The Wilderness ARC
Course Changes & Worse Weather to Come
Rob Howard / 23.08.2005
Race Director Phil Humphreys described the forecast weather map for Wednesday as “a mass of closely packed isobars right over the top of us.� The prediction for Ben Nevis is for winds of 90-100mph and possibly even for snow over 1000m, so the decision was simple – the Ben Nevis stage had to be cancelled. The course was designed with this possibility in mind, and with good reason, twice in the past Raid World Series events have tried to race across Ben Nevis, and had to cancel the stage due to bad weather. So, it’s Ben Nevis/Scottish Weather 3: Adventure Racing 0.
Teams will now take the adventure course route, a quick short cut to TA5, where kayaking up the Caledonian Canal begins. At the time of writing (17.45 Tuesday only leaders Aberdeen Asset Management have taken this short cut.)
The position of TA4 on the northern side of Ben Nevis was also changed, moved 1km down the road to an Auction Mart. It’s used for cattle auctions but it’s a large building where teams can spread out in dry conditions, and both Aberdeen Asset Management and Live Life slept there on arrival. All teams are being given a 3 hour rest stop there, and any time penalties from the prologue and the ‘time out’ on the Aonach Egach ridge are also being served here to bring the competition back to true race time.
Aberdeen Asset Management and Live Life had been racing side by side at Kinloch Leven, half way along the mountain bike ride on stage 3, but by the time they arrived at the new Transition 4 Aberdeen Asset Management had a 16 minute lead. As they had a 90 minute time credit from the previous night when a checkpoint was misplaced they also left much earlier than Live Life, giving them a good lead and the chance to extend it before night fell.
Whether they will do the full route as planned on the ‘Monster Trek’ from TA6 to TA7 is also open to debate given the weather forecast and the fact the route goes to high elevations in a very remote area. It’s possible there will be further course changes here.
SleepMonsters
