Spanish Adventure Racing Championships

Antonio de la Rosa / photos Rafael Ruíz Fuente / 01.10.2007

The winning team arrived 9:00 Sunday morning at the mountain station La Pinilla after roller-blading 8 km, with an ascent of 400 m, from Cerezo de Arriba. Team Buff-Coolmax (Nuria Domínguez, Pablo López and Francisco López) were the fastest to cover the 222 km route, without stopping or sleeping, in 25 hours of competition.

In this race, the 10 best teams of the Spanish Adventure Racing League wore GPS + GPRS units as part of a new system to allow teams to be seen and followed live over internet.

The start of the competition took place the previous day at 8am in the city of Segovia, under the famous ancient Roman Aquaduct, starting with an urban orienteering task through the city. The teams (Elite category with 3 racers and in Adventure category with 2 racers) had to find the answers to a series of questions by finding and reading interpretive signs at various historic sites in the city.

After the orienteering, they had to skate 6 km to the town of La Granja. From here they started on the longest and toughest section of the race: a 29 km trek, in which they had to ascend La Silla de El Rey, going around the gardens of La Granja and ending up in Torrecaballeros.

The hours of racing in the heat started to take their toll on the competitors, although up to this point all teams were continuing in the competition. In Torrecaballeros they took their bikes to ride to Cantalejo, along a route that was slow going due to lots of sand on the trails.