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River High ... River Low

Susan McKenzie / 12.09.2006

There are certain givens in adventure racing: teams will get lost, feet will get blistered and some point, somewhere in the first few days of the race, a dark zone or a cut off will split the field in two, maybe even three.

At the Raid World Championship in Quebec, that split took place around four o’clock this afternoon, on the Malbaie River. Teams not already on the Malbaie River were not allowed to get on it, and those teams still paddling had to reach the dam at Clermont (CP 23/TA9) by seven pm or else have to pull over and camp on the water overnight. (In fact, teams could stay on the water until 7:30pm and face a penalty of five minutes for every minute past seven pm they were paddling.) The dark zone lasts until 6am.

Teams that have to wait for the dark zone to be lifted will have that rest time deducted from the total number of sleep hours required during the race, so all won’t lost, but still they’ll be so far behind the lead teams that it will be virtually impossible to really challenge for victory.

After 139 kilometres of mountain biking a sleep might be welcome, but eleven hours might be considered excessive on any given day, never mind the middle of an adventure race.

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