Bimbache Extrem Castilla y Leon
Day 3 - Hills, hills, hills, snow!
Pyro / 20.05.2009
The day started early for some. Multisport.Fi, arriving at 10:30pm last night, held an almost unassailable lead. They left Boca de Huergano at 2:30am, having ticked off the whole of the trek back from the rafting stage in a modicum of daylight. As they left, they were able to see their nearest chasers, Vibram Sport2000 just entering the transition area, showing the Finns just what time they had in hand. At that moment, they agreed amongst themselves that they could “take the next section at our own pace�. The next sections were not ones to be taken lightly; A 10km skate started their day, continuously climbing but never excessively steep, one which some later teams finished on foot, the constant gradient finishing their weary skating legs off. But there was more foot work to come, a long trekking stage, over 4 separate ridges and saddles, ascending and descending in much the same way as the first MTB stage. At the first high point, the teams were treated to something new to the event - snow.
The large banks of remaining snow in the shelter of the ridge provided a faster descent than expected for most teams, a skiing motion allowing very rapid loss of altitude, where the climb was slowed significantly by large swathes of Broom scrub, hampering the teams unless they either climbed steeply up a stream bed or managed to find a more easily used path. This up-and-down continued for the entirety of the leg, and the Finns stuck to their edict, finishing in 13hrs, two hours down on the estimated fastest time.
Their nearest chasers, Sport2000 Vibram, headed out onto the hills in second place at around 6:30am in good spirits and began working to close some of the gap between them and first place. They left the fishermans refuge at T14 in the early evening, having made back an hour over the day, putting themselves closer but, barring a major issue on Multisport’s part, not within reach of first place. Buff Thermocool trail Vibram by around an hour, at the moment showing no signs of closing the gap, and with the top teams firing on all cylinders after the rest stop, bridging any of the gaps will be a hard task.
The South Africans of McCain, in fourth place, seemed impressed with the entertaining descent laid on for them, being singularly unused to anything snow-like. They trail the Spanish team by an hour and a half, and seem happy to move at their own pace, although knowing that the team following only ten minutes behind them are Absolue Raid, the first of the short coursed teams, and are therefore no threat to their position.See All Event Posts
