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Rush Hour

Rob Howard / 11.11.2009

Transition areas are usually quite places. For most of the time support crews and staff are waiting, and waiting and waiting. Teams when they come through are resting and eating, then preparing to set off on the next stage. But tonight at 21.00 at AP3 in the World Championships the atmosphere was electric as teams rushed to check out before the crucial race cut-off.

With the race clock on display and ticking down few teams were resting in the hour before the cut-off. They needed to plan ahead and that took time. Team Helly Hansen Prunesco had all the maps laid out and quickly decided the next stage was impossible for them to achieve. Then they had to figure out what to do! That was not so easy. Questions which there was not enough time to answer quickly came to mind. What happens if just go to sleep and miss this cut-off? What happens if we miss the closing time at the end of the next stage? Can we cut the trek short? Can we cut the bike short? How many CP's do we miss doing each of those options?

The logistics were mind-bending, but they worked though them and came up with a plan to shorten the mountain bike ride and miss only 3 checkpoints. They also decided to miss the first jumar CP, so there was no need to paddle across the river, sort kayak and climbing gear, jumar, and possibly queue at the jumar. Tom Gibbs, the team navigator, said, "It doesn't save us a lot of distance but it does save us time." Other teams like Orion preferred to use the time to get some sleep

As the clock approached 21.00 the rush of teams checking out increased, support crews and teams rushed about shouting to find each other and grabbing their gear while the race director shouted out a countdown. Many teams checked out and then seemed unsure what to do next! Orion had only just woken up and their only plan seemed to be to go down to the river bank and go to sleep again. Nike too were very uncertain and did not seem to be leaving with a plan in mind!

In the midst of all this mayhem the all-girl Arena team from Russia were getting changed and repacked after arriving a little earlier, and hoping to make the cut-off ... but they just missed it. The presented themselves to the Assistant Race Director at 21.02 and he had to tell them they were too late and explain their options to them. They were disappointed, but the prospect of sleeping for some hours softened the blow.

Unofficially it looks like 21 teams checked out ahead of the cut-off and unofficially they are as follows; 32, ,31, 33, 02, 05, 10, 14, 20, 53, 12, 45, 40, 49, 21, 29, 8, 7, 22, 44, 41, 3.

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