Team adidas TERREX Win Iberian Adventure Racing Championships

Nick Gracie / 13.07.2010

Team adidas TERREX continued their recent unbeaten international track record at the weekend by winning the Iberian (Spanish & Portuguese) Adventure Racing Championship. After winning the World Championships in Portugal last November and the Wenger Patagonia adventure race in Chile in February the team battled hard to win the Somoza Extreme race in the Galician region of northwest Spain.

After a short direct flight from London we were met at La Coruna airport and driven 1 hour to the picturesque Spanish village of Somaza in the mountains. We were put up in a fantastic brand new boutique hotel and after a late dinner of squid and octopus we hit the hay for the following day’s adventure.

The race start and finish was in the centre of the village and the format consisted of a number of loops from the event base which acted as the transition hub. The first stage consisted of a short 1 hour run followed by stage 2 which was a bike stage with a tough and technical running section in the middle. By the end of stage 2 we had opened up a 15 minute lead on the second place team.

Stage 3 was a fantastic mountain bike stage including a few big climbs and fast descents, while stage 4 was a long, tough run with plenty of off-track bush bashing and running down rivers. After finding one of the checkpoints in a waterfall Eliot’s shin had a tussle with a large rock which gashed his leg open. We got to the end of the run and our lead was still 15 minutes, but the Spanish team Bimon Nutrisport in second place were looking strong and pushing hard.

So we headed off on to the final bike stage which had a 7km paddle in the middle. We maintained our 15 minute lead, but had to work very hard for it and after 12 hours and 45 minutes of flat out racing we had run 32 hard km and cycled 103 km with over 3000m of ascent. The final stage of the race was the following morning which was a short 8km run./ With a 15 minute lead we were comfortable but things can always go wrong so we pushed hard. Bimon Nutrisport were a little quicker on the day and beat us by 3 minutes but it was not quite enough and we held on to our lead to win the race by 12 minutes.

Anthony Emmet and Eliot Challifour joined team captain Nick Gracie. Anthony did an amazing job navigating the team around a technical course and using Spanish maps for the first time. Eliot joined the team for the first time, a former GB triathelte, X-Terra World Champion and a sub 9 hour iIonman he acted as the team workhorse and enjoyed the race though he said it was much harder than any Ironman race.