Team provides standby rescue cover for Midweek MTB Madness mountain bike event in Leverhulme Park

This evening saw team members providing standby rescue cover for the Midweek MTB Madness mountain bike event, attracting 91x entrants, held at Leverhulme Park, Bolton.

This is the first time we have been associated with this fantastic event, with the race commencing at 19.15hrs, whilst practice laps started at 18.00hrs.

Our team members started assembling at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ at 16.45hrs, arriving at the Leverhulme Park Race RVP at 17.15hrs.

Here our initially arriving team members in our six team vehicles set up our control point, utilising our Incident Control Vehicle, immediately next to the event control and finish point.

Our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE (webmaster: will he ever repeat this?) then greeted the team members present at that time with a selection of iced fingers, doughnuts and other savouries.
Thirteen team members took the opportunity to walk the event course, including our Team Leader, and our Deputy Team Leader Chris Greenhalgh, who had previously walked the course and met the organiser Mick Speirs on Wednesday 24th June 2015 (see website ‘News’ report dated the same)

Our Deputy Team Leader Chris Greenhalgh then organised where around the course our team members would be based, whilst our Team Leader further liaised with the event organising team.

The entire course was very well marked with all routes clearly indicated and marshalled, for the 19.15hrs start, which saw concurrent races including the following categories for the 91x taking part;
Racer, Enthusiast, Women and Youth, all taking part in this multi lap event through the woodlands and over the open grasslands of Leverhulme Park including a crossing of Bradshaw Brook.

All passed without thankfully any requirement for our services, and by circa 20.20hrs all competitors had safely completed their multi lap events.

A great prize giving and presentation ceremony followed, with Karen Long, British Cycling Commissaire presiding over this part of the event.

Over the course of this evening we met up with many friends and supporters of the Bolton MRT including Simon Fox of Darwen Dashers Running Club fame, and Neil Brown of Horwich Festival of Racing, both of whom were assisting with this event.

We also met the casualty from our Incident 54 iii of Sunday 21st June 2015, Horwich Festival of Racing, who informed us of the healing progress of his leg injury.

In total we deployed thirty team Call Out list members around the course this evening, at multiple points in order to react quickly to any requests for our services, with all four of our Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances attending, plus our Ford Transit minibus / Ambulance and our Incident Control Vehicle.

In the way we like to take the mickey out of each other, we took great delight in one team member who mistook / misheard the Leverhulme Park venue location and instead went first to a similar sounding location in Rivington! two members forgot that a mountain rescuer never gets separated from their rucksacs! and a certain later arriving team member who shall remain nameless regaled all his earlier arriving hungry colleagues (who had yet to have their evening meal) with how delightful his just digested restaurant meal had been!

Tomorrow evening will see the team for only the second year running providing standby rescue cover for the Bull Hill Fell Race, organised by Radcliffe Athletics Club.

The race, starting at Boardmans Farm, Hawkshaw, takes in a route up to Lark Hill, thence to Bull Hill summit and on to Alden Ratchers, then to Beetle Hill, Pilgrims Cross, Holcombe Head Farm, to finish in the vicinity of Holcombe Hey Fold Farm, Holcombe.