to take place on 29/30th September 2007! 

The city of London will be an amazing venue for a Rat Race but the work involved in organising it will be phenomenal. It's expected that a 1000 different permissions will have to be granted to make it work, but local man Nick Gracie, (the current British Adventure Racing Champion and man behind Nuun in the UK), is the planner for the race. He's got a huge job on his hands to match the success of Edinburgh, Bristol and Manchester, and this may only be the beginning...what's next? Munich, Paris, Sydney...?  

See you there Rat Fans. For those looking for more information, visit www.ratraceadventure.com

Published: Sunday 24 June, 2007

Rat Race Edinburgh 2006

In 2006 UAG was born with this website launching the day of the Rat Race Urban Adventure in Edinburgh. So we took the shop to the event, left it in the safe hands of someone else and went off racing. Hey, we are the official shop of the race after all so we kinda had to be there, but our team had a title to defend from 2005 so racing was also top priority...

In the end we had a stinker of a race, marking up a checkpoint in the wrong place, but we had fun all the same, so thought we'd share this video of the day's activities to whip up some enthusiasm for the upcoming events in 2007.

Published: Sunday 24 June, 2007

Rat Race Bristol 2006

Danny and Fraser are as talented as it gets in Scottish Mountain Bike Trials. They came along to the Bristol Rat Race 2006 and destroyed our taxi. Just as well they are nice lads. Check out some of their moves in this vid.

Published: Sunday 24 June, 2007