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Death by a Thousand Cuts

Rob Howard / 13.11.2009

As the race moves towards it's finish on the coast of Portugal tomorrow morning teams throughout the field are racing against the clock as much as each other, trying to make the final series of cut-offs and section closing times. Race leaders Nike Beaver Creek have spent days racing hard to beat cut-off times and today was no exception. If anything the pressure increased as they raced to arrive at TA14 by 14.00, and then had to plan for another stage closure at 02.00 tomorrow morning.

Having left T13 at Aldeia do Mato with only 3 hours to make the 50km ride to T14 and collect two CP's they looked to be hard pressed, but sure enough they swung into T13 with 10 minutes to spare and checked out again only a couple of minutes of the cut-off. Monique Merrill looked red faced and said, "We put the hammer down then! We were cruising along when all of a sudden Chris said we needed to get a move on, then we went flat out, and were not helped by following another team the wrong way near the end." Despite the time pressure they had managed to get both CP's and maintain their lead, but once they'd checked out they needed to stop just outside transition to eat, rest and look at the maps for the next section.

Their navigator Chris Forne said, "I've not even looked at those maps yet." When he did he spent some time trying to figure out the team's best course of action to the end of the race. At that time there was no information on race positions available to the team and they were divided on what they thought the position was. George Christison felt the team had a comfortable lead, but Mike Kloser was much more cautious.

Forne was struggling to see a good route to the CP'S on the next trek, mainly because of the instruction to only follow paths due to national park restrictions. This made route finding exceptionally difficult and there seemed to be no easy line to take. Also the terrain was hilly and this was the area where teams had been warned of the labyrinth of high stone walls which it would be easy to get lost in. After a while and a few timing calculations he decided to take a direct route to T15 at Alvados, missing out some of the CP's on the stage, to ensure the team started the next riding stage before 02.00 on Saturday morning.

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