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Calling International Adventurers

Rob / 18.09.2003

At the end of day 5 of Reunion d’Aventures we spoke to Primus Lambert of Team International Adventurers. With his remaining two team members he was camped for the night high up in the mountains, sitting round a fire and eating oranges, looking forward to the first clear night the team have had on the race. Meanwhile the winners have already finished the course, and the International Adventurers support crew are down on the coast, relaxing in a luxury hotel. It’s a strange race this one!

“We left the track just before the 6pm deadline and found a ready-made campsite, “ Lambert said, “it’s perfect and we should have a fine night. The organisers telephone us each night to check our position and GPS log records where and when we stop, then we have 12 hours in our sleeping bags! I don’t get this much sleep at home. In fact we are getting far too much, we’re in bed by 7.30 and it’s hard to stay asleep until morning. I think our bodies are going into recovery and it can be hard to get going again�

“We saw the support crew this morning, and they are doing a great job, though we’ve only seen them a few times. They have long drives up from the coast to get to the TA’s, so they are the ones having the early starts while we have a lie in! We’re pressing on though at a steady pace and it’s been a good experience.

The scenery is unbelievable but we didn’t expect it to be so, so steep. There has been something like 11,000m of ascent – yesterday we were trekking for 12 hours, 10 of them uphill. We went close to the top of Piton des Neiges, then down into Cirque Cilaos for the canyoning

“In fact most of the route has been trekking, far more than we expected. The first Mtb stage was 5 hours and we spent only 40 minutes on the bikes, the rest of time we were pushing and carrying. Today has been good though. We started with a fantastic abseil down a waterfall into a deep canyon, but missed the second canyon, before climbing up, and up, to our current campsite. Tomorrow we should reach the bike transition and make it down to the swim at the finish. I’m looking forward to a beer in that hotel.�

The team had in fact missed a race cut-off at CP13, but were allowed to continue with others on a new course for slower teams, now called the ‘Discovery Class’. Race Director Gerard Fusil introduced this as conditions have been so difficult with the exceptionally bad weather. Fortunately, CP13 also doubles as CP15, so they missed the second canyon, and also the climb. Only 5 teams did the tough climb, and the leaders were held there for a while by heavy rain. Sadly, no one had a go at the paragliding either.

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