Raid Gauloises
4000 Steps Downhill
Pino / 05.05.2002
Giuseppe is heading for the coast, after leaving Assistance Point 3, when he spots the Iberian team Buff making their way down the 4000 steps leading from the shrine at the summit of Mount Yaen Tu to the short trek just before the final sea-kayaking section.
Stop the car! Off in the horizon I can see 5 pairs of orange, lycra leggings moving quickly and it can only mean one thing: team Buff have just left CP40, at 1068 metres, and are on the way to the home stretch and Cat Ba. On my command the driver leaves 4 black lines on the tarmac about 30m long and, as the traffic behind reacts, and we nearly cause a 10 car, 4 motorbike, 7 bicycle and 2 water buffalo pile up!
I grab my trusty voice recorder and leap from the van before it stops. The team are about 1 kilometre away and it’s hot, hot, hot! To get my interview I have to run across rice-paddies, over a garden wall, dodge a plough and fend off a mob of curious school girls but, with sweat in my eyes and my heart in my throat, here’s what they said.
Mark, you have 6th place pretty much in the bag, and with 20kms to hike and 130kms to paddle, are you going to take it easy? \"Well, we dropped an hour today because we got lost! So we are keeping the tempo up. We were on our way to CP40, which is a hard assent in this heat, and we felt a bit uneasy about the path we were following. Sure enough after 1/2k it seemed to double back on itself and we had to back track. The routes on this mountain are not clear like the ones you and I know and they go here, there and everywhere. The vegetation is very dense and even though we are heading uphill, you quickly loose your bearings because you cant see more than 2 feet ahead.
How has your day been since breakfast? \"The paddling on the lake after assistance point 3 was very relaxing! We were totally exhausted on our bikes just before we reached our assistance, so we decided to sleep about 5kms before we arrived, just to ensure we weren’t disturbed. Assistance points can get very noisy so when we turned up we ate, changed and got out of there. The water on the lake was dead calm, and it was easy to take it easy.
Belen, have you enjoyed yourself? \"Uhm, yes and no. Sometimes I think to myself ‘what am I doing?’ but then we might arrive at a beautiful spot and we remember why we are here. This is a lovely country but the race has been the hardest and longest ever and it feels like it. When we cross the finishing line we will enjoy that moment the best\".
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