Race2: What’s the point?

Hitchhiking: a lack of money, dependency on strangers, blagging, haggling and occasional hiding. The image inspired does not exactly resemble the typical St Andrews student experience. Yet, these hardships are […]


Hitchhiking: a lack of money, dependency on strangers, blagging, haggling and occasional hiding. The image inspired does not exactly resemble the typical St Andrews student experience. Yet, these hardships are all supposed to be key components of the University’s Race 2 experience. The task of the race is tough, but the struggle is the basis of the charitable fundraising. Laziness, unfortunately, often trumps the perfect.

The ideal journey, which very few teams accomplish, is to spend no money throughout the race. However, this is virtually impossible. Some argue that spending money reduces the activity to ‘a holiday.’ Before partaking in the long and strenuous journey, I thought the ‘immorality’ of spending money to be perfectly valid. But I challenge anyone to try and cross the Channel for free. The teams that spent several hundreds of pounds seem to have missed the mark, though, in their choice to skip the hitchhiking and opt for a direct, and only slightly more bearable, Easy Jet flight. Didn’t you essentially just pay for the free TV prize? An issue with Race 2 is that the winning team is simply the first team to arrive; the team to arrive in the least moments rather than with the best moments. Most creative route, funniest experience, or most entertaining safety update are merely a few awards that come to mind. I expected that freezing off my derrier in Dresden would at least warrant me a shoutout. 

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The winners this year, Tom Whitehead and Dougal Adamson reached Prague within 33.5 hours of setting off, with “a lift from the ferry to Rotterdam all the way to Prague.” Tom compared his experience this year to that of last and explained that “Barcelona was much more stressful and we took just over 70 hours. Regardless we had an amazing time and even the nights at some dodgy French service stations were still fun.” The experience and the journey are the intrinsic ingredients. Placing yourself at the mercy of other people in order to achieve a goal separates it from any other ordinary holiday. When one goes on holiday, the travelling is the means to have the holiday, and, in some ways, ‘a necessary evil’ that many dislike. But Race 2 prizes the journey as the centrepiece.

Spend too much money and the journey is undermined; arrive first and bag yourself a television. It is a fine balance with no clear expenditure boundaries. I recommend the Race 2 experience, but winning isn’t everything. Besides, no one will want to hear about that time you paid for a budget flight to Prague.  

images couurtesy of Toby Harris