Raid in France
A River Runs Through It
Team Lozere Sport Nature / 03.10.2014
Build a team ahead of the race: check
Set up everyone’s role: check
Get mentally and physically prepared: check
Organize logistics concerns: check
While heading to Le Puy en Velay, we had examined almost each and every last detail, and our mindset and serenity makes us feel like we are almost invincible. The whole Raid in France family is here. Our brain unconsciously connects some images and feelings : seeing these faces, these smiles gives our brain some pleasure, there must be some emotions well hidden in the depths that rise up any time we see these flagships, these men and women who had already given so much to it in the past. And it is time to take a big piece of it again.
We quietly take care of the last arrangements. We even enjoy these moments, which are usually quite stressful. However attending the briefing and discovering the event’s schedule brings us back to it. We try to guess what the hills and canyons or rivers we’ll cross are, but quickly focus back again on decoding the road book in order to adopt our own course of action regarding mandatory equipment.
On the morning of D day, Agnès and Amelie, our 2 biggest fans, join us with an overwhelming amount of homemade delights in order to let our taste buds enjoy for the last time some delicious favours before going through tons of ziplocs, energy bars and other very yucky stuff.
Backpacks are done, containers and boxes have been weighed, we can now take our marks on the tiny start line for the Prologue. After a short run in the city, I take the map in first position, Oli, Fanny and Niko are here as well: let’s get out of here! After the 2 first checkpoints, I’ve made up my mind on the order of the checkpoints. Le Puy’s beautiful little streets are passing by quite well even though they’re pretty steep and we’re quickly heading back to the finish line. I unfold the map in order to make sure I haven’t forgotten any of the CP’s at the top or bottom: we’re good, and no team has shown up yet. But when Niko clears out the Sport Ident I realize the terrible mistake I’ve made: I’ve forgotten CP 50, so close, 150m away from the start/finish line.
Devastated, I first think about my team-mates who trust me, and whom I’ve put in a very bad position before the start of this challenge we have all been waiting for, for so many weeks, due to some lack of rigour from myself and too much pride. I can only blame myself and secretly promise to myself that it’s going to be the last mistake of the race... We then go through the 35k mountain biking connection section but my legs are not working so well.
Still thinking about the damned Prologue, we’re nestling in our sleeping bags for the ultimate restless night.
5:30am and we jump into our kayaks and leave the bank quickly. We’ve got a lot of CPs to check compared with our direct competitors, who I can already imagine are irreparably far away. After a few diagonals in this rounded-up lake, and some approximations getting close to the CPs, we finally get to the bike transition area as only a few headlights still fight on the water. I need to quickly familiarize with this tricky 1/50000 map, without letting panic get the better of me.
The first choices are smooth and we pass by many teams. As day dawns we head to the first transition area. We’re back in the top 5 already, only a few minutes away from the frontpack: the Prologue mistake blown away.
The next kayaking leg combines easy rapids and flat sections. We try to navigate cleanly, and need to regularly empty our boats. Again we make a quick transition onto a short trek with our kayak equipment with us. We team up at the front with Raidlight and Raid 74. We put on our swimsuits for a boring rafting section, water volume is critical – it’s too bad that EDF (French historical electricity company) did not allow us to play a bit in the waves.
Finally, at the next transition, the race is going start in earnest with a 95k bike leg. We leave the transition area with Raidlight for a first steep climb, and the warm sun tells me to keep it calm in order to save some energy for what’s coming next. We should have enjoyed our friends’ company more because that’s the last time we see them... we quietly find our own pace, orienteering still goes smoothly and we make our way quite well.
After 60k the sun goes down behind the hills, and we’re 25 minutes away from Raidlight. Nothing critical, all the more since we’ll be more comfortable with the coolness of the evening. We fill up at a fountain, nicking 4 apples from a tree and finish the last 25k of this first long section. Was it SnowWhite‘s apple (the apple was not red though) or was it Du Guesclin’s cold water that was too cold? I don’t know but my stomach starts buzzing. I stay calm, it often happens and then it stops. But the pain gets bigger and bigger, so I try to make myself throw up with no success.
Raid 74 takes us back and we carry on together with them. It gets harder for me to follow the pace and I often get out of the map until my stomach says stop and throw up. With an empty stomach, my glycaemia quickly falls. We finally get to the transition area, I feel really bad. Shivering, I can barely get ready for the next section, but thankfully Niko and Oli take care of my stuff, pack my bike and prepare my backpack, but we lose some precious minutes.
