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Day 6: Another beautiful and varied route on the island Grande-Terre

Jacqueline Windh / 11.04.2010

At 26 km, it was one of our longest routes of the week. On top of that, we all knew that heat would be the big challenge of the day: a scorching sun, and a later-than-normal start at 9 am, which would have most of us on the course through the hottest hours of the day.

It’s the first time that I’ve really paid attention to race results and my own rankings. But last night, as I reviewed the overall results, I realized that I was 7th-place female in the overall rankings. Karine was a half hour ahead of me, so I had little hope of catching her. Martine was 9 minutes behind me and Valerie another 4 minutes behind her. Martine and Valerie are both much better runners than me; if today’s route were more technical terrain, I’d have a pretty good chance of holding that place.

But it was a pretty runnable route, so I’d have my work cut out to hang on to that position. My only hope was to do what I am good at - race management - and do everything right, especially in terms of hydation and electrolytes given the heat we were expecting, and hope that that paid off for me.

We set out from the Hotel Golf Village just afer 9am. It was already hot at 7am - by 9am the sun was burning down on us. I was feeling great, though. The pain in my quads had subsided a lot and was much more manageable, and I had no blisters in spite of yesterday’s wet route. And I was just generally feeling strong, and I really attribute that to being very regimented in eating a big hit of protein (sardines, paté, or beef jerky) within the first half-hour after arrival after each stage, which aids hugely in muscle recovery for multi-day events.

I started a but ahead of my usual group, and decided to really push hard by barely walking at all. I took frequent walking breaks, but only for 20 or 30 metres at a time, as I worked into a good rhythm. Martine and Valerie were slowly moving further ahead of me - and I realized it would be tough to maintain the slim lead I had on them. We started on dirt roads and, after 5 km, headed on to sandy tracks at the back of the beach. This 5 km section was a two-way part of the race - at the end of it was a 5km loop around the tip of Grande-Terre’s easternmost point, then we returned along the same track. I hoped to finally see the frontrunners along this section.

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