By Neto Baptiste
Over 50 individuals have already registered for what is expected to be a gruelling and challenging hiking and mountain-biking event being put on by the Road Runners Cycling Club this weekend.
This is according to president of the club, Alistair Savoury, who said that upwards of 60 individuals have registered for the 23.5-mile event dubbed Trans Antigua Challenge slated for June 13.
Savoury is encouraging all interested parties to register soon as there will be no registration on the morning of the challenge.
“The registration is open until 6 pm Friday evening. It’s an online registration so you’d just have to go to the Road Runners Cycling Club Facebook page and punch in Trans Antigua Challenge or Trans Antigua Hike and Bike Event and follow the links there so you could register online. We are not going to be doing any registration on the morning; it would strictly be ticking everybody off as they come in and assigning their numbers, etcetera,” he said.
The cyclist went on to outline that participants will compete in a number of categories to include hiking, walking, jogging and mountain-biking.
“The hikers, we want them to be on site no later than half past five [in the morning] because we want to have assignment of numbers and so on for a 5:45 am start. The mountain bikers will start at 7 am from the same car park at Half Moon Bay and then, at the top of Lonely Hill, which is the hill above Half Moon Bay, we’ll be setting the road riders off at 8 am,” he said.
Savoury gave assurances that all Covid-19 protocols will be enforced in attempts to keep all participants and officials safe.
“These adventure challenge events, we have the advantage of people being spread out, so people are generally moving as individuals or pairs in very small groups. We do have a start and a finish and at the start we can have in excess of 50 or 60 people. In fact, we’ve already got 50 people already signed on this event and we expect more,” he said.
“We do work very hard and if it’s one thing I would have to say is that our club, the cycling federation and the Rohrman sports association has done is that we’ve worked very hard on social distancing so we select the venues where we have adequate space,” Savoury added.
Registration for the event is $50 and the route will take participants from Half Moon Bay to Ffryes Beach.