My lack of action is deplorable. We’re back to it again, even if I would have preferred disappearing into my sleeping bag. I force myself to read the map, trying to sip a bit of fruit salad syrup. We go down to the little valley where the first CP stands and walk along the river, trying to keep our feet dry, but we reach the meadow without any sight of the CP. We go backwards, my stomach ache has gone, as well as the thought of not letting our feet into the water. But still no CP, so we decide to forget it, and Raid 74 as well.
The rest of the trekking is quite painful, thinking that we might have left a CP, but at the next CP, we’re told that Raidlight did not find it either. We feel relieved but it does not facilitate our progression: we need to walk up the cold, cold river for a few kilometres and our only option out is via brambles and stinging nettles along the river. Oli does not understand that there is no other possible option so I try to re-boost the team, but motivation is not at its highest. We still manage to find a trail above the river for a few hundred meters but it finally vanishes and we have to go back in this damned river.
The sun rises and puts an end to our painful progression. We all agree to take a long break to try to soothe and preserve our feet but the pace still remains slow and motivation is quite low. Niko struggles with itching legs, he has red blotches all over his legs. We have to stop again to smear him with Betadine and to fill him up with antihistamines.
Thankfully it’s the return of our friends’ from Arverne, which puts the “Kid” back on track: at the foot of Mount Mezenc, Steph, David, Sed and Aurelie overtake us and give us all a second wind.
We double our pace and run over the hills, CPs, and kilometers with a totally different mindset. We finish this long section with our pursuers (Raid 74 and Arverne) and arrive at the first mandatory stop. If it had to be said, our Raidlight friends have irreparably gone away: they are 4 hours ahead of our trio. We change clothes, prepare the bikes, and start our first meal. We eat with no limits ... or almost no limits since Fanny does not seem really enthusiastic in front of her “aligot” (local meal).
However she forces herself to eat , but it doesn’t work that way and she throws up her whole meal. Never mind, we’re going to enjoy our 3 hour sleep, and everything’s gonna be alright. Despite ear plugs, we can hear the storm. After a light but restorative sleep we find our bikes back on the parking lot under a light rain and do not understand what has just happened there, it seems a storm has struck the area. We’d understand better later, when seeing the pictures and the amount of hail that fell down during these 3 hours.
Fanny does not look her best, but we start again full of good intentions. The rain stops and we can even enjoy the last sunbeams of the day. We meet Raid 74, then split again, and see them again, the same with Arverne. We finally finish this bike section with short gaps between our teams.
We’re in the middle of the night, it’s cold, and we need to put our wet wetsuits on again to rush towards the canyon of Haute Borne. We were so afraid of throwing ourselves into these cold waters that things happened to go quite well actually! However we do not lose any time in the pools and quickly reach the end of the canyon. We follow the river to get to CP 17, the sun is rising. Everything would be OK if Fanny could manage to eat a bit but she can’t swallow anything.
The steep climb up to CP 18 confirms that our miss is not doing well. Oli takes her backpack (at least when he does not fall asleep!) and Niko tries to accompany her while I look for the easiest way. The pass where the CP stands reveals what to expect: a big valley to cross in order to get to the next transition area, we can barely see from here. A sea of bushes stand before us.
I can see Raid 74 progressing with difficulty in the area so I decide to turn around the top of the hill so that we can go down directly towards the transition area and shorten our progression in the bushes. My team-mates do not seem convinced by this detour, but when we start going down, our pace is much easier than directly below the CP and we quickly hit the mapped trail. The end of our way down is undergrowth same as our way up. Raid 74 has been here for about 20 minutes and Arverne, whom we had seen on the ridge, have not arrived yet.
We make a good transition and leave the area on the heels of Raid 74, but Fanny still looks gloomy. I need to pay great attention to the orienteering because a few passages are tricky but we find the way quite easily, to the track and then the canoes. However a branch gets stuck in my gears and disturbs our fluid pace. Wizard Niko pushes, pulls and unfolds the gear mechanism, and I almost end up with a fully working transmission.
We cross the lake arm, and we carry on up to a place we are more and more familiar with. Up there, we can see no one on the lake, it seems we made a gap. At the Roure transition area, a few teams have been rerouted here: our friends from Agde Racing are down to 3 after Phil’s injury, XTTR, Elsa, Thierry, Denis... we lose a bit of time chatting, while Niko changes the derailleur and derailleur hanger of my bicycle. Fanny still cannot eat anything and I start to wonder how she manages to keep up.
We splash into the Chassezac and climb up to Garde Guérin. Them make a quick stop at the souvenir shop right below the tower and Fanny, who had dreamt of sushis for hours, finally finds her Graal: local smoked trout! She slowly swallows bite after bite whereas we stuff ourselves again.
