7 Cerros Medellin Urban Adventure Race
7 Cerros Urban Adventure Race Report 1
Jacob Thompson / 22.01.2010
The 3 day event began with an adrenaline filled boxcar descent down a steep and windy road cutting across one of the cities many forested parks. Teams ran to grab the first available boxcar and then had to maneuver their way through the chaos of two dozen boxcars trying to get by. Once they slipped out of the mass of competitors, the biggest challenge was controlling the rickety box cars as they reached speeds of up 20+ mph.
They were greeted at the bottom with a checkpoint and were sent straight back up the hill in search of the next one. Racers then continued with lengthier trekking sections, utilizing the race maps that offered limited information, they had to find their way through a complex maze of streets, waterways, and tunnels to get to the various checkpoints.
Around mid-day they replaced their running shoes with bike cleats and got on a city bike track where they had 25 laps to complete before they could continue. Jaako, of Team Multisport (Finlandia) said, "I have never cycled on a track before and was afraid it would be boring, but every lap people cheered `vamanos Finlandia - Let's go Finland` and it made it much more enjoyable."
Other teams shared a similar experience throughout the race, as they ran past markets and soccer matches, the people would all stop what they were doing; and whether they had any idea of the adventure race or not, they would all invariably cheer them on.
Locals from Medellin competing in the race were even surprised to encounter parts of the city that they had never been to, while the other national and international teams got a crash course on the beauty of Colombia and the city of Medellin.
Urban adventure races inevitably change your perspective of a city - while you might have normally continued down the street to a bridge over a shallow canal, you realize that you can easily just jump right over the water and get across much quicker or instead of taking the streets you might just recognize a great little singletrack on your way. In the end, these races have the ability to turn your every day city into an epic playground.
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