Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race 2010
Team Untamed New England Experiences the Untamed Wilderness of Patagonia
Harper Forbes / 01.03.2010
Following 20+ hours of travel, we spent the next few days in Punta Arenas cramming in registration, grocery shopping, packing our gear bags and passing the skills tests. At the race briefing we received the maps - a mix of rough satellite images on a 1:200,000 scale with the occasional 1:50,000 “contours only� detail, all featuring contour intervals of 100m! Such large scale maps would ultimately make navigating difficult, as we anticipated based on reports from previous years. Checkpoints were pre-plotted with recommended routes, which usually made good route-sense.
45 knot winds and 2 metre swells forced race organizers to cancel the paddle start at the Strait of Magellan. So we instead took a ferry across to Tierra Del Fuego and within minutes the race began with a half-marathon beach trek, which quickly turned into a beach run among the top half of the teams. Considering our ~25lb packs and the high head/crosswinds, we all redlined for the first few hours along the beach - not the start we expected but we made it into the first CP/TA in 5th. We assembled our bikes as soon as we could, but our slow transition (a recurring theme in this race for us) got us out in 7th, where we made our way along the gravel roads of Tierra del Fuego. Once on bikes, we were blown all over the place with a constant wicked 60-80km/h head/crosswind coming in from the Strait of Magellan.
The first 30km was a mentally exhausting exercise in pacelining along the coast that took us nearly 3 hours! We did get through it - albeit with several comical crashes - and managed to pass the 2 other teams that beat us out of the TA in the process. Once out of the head/crosswind we were pushed along at 35km/h with NO EFFORT, with some uphills requiring no pedalling at all.
We arrived at the next, TA in 5th place and prepared for the next trek. Unfortunately our transition bag - which included our detailed (1:100,000) trekking maps, food and clothing for the next section - had not yet arrived due to high winds causing the cancellation of the ferry carrying all of the teams’ gear. However, the race staff provided some food to all teams and our cycling clothing was still dry, so we were able to continue without any difficulty.
We decided to veer off the recommended trekking route and take the road to the next CP, opting to run for 1 min and speedwalk the next minute. We repeated this as long as we could for the ~40km through the night and into morning, arriving at CP5 shortly after the Swiss and Helly Hansen who were vying for 1st place. The same strategy paid off again en route to CP6, with uor team arriving 4 minutes before Helly Hansen and 10mins before the 3rd place Spanish team.
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