Malheur Raid XL
A Weekend in Belgium
Russ Ladkin (Team CamRacers) / 27.05.2008
From East Anglia, it’s about the same amount of driving to the Lake District as it is to Belgium; and that’s how Paul Dickens and I found ourselves signed up for the Malheur Raid XL race in May in Belgium. After a 2 hour rest on the ferry we arrived south of Charleroi before it was dark to set up camp at a watersport’s centre on the edge of Plate Taille reservoir. There were over 30 pairs in the XL 30 hour, 220km race and a further 20 doing a shorter 100km race alongside including a 6 hour bivouac. Teams came from Belgium, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg and ourselves from UK.
Although little heard of in the UK, Wim and Roel have been organizing this race for more than 5 years with a dedicated and enthusiastic bunch of helpers who made us really welcome. We were issued 10 pages of maps at registration to give us a chance to get to grips with the Belgium map grid system and to cover them before a good nights rest for what was to come.
An efficient briefing in Dutch, English and French out of the way, we joined the group of neoprene-clad bodies for the 10am swim start. The triathlon swimmers soon had a good lead followed by the rest of us with our mix of surf floats, snorkels and air-beds which, without any wind, were making good progress. Back on dry land we were handed an orienteering map. Around 5km to link all the controls, although some of the map was deliberately blanked out to spice things up. Here was the first decision. Many teams opted to stay with the neoprene and swim across to the first peninsula while we changed and ran around to join the wet-suited runners in the woods. At least the neoprene would have given some protection against the brambles!
Once completed, we set out on 30km of mountain biking on rural lanes and forest cycle tracks to a forest picnic area. Here we were back on foot with a black and white orienteering map plotting controls just on bearing and distance. This was a 12 km run with some tricky navigation, matched by some tricky checkpoint access such as tree climbing. A very welcome container of water had been positioned half way around the course as the day was warming up and we arrived back pleased with ourselves.
Before we could carry on though we had a little task: to score 5 points at archery. O.K. Never done archery, looks like fun. Then we were shown our log! It was explained we just had to saw the log in two, carry both parts across a pond, under a scramble net up the beach, up an electron ladder up a tree and down and then we would be at the archery. Predictably, the first arrow missed the target, but we were pleased to see we were still credited with 1 point towards our total. Try again. See All Event Posts
