Adventure Racing World Championship 2006
Its a Little, uhh Complicated
Jeff Akens / 16.08.2006
The first several hours of the race had the teams competing in four different disciplines. They started with a short sprint, followed by an uphill inline skating section two kilometers long, then a technical mountain bike course that led to a canyoneering section.
Some teams chose to run with their skates and avoid the time loss associated with putting on and taking off skates. Many teams aren\'t particularly skilled on inline skates, for this reason race director Mikael Nordstrom allowed kickbikes as an option. A kickbike (or scooter) is a safer albeit slower method of travel, it also tends to burn the quads a bit, the savvy kickbiker knows to change legs regularly.
Once teams completed the 13 kilometer mountain bike section they were treated to a short canyoneering section, in full wetsuits and personal flotation devices teams climbed, crashed and crawled down the Murtserjukke river for 5 kilometers. The river was fast flowing and had several manditory jumps of 5 meters or more. The teams worked their way out of the river back on the bikes and off to TA 2, 25 kilometers away.At TA 2 teams dropped their bikes and had to retrieve the maps for the following orienteering section, unfortunately the maps were on the bottom of the Tarnaforsen Bay. Team members had to swim out to a group of bouys between 20 and 200 meters from shore then dive down and find them. There were enough maps for all teams to get one, but some bouys had maps and some didn\'t, they just had to go and look, such is life. Then the teams set out on the 12 kilometer trekking/orienteering section followed by the first big mountain bike section, 44 kilometers, 6 hours.
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