Estoril Portugal XPD Race
An “Athena� and 3 Spaniards in the Estoril Portugal XPD Race
Fernanda Maciel, Team Atenah Natura / 21.12.2007
So that was how I was invited, and of course I accepted. We had wanted to race together for a long time, and this was the perfect chance. We changed my return flight to Brazil, we organized for me to borrow a bike, and that was that... a Brazilian Atenah together with three Spanish guys (Antonio De La Rosa, Fran Villela and Aurélio Antonio Olivar).
The race took place on the beautiful Estoril coast, with its cliffs and rock formations - a wild coast.The Cascais and Sintra national Park also is fixed in my meory. We passed the Castle dos Mouros, and the Pena and Vila palaces, and arrived at Cabo da Roca (Rocky Cape), the westernmost point of continental Europe. We also hit some PC’s located on beaches where dinosaur fossils could be found, or in tiny peaceful villages – always with a cafe where we could resupply with food and order a large cup of coffee.
The Estoril Portugal XPD Race did not have obligatory sleep stops, so managing this was the choice of each racer – choosing how they wanted to run each section. In this way, what really was important was STRATEGY!
The objective was to complete the entire course hitting the maximum number of obligatory and optional PC’s, always keeping in mind: speed, pace, strength, and sleep strategy, in order to be able to complete all of the sections of the race – since each stage had a starting time. For example, for us to be able to start the final trekking stage of the race, we had to pedal really hard and bypass some of the optional PC’s in order to arrive there before 12:00 noon on the day of the 9th, the starting time of that stage. We arrived at 11:55, ufa!
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