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Race starts in 3 days

Jacqueline Windh / 01.04.2010

Am I ever glad that I was able to come here early. It is really hot here! Participants are required to arrive two days early, but I chose to get here 6 days early. So I am getting a few runs in in the heat, and I’m also spending all my time in the heat, no air-conditioning in my room, so that I can acclimatize to these temperatures (low to mid 30s, high humidity, and very hot in the sun) as thoroughly as possible.

The Guadarun crew seem to be really well organized. A flurry of email message to racers have gone out these last two weeks with all sorts of useful info. I had no idea where to stay this week, so they arranged my booking here at the Golf Village Hotel, in the village of St-François, on the island of Grande-Terre. This is where the sixth and final stage of the race will take place, and also where all of the racers will stay that last night (we are camping the rest of the time).

Race organizer Daniel Lerid picked me up at the airport, too, and drove me across to St-François - so I was able to quiz him a bit about this year’s race. There are 49 racers entered, and although they have had more of an international field in previous years, Daniel said that this year the majority of racers come from either France or Guadeloupe. He said around 10 of them have raced Guadarun before - some of them as many as 7 or 8 times!

Daniel is also the course designer. He is really excited about the places he is taking us. Each stage is on a different one of Guadeloupe’s many islands. “Make sure you have your camera,� he said, “because there will be some super views.�

Stages range from 15 km to 27 km in length, but he noted that the shorter stages won’t be super fast, as they are quite technical. “The season right now is what we call “carem�, our dry season,� he explained. “In some places, there will be so many dry leaves over the trails that it will be hard to know how to put your feet down.�

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