ITERA-lite

Checkpoint Hunting and Short Coursing at ITERA Lite

Press Release / 30.07.2023

On Sunday morning at ITERA Lite the majority of the teams were either on or at the finish of the Southern Upland trekking stage.  The full course teams are on the hills ticking off their checkpoints, while many of the short course teams, who completed the majority of the long ride, had arrived at TA4, having missed the trek across the hills and taken a short route from TA3.

Conditions have worsened significantly today, with the temperature dropping, the wind getting up and more persistent rain falling.  For the teams who are on the trekking stage it is very windy on the higher ground and underfoot conditions are soggy. 

The two leading pairs are close together but the bad news for long time leaders Breizh Team (France) is that they didn’t get CP20.  They were in the right area, but couldn’t find it.   The precise location on a fence was mentioned in the captain’s briefing, but perhaps they hadn’t understood the instruction.  The Irish pair, Eco Trail Wicklow, also struggled to find it, but waited around and the Swedish Team lead them to it.   The two pairs were trekking within sight of each other mid way through the trek.  Team NZ/UK have fallen behind as they slept longer and had a broken chain to deal with during the long ride.

The Swedish team, Karlstad Multisport Green, are moving well and are currently the third placed team behind the two Endurancelife teams.  Magnus Albinsson said the terrain was very like some Swedish hills and the team had their feet in water much of the time.

For the teams who are short coursing, TA4 at St. Mary’s Hall, Cappercleuch, was a hive of activity this morning.  Teams who had slept at TA3 were all arriving together, having taken the short course option from there.  That’s an obvious option for all of the short course teams at this stage of the race as the trek is demanding and long.

Among those in the hall were Nav 4 Blue and Paul Taylor said, “We’re really pleased with our race so far.  We did almost all of the long ride, and the special stages, and from here on we think we can do the rest of the course. With two newbie racers we’ll be delighted if we can do that and just miss the one stage out.” 

The Nav 4 pair, James Nicholson and Sarah Hodgson, had been on the full course, and set off on the long trek.  “We climbed up to the first checkpoint,” James said, “then sat in a bivvy bag for 20 mins and thought about what we wanted to do.  It was pretty horrible up there so we came back down and decided to short course.”

Sarah said, “We overslept at TA3.  We meant to have a couple of hours and woke up after 4.  We were pretty wrecked.  We just got out before the 6am cut-off, but then short coursed anyway.”

Dave Harcourt of Portly Porties said, “We had a great sleep, it was 3 and a half hours.”  His partner Megan Davey corrected him and said it was only 2.5 hours as they sat and enjoyed a cuppa soup in the hall.  Beside them were Team Cheese and Cake and Philip Avery joked, “Where else would you hear someone say 3.5 hours on a floor was a good sleep!”

He added, “We missed the long trek out. We do a lot of hill walking anyway and want to do the other stuff we don’t usually do.  We want to finish as friends as well.  Last night at the end of the ride we were riding apart for a while!”  He was smiling and they were both in good spirits in transition.  His partner Bradley Morrell is doing his first adventure race. Both were very happy the next bike stage had been made much easier by relaxing the out of bounds and allowing teams to use the road.  “We are pretty saddle sore,” said Bradley.

All of the short course teams are now managing their own races, keeping their spirits up and doing as much of the course as they can on the way to the finish.  They still have another full day ahead to get there as the course close time is 10.00am Monday.