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A hard day\'s night ... and a hard night\'s day
Susan McKenzie / 15.05.2005
It was a rough first night on the bikes for many teams. Holofiber dropped out, Lundhags got lost (they weren’t the only ones) and GoLite/Timberland got lost and a little sick and everyone felt the cold.“Elina (Maki-Rautila) has asthma, and she wasn’t feeling well, so she really felt in her lungs,� explains Holofiber’s Lawrence Foster. “The doctors said she shouldn’t raced, that it was not the right decision and we agreed. You just can’t mess with your health that way.�
As Maki-Rautila rested at the Transition Area, her three teammates continued on the course, making short work of the orienteering section.
“I think we got the second fastest time,� Scott Ford said.
Once the orienteering was done, the team was in no hurry to leave the TA. As a trio, they were not allowed to kayak (the kayaks are doubles), so instead they slipped into the warm cozy cabin at the Vildsmarkscamping, where they heated up ravioli and stew, stripped down to their long underwear and had a sleep. Foster was later put to work carrying a camera to film the other teams in the race.
Other teams got quite lost overnight on the bikes.
“We crossed a road and did not even see it, it was just white,� says Bjorn Rydvall of Lundhags. “We ended up carrying our bikes for an extra three hours in deep snow. That wasn’t so good. We caught up with the Swiss though, because they made the same mistake.�
So, too, did GoLite/Timberland and Buff.
“We had a lot of problems last night,� says GoLite/Timberland’s Billy Mattison. “We hooked up with Buff and made the same mistake on the bikes. We just had our heads down and we were pushing through and didn’t notice the road.�See All Event Posts
