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Inline all the way!

Jan Smolik / 20.08.2010

Throughout the inline-skating stage team were able to choose whether to skate or run? And the CPs were located in a fashion to make this a difficult decision. All the CPs for the inline-trekking stage were located at the tops of hills but still, every team decided to take skates. By the start of the inline-skating stage one team had withdrawn , as they could not locate CP8 and got lost. The skating stage claimed a second team due to injury.

Team AlpinePro/Nutrend/Merida were able to ride fast, and returned at 2 a.m. They were able to continue quickly with just thirty minutes in the TA. Other teams were not that fast. Lokal Blok, second before this stage, lost one place during inline-trekking and slept for full 90 minutes. They left the TA after three hours in seventh place. We do not know their reason yet, but everyone was surprised. Estonian Ekstreem Adventure has moved to the third place.

Next stage was 60 km of paddling on a relatively slow flowing river. However, it was not so easy as most CPs were located on hills along the river course. Teams were allowed to split, so somebody could run and pick CPs and other paddled. The Estonian team decided to tow their canoes on skates and from the TA set off into the forest – an Interesting decision? It soon proved a bad choice and they returned to the water, losing time in the process.

In the middle of this stage at Kacov, AlpinePro was still first, but Kompar XStream had placed second. Not a big surprise as these are the two most experienced teams in the race. Kompar even started to close the gap. At Kacov there was another special task - climbing, and the penalty for failing the task was an interesting one ... Instead of running, teams who failed to climb had to swim. It motivated teams to greater effort! Many would prefer running to losing time climbing, but they tried much harder when the alternative was cold, mountain water.

From Kacov teams continued paddling to Cesky Sternberk, and onto another inline-trekking stage back to race center in Ledec. AlpinePro was moving fast in first place gained some minutes over Kompar XStream. Their only problem was their female racer ‘Bara’ has no brakes on her bike currently, and her team are having to slow her down by holding onto her backpack!

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