RAIDARAN-LLEIDA PIRINEUS

A Monster Mountain Biking Section

Anne-Marie Dunhill / 21.07.2016

The first night on the RaidAran was cold with storms breaking throughout the mountains. Teams transitioned to their bikes in Esterri d’Aneu and headed out into the night.  The road book hinted at what awaited them but the reality of the terrain tested even the strongest of teams. The section was “only” 55km long but with 2,600m elevation gain,  there was no respite.

Section 5 ended in the village of Areu which is composed of dark stone dwellings.  Thule arrived first and had a pressing issue to deal with. They had broken one of their mountain bikes and had to quickly find a solution in order to maintain their lead. They found a villager who was willing to lend them his bike as long as they left their bike with him. It was in this way that a local family in Areu learned of adventure racing and apparently they are now avidly following the tracking and Facebook posts since they are in a way part of the team that is currently in the lead.

At TA 5, Pavel Paloncy of Fenix Multisport said that last night was cold but that he prefers the cold and suffers in the heat. He added that his team had lost a backpack on the kayak section yesterday so they had a lot to carry. As he spoke, he was using duct tape to attach his trail running shoes to his bike.

Christian, team captain of SAFAT, said that the night had been “interesting.” The use of the word interesting is surely international code for “shit went down.” When asked to elaborate, he said that “everything takes longer because of the altitude. We had to push our bikes uphill.” Cecilia added, “The night was either uphill or down, nothing was flat. Last night was pretty hard, mentally tough. It’s usually fun to ride uphill because you get to ride down afterwards but here we also had to walk our bikes downhill.”

Silver Eensaar of the Estonian ACE Adventure Team blurted out, “In Estonia the highest point is 318m so we really struggled with the altitude and it was tiring hiking with the bikes downhill! We were surprised because it’s taking much longer than expected.” He briefly mentioned their experience travelling through Turkey to the race shortly after the attempted coup d’état.  “The flight was delayed by 24hrs, there were a lot of people in the streets, it was a bit nerve wracking and we weren’t sure if we’d make it.” One of his teammates had been struggling with health issues yesterday and as we spoke Mariann Sulg was getting her bloody left knee tended to by medics.

The difficult night had obviously had a devastating effect on team 17, Raidermania Elx Outlet del Descanso as one of their team members withdrew from the race at this transition and the remaining 3 members are continuing unranked. The race director Xavi just confirmed to me that he thinks that team 7, Dutch Adventure, will be doing the same.

Update: Patrick Martina just came into the bar where I’m writing and asked to pay for a cold coke with a credit card. When told that they wouldn’t accept a card for such a small purchase, press and organization all chimed in, “we’ll buy you your coke!” He confirmed that Wout van Hoof was doing too poorly to continue. He said that he was pretty exhausted as well from having pulled a team member extensively on the lead rope the first day. Speaking about the monster 55km mountain biking section he said, “the down hills weren’t technical, they were impossible!”

At 14:36, the Spanish team, Aventura X-Perience from the Catalonia region were sitting in the transition tent eating sausages and pasta provided by the organization. Yolanda Fernàndez del Campo looked exhausted but she said that she was determined to finish the race for her teammates. She said,  “They keep cheering me on and cheering me up, pinching my cheeks and saying ‘you’re doing great’!” A 42 year old ultra runner who has competed in well-known international races such as UTMB or the North Face Lavaredo Ultra Trail she stated that this is her first non-stop adventure race; “as a runner my legs don’t hurt at all but everything else does! My back, my shoulders, my arms…” She was sporting a beautiful lion tattoo on her right arm so hopefully she’ll be able to call on that force to get her through the rest of the race.

The transition area closed at 15:00 today, July 21st and the lead teams are currently only 1 minute apart. We are waiting for the lead teams to arrive back from the trek; they left transition 5 at 07:30 and at 16:59 have not yet returned. The section 6 is mountain biking followed by a high mountain trek that will take teams to all of the peaks over 3,000m in this region and they had to pack crampons and ice axes in their packs. CP 55 has been cancelled on this section due to security concerns. It will be interesting to see how the teams fared after the difficult, technical section of stage 5.

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