Independent Networks Adrenalin Rush
A Cold Early Morning Swim
Rob / 26.05.2003
On the first night there were a few navigational mishaps and some interesting tactical choices at the night navigation stage, but it was the swim on Monday morning which presented teams with the greatest challenge. It was a morning few of them will forget in a hurry and a stage which helped the British teams, more used to Scottish conditions, move to the front of the field.To get there they had to navigate through the night on their bikes, stopping on the way for the orienteering stage. There was also a short ‘hike a bike’ stage over some very rough ground. Quite a few teams went the wrong way in the early stages and SleepMonsters.com seemed to have more than their share of navigational mishaps. At the end of the bike ride John Cunningham just said, “It’s not been good so far� and Greg Clarke explained, “There were a lot of forest roads not on the map and we seemed to take the wrong way every time!�
John McBride of Apex had his problems too and arrived with a gash on the corner of one eye but was fine to continue. Mostly Fun hadn’t had a fun night either as Andy Smith was ill, he had to withdraw from a race a month ago and it looked like a recurrence of the same sickness. His team helped him through the night, but he wasn’t fit to swim so they will be unranked and he may not continue.
The leaders were moving quickly with The North Face, OK Adventure Renault Sport and Speleo Dec swapping the lead. The French team lead most of the way, though The North Face sneaked in front at the orienteering. This was only 6km with two checkpoints, but there was the option of missing and taking a 90 minute penalty for each. It wasn’t an option the leaders could afford to take but others did as the penalty would be served after the swim, when teams would be drying, changing and recovering anyway, and also had access to their gear boxes so could put up a tent and sleep.
The final ride up to Loch Beannacharain along Strathconan in the early morning was magnificent, with low lying mist in the valley and hundreds of deer, with ragged coats and stubby, velvet coated antlers on the road and tracks. OK Adventure Renault Sport lead most of the way but were caught by The North Face just before the transition to the swim. This was in a car park at the Loch side, where teams changed into wet suits and buoyancy aids to the 1000m swim in the bitterly cold waters.
They had to swim to the far side and back, which took even the quicker teams 45 minutes, and there were numerous tactics used. The North Face were well kitted out, Ski Sharp had a full 7mm dive suit on, which was probably the right equipment for this swim. All his team had flippers, while the chasing French team had only borrowed wet suits. Some swam on their backs using the flippers, others did front crawl, a few teams used snorkels to make breathing easier and Subaru USA had floats with them to lay on. Marco Ponti even kept his cycling helmet on to keep his head warm!See All Event Posts
