International Raid Temiscamingue
Raid Temiscamingue: Improvise-Adapt-Overcome
Carrick Armer / 08.09.2024
The final day of the Raid Temiscamingue dawned, well, just as grey and wet as day one. If anything, a little greyer and a little wetter.
As predicted, the rain and wind made the cancellation of the first canoe section an easy bet, while Plan B became Plan C or D and the original 7am start became 8am. On the original plans, the Timiskaming First Nation leaders had offered a sunrise ceremony at 6:15am; with was not much sunrise to be seen, the sunrise ceremony became a drumming ceremony and 6:15am became 7:45am to warm the racers up just pre-start.
With the cancellation of the canoe, the event team had worked hard overnight to reconfigure the early stages, not just for the racers but for the support crews as well, as transition purposes changed and activities were altered or dropped. After the drumming warm-up, the race started with a short run before a transition onto bikes and then a fast ride down the main highway and onto gravel roads, to bring the racers back to what would have been the end of the canoe and onto the originally planned foot bushwhack and trail running stage.
With the heavy rains, some of the trails were running like small streams, and the clay-heavy saturated mud meant those racers not in good grippy trail shoes were resorting to running in the scrub at the edges, as it was less treacherous than the main trail itself, escpecially on the downhill. One CP towards the end of this stage was originally slated to include a one-person swim out to a bouy, but for the sake of avoiding hypothermia this was removed and the previously 'non-assisted' run-bike transition became assisted.
The next bike leg became, like yesterday's moose CP, a small catalogue of possibly-uniquely-Canadian checkpoints. 'CP11 is at the Sugar Shack' was one of the more unique ones at a local producer of maple syrup; 'CP13 is on a seaplane' being another fairly specific option.
The next major activity was another Endurance Aventure specialty, though: A rappel-zipline across and into a flooded quarry. A short 'guided abseil' section at the start of the descent was put in place mainly to stop racers accelerating too much: being a flooded quarry there was nowhere to put in braking lines, so one member of the team effectively abseiled down to and then off the end of a rope before the zipline took over and skimmed them across the lake. With help from a safety crew in a canoe they then unclipped themselves from the line and swam ashore - lighter racers had the advantage of getting furtehr across the lake on the zipline so had a shorter swim, though Clelia Ponteri (one of those who'd made it the furthest on the line) remarked that it was warmer in the water than it was out of it - windchill being the biggest problem.
Back on the bikes to warm up, and then the racers continued onwards to a short canoe and cable ladder climb, sited at an historic covered bridge. After a short paddle up a swollen, but fortunately not overly fast flowing, river to a checkpoint, the pairs returned to the bridge where one of the team clipped in to a belay line and climbed a caving cable ladder up the outside of the bridge while the other paddled their boat ashore solo. Cable ladders are a thing that takes some technique, and while some teams made it look very easy, some more inexperienced climbers made it look quite difficult - not helped by the fact the instruction and safety demo before the race started didn't involve actually climbing the ladder, just some tips on how you did it. Obviously not information everyone managed to retain.
As the rain began to abate and the wind finally began to drop, the final few checkpoints in St-Bruno-des-Guigues could be ticked off; first a transition at L'Eden Rouge, a local farm shop, where the volunteers were handing out blueberry muffins and food boxes to teams and support crews; then a long crawl through a culvert under the road, requiring head torches as well as bike helpets despite being on a foot stage; and finally a CP on the historic house Domaine Breen, built in 1906. After that, a short final run took the racers into the finish line at the Western Festival site, where the race gong, medals, showers and warm clothes awaited them.
When the slightly soggy dust settled, the young Finns of Northern Adventure Team had taken the win, pushing hard all day to clear their 4 minute deficit, though at the prize giving they acknowledged their rivals in Def Leoppard who'd stopped to assist on Day 1 when Lauri Hollo had had a fall while on one of the running stages that left him dizzy and needing a couple of stitches to fix a small but deep cut on his top lip. Def Leoppard had worked hard to stay in contact, but perhaps the removal of the longer canoe stage swung the course in favour of the Finns.
In the Female pairs, Team Uterati took the win, with Una Hall also paying tribute to their rivals for stopping to help them when they'd capsized their boat on Day 1, saying that "we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for these teams - they saved our butts. We flipped the boat an hour and a half into the race."
In the Mixed pairs, Raid Bras du Nord / 100B7 took the win - although Lyne Bessette confessed at the prize giving that she was disappointed she hadn't beaten her friends Patrick and George (Team Def Leoppard).
We'll wrap-up with the full results when we get them, but until then, the race is over, the awards ceremony and banquet were beautiful, and the weather seems to be improving, albeit a little late for the race itself...
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