Aveyron Adventure Race

Options and Strategy at la Couvertoirade

Rob Howard & Anne-Marie Dunhill / 25.07.2013

From the outset the Aveyron Adventure Race is offering teams some optional checkpoints, so they can pace themselves around the long course in the hot weather. The first cycle section was a fixed route, taking teams across rolling and open country, scattered with low trees and rocky outcrops, to reach the historic town of La Couvertoirade.

Lafuma Rose were the first to arrive (09.42), followed closely by Raidlight, Chauds Patates and Quechua who all came into CP1 together 9 minutes later. (This is Transition one, confusingly the race is calling all the transitions ‘checkpoints’.) This was set up just outside the walled town of la Couvertoirade, a fortified Templar town that is one of the major visitor attractions in the area.

Section two took place here, and this was a foot orienteering challenge which proved to be very demanding, but did offer teams the choice of how many of the 19 checkpoints they wanted to do.  Each one missed would cost a penalty of 20 minutes, but slower teams could move on around the course and avoid the exertion of running in the heat.

The course was on 3 maps, two specialist orienteering maps at 1/7500, and the other a town plan of la Couvertoirade. This showed 3 cps within the town itself, and another at the windmill on top of the hill just outside the fortified walls.  The planner here had aimed at a 90 minute course for the elite teams, but later had to admit to being ‘a bit ambitious’, with the leaders taking well over 2 hours.

“It is a difficult course,” he explained, “set to be of European series standard and to really test the teams. There are many boulders, walls, outcrops and tracks marked, and a lot of the paths are overgrown as well. In the heat it will be hard to get all the checkpoints.”

So it proved. Many teams looked at the map, thought better of it, and opted to get the nearest CP’s, including those in the town where they were running around among the tourists, ducking down alleyways and sprinting up stone staircases between the buildings.  It was a fun way to explore the 15^th century town and the tourist office was giving the same map out to visitors, who were trying to find some of the checkpoints themselves!

The teams who missed many checkpoints will have large penalties and as the elite teams took so long on the orienteering the race order changed so the first were last, and the last were first!  Of the top teams only 3 opted to get all of the checkpoints and avoid penalties, all of them taking about the same time to complete the orienteering course, around 2 hours 24 minutes. These were Lafuma Rose, Raidlight and Quechua. 

However there were others who missed only 2 distant checkpoints and returned in a quicker time, including the surprise package of the race so far, Team Chauds Patates. They were back in two hours, so lost 15 minutes against the full course teams due to penalties, but exerted themselves less in the 30 degree heat, and it may be that such strategic choices will play a key part in the competition to come.

Leaving La Couvertoirade the teams set off on their bikes again for a 49km cycling stage to the town of Viala-du-Pas-de-Jaux.

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