We do not struggle finding our way down to Villefort lake on these well-known waters we’ve been navigating on all summer long. At each transition area we meet familiar faces, smiles, a few words that warm our hearts. At the start of “Our” section we are fired up. We start the trek on Mont Lozère feeling powerful, Fanny gets some colour back in her face: greenlight!
We climb at a good pace and quickly reach the first CP at the Eagle Chalet. We keep up our pace, CP12, long track where we run smoothly. CP13 & 14, and the way down to Masmejean seem quite supernatural as Oli and Fanny start to hallucinate, whereas Niko and me, still lucid for a few hours, do not want to miss any bite of their incoherent conversation.
We arrive at the transition area together in the rain and decide to take a nap under shelter for a few minutes. 15 minutes later we’re back on our bikes in some heavy rain. Despite the fact I know the area well I only notice we’re not on the right track after I fly over my bike, falling in a ditch. Time for a shortcut and we’re back on it.
Each one of us now starts to become sleepy and despite the rain, the wind and the coldness of the night, we are overwhelmed by somnolence. As we can’t chat together to keep awake, we all start talking to ourselves, and in this unreal environment we make slow progress, but without stopping. Orienteering is not easy and I need to concentrate a lot not to make any mistakes. Daylight finally comes, the rain calms down, and we can see the village of Vebron.
De-concentration and lack of success oblige us to climb back up to look for a trail because the one we were looking for does not exist anymore: 30 minutes lost. At the start of the next trek, we are told that the caving has been cancelled because the underground river has swollen too much. We hope it won’t be the same for the kayaking sections close to the Cevennes. We climb up the Mejean where rain and storm have been replaced by a thick fog. We walk through the hills, having a few difficulties orienteering, and finally get to Nîmes le Vieux.
After a big lack of concentration (approaching the transition again) and I move away from my team-mates to go find the CP. When I reach it, I then come back for them but find no trace of them, so I look around again thinking they might have found the CP as well, but do not find them. One more turn and I finally catch them. I tell them off, but we were all responsible for this mistake and we reach the transition area all quite irritated: 45 minutes stupidly lost due to some hastiness from myself.
The sun shows up a bit and accompanies us during the beautiful downhill and climb up below the Aigoual, that we can see through the clouds. Then comes a long ridge where Niko helps Fanny out one more time. We go down to the village of Oudret thanks to the advice of a local, and start the long climb up to Camprieu. Fanny has no energy anymore to ride her bike even though the climb is not so steep.
We can see the Valley of Happiness (the name of the river) right when the storm hits us with still a few thousands meters to go until we reach Assistance 2. It’s 7 pm and we’re informed that the stop will last 5 hours (instead of 3) and that the following kayaking section has been cancelled. Our friends from Raidlight are getting ready to leave, they are 4.5 hours ahead of us. But as we eat, they are finally stopped : the race has been stopped entirely. All the teams are being repatriated to Camprieu and we’ll be informed of the racecourse the following morning.
Pascal and his team masterfully manage the situation which must be terrible for them. We feel frustrated, we had found our pace, and the kayaking sections we’re usually so afraid of did not scare us this time as we had been prepared them pretty well. That's life.
The day after, Pascal explains to us that they are trying to organize a shortened finish with a bus transfer to Aigues-Mortes in order to do the horse riding section and the last trail along the beach. The horse riding was a super nice moment shared with the unreachable winners. And in the end all the teams crossed the finish line almost as if the race had been continuing normally all along.
We haven’t been able to fight for the victory as we imagined. Audrey, Seb, Adri and Toto were stronger, but in spite of this, it was so good! How lucky I am to race with such team-mates who know me, with whom a simple glance means a lot, who forgive, who allow so much, and who put you back on track when needed. We can tell anything to each other with no hidden agenda. Fanny, in a few months, has found her place amongst 3 unrefined, selfish and pig-headed guys. We needed more rigour and someone to ring the bell when we stopped, when transitions lasted too long, when we allowed ourselves to discuss for too long ... but I’m sure a 1.6m high and 45kg Fanny will play this unrewarding role in the future.
A huge thanks to this wonderful team, who is much bigger than the 4 guys racing: Agnès, Amélie, Audrey, Yohann, you have supported us, helped us out, transported us, lifted us, and cheered us up. At some crazy hours we discovered you on some remote transition areas whereas your days were already busy with work: hats off and thank you so much!
A new page of Raid in France was turned, a beautiful one. As usual, during the first night out, I promised myself that it would be the last one, and as usual I only think about one thing afterwards: do it again.
See All Event Posts
