The Long River Home
Pyro / 07.10.2010
Catching an hours sleep at the dam, at the end of the first part of the long kayak to Salamanca, Buff Thermocool look set to take this year’s AR World Championship. Overnight the trackers seemed to show second place Blackwater having closed in on them, reducing the Spanish team’s five hour lead to a matter of minutes. But first thing this morning, the US/NZ team had dropped back once more.
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Blackwater, and especially Nathan Fa’avae, had had a hard time on the overnight trek/ropes/skate stage. They are limited in which of their kit cans they can access at the various transitions. At the end of the MTB stage prior to the trek, the only one they could access was their MTB can, to deposit biking gear - meaning they would need to be carrying their trekking shoes with them on the bikes. While Buff Thermocool had read through this correctly, Blackwater were not carrying their shoes, and at transition, rapidly realised their mistake. Faced with an agonising 23km trek in their bike shoes, Monique, Mike and Chris managed to scrounge shoes from the marshals, but no-one had anything to fit Nathan’s size 48 feet. As a last-ditch solution to keep them moving, he took the insoles out of his bike shoes, stuck them inside his socks, and soldiered on.
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