BANDORAID - Spanish Championship AR 2012
Team CATRAID Trangoworld are Champions of Spain
Translation by German Cuevas Alonso (Adventure Feeling) / 07.06.2012
After the Catalan Championship, winning the Garraf Raid and taking fourth position in the European Championship in Corsica, team CATRAID Trangoworld won the Championship of Spain 2012, which took place in Ronda (Malaga).
This time it was the turn of Judith, Gerard, David and with the impeccable assistance of Xavi R. to face the heat of Andalusia in June.
The team was lively and concentrated, but aware that it would be very difficult as the best teams in Spain would race and they would not make things easy. Furthermore, in 3 sections of the route we had the option of moving separately to checkpoint to gain time. This was one of the points where we had some headaches, teams with 3 good navigators could make a lot of time.
With orientation with 3 maps the Raid began and we decided to take it quietly and go carefully. From the beginning we separated, Gerard to do complete all of his map, Judith to do the less complicated checkpoints on her map, and David to complete part of his map, find Judith and between the two of them finish the two maps.
The strategy was not too bad and we arrived at the transition to a technical and physical trekking stage in fifth place. The trek began with a technical section where we had to make our way through the bushes to make progress and then took us to the top of a rock in the north of the reservoir of Zahara. After another great cross country downhill