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The Czech Adventure Race Starts Wednesday

Jan Smolik / 16.08.2010

Monster editions seem to be in fashion this year. The Czech Adventure Race follows the example of Explore Sweden and this year has the longest course in its history. While 480km looks short compared to some races, it is still a full 120 km longer than any previous edition.

“Participants are getting better, and in past years they were faster than the expected 50 hours, so we had to make the race a bit longer,� explains Race Director Tomas Vanek. “When you just look at the kilometer figure it seems long, but there will be a lot of really fast sections.�

An interesting feature of this year’s edition is that all trekking stages will be combined with skating. It will be up to teams to decide when to skate and when to walk. They can even leave their skates in the TA, if they think they are fast runners. There will be a lot of room for strategic decisions.

Even the canoeing stage will not be normal. Normally you would expect checkpoints on the river, but many of them will be on hills. Teams have to bring both canoes downstream, but during this stage the team does not have to progress together. “It is up to the teams whether three will paddle and one will run through checkpoints or if they will carry canoes on the shore. They can even let the canoes drift and just wait for them downstream,� laughs Tomas.

Altogether there will be two biking stages 100 and 190km long and two inline-trekking stages with lengths of 55 and 70km respectively. The canoeing stage will measure 60km and with current heavy rains it might get very interesting.

There are 17 registered teams, 5 of them foreign, including one Slovak team. It is first fully Slovak team on the Czech Adventure Race and as far as we know the first Slovak adventure racing team ever.

As for favorites, Czech team 'AlpinePro/Nutrend/Merida' and Polish team 'Code 34' should be really strong. AlpinePro won a race in Slovenia and they will compete in an even stronger formation. Danish team 'Roadrunners' had to cancel their participation almost at the last minute and last years winners OS-Direct from Ukraine cancelled some weeks ago.

The rest of the field will be also very interesting. There are many new and inexperienced teams so the fight for the last position will be even harder than for the front spots.

You can follow the race live on www.adventurerace.cz and also on Sleepmonsters.com.

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