Rajd Beskidy

Team Nonstop Adventure Win Rajd Beskidy

Rob Howard / 23.06.2023

Team Nonstop Adventure crossed the finish line in the ski resort of Szczyrk this afternoon as winners of Rajd Beskidy 2023, which was an Adventure Racing World Series Demonstration race for the first time this year.

The team of Marek Woźniczka Marzka Janerka, Andrzej Brandt and Stanisław Odróbka completed the 600km course through the mountains of Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in 4 days 5 hours and 48 minutes. They enjoyed the final ride down the 6km HipHopaA flow mountain bike trail into the finish line and only knew they had won when Race Director Jerzy Lekki gave them the good news!

“We had seen other tyre tracks during the mountain bike orienteering stage and we all thought the Snowdog Trailteam was ahead of us by an hour or more” said Odróbka.  "After we went in the cave Marzka was feeling very bad and wanted to stop and lie down and we told her, not now we only have a few kilometres to go!”  Of all the team, she was the most elated on the finish line.

Odróbka continued, “I think the main thing we will remember is how tough it was!  There was almost no flat so it was always up and down and up again!  Our two navigators were Marek and Andrzej, and they were always under a lot of pressure racing against Snowdog Trailteam.  We know them and we know how good they are!  When we took different routes to them I was a bit worried but they did a great job.”

“We have had a team for 10 years but never really managed to enter an expedition race, mainly due to not finding a woman racer to join us.  We’ve all done one or two big races before, but not together as a team."

“We tried to look after ourselves well.  Day one was so hot I can’t think how much I drank. We were stopping at every shop, racing from shop to shop, not checkpoint to checkpoint! And we slept on the first night. We have seen Avaya do this and thought we should try it. We stopped in a restaurant for an hour the second night, and slept at TA3, in BEDS!  That was so nice and while we slept we missed a big storm, so when we left it was perfect weather for us to do the via ferrata.”

Team captain Marek Woźniczka interrupted to say the team had 7 hours sleep during the race, taking the least on the final night when he insisted they take only two 15 minute sleeps.

Part of their prize for winning is a free place at the LaRouta Adventure Race in the Philippines, which is the ARWS Asia Championships this year and they are hoping they can make arrangements to go.

It was only an hour and 27 minutes later when the Snowdog Trailteam followed them across the finish line (although the time difference will be bigger when some time credits and penalties are applied).

Poland’s most experienced racers are in the team (Artur Kurek has finished 7 AR World Championships) and they had a great race with Nonstop Adventure.  They took the lead at times and finished really strongly, but could not stay ahead of or catch Nonstop Adventure.

They were all in good spirits on the finish line and said they had been really tired on the mountain bike stage in the Czech Republic, especially the bike push up to CP78 on the summit of Lysa Hora.  They had even thought of giving up, but decided to sleep and then continued.

There was a thunder crack as they rode up to the finish line and heavy rain soon after, and the remaining 3 teams will need to continue in more frequent storms and downpours than the area has seen in recent days.  The next team expected to finish is On-Sight Navagatoria who should finish in the early hours of tomorrow morning. 

The final two teams will have until 4pm tomorrow (Saturday) to complete the course and from their track it looks like the OMM Nordisk Adventure Team has opted to cut the course short and take a more direct route to the finish.