ONE hundred of the UK's top Adventure Racers are heading to the Lake District this weekend for The North Face Winter XX Adventure Race, the first round in one of the country's most gruelling sporting series, the British Adventure Racing Championships.

The North Face Winter XX, run by ACE Races, will take place between Saturday and Sunday, February 7-8. The actual course is kept secret until the day of the event, but the athletes will gather at Wilf's Cafe in Staveley on Saturday.

They will be running, cycling, canoeing, climbing and abseiling around a course of 130km in distance with a total ascent of over 4,000m. In total the course is designed to take the top teams an exhausting 20 hours to complete.

Phil Humphreys, Winter XX and ACE Races Event Director said: "In seven years of organising adventure races I have never managed to pack in so much excitement and exhilaration into one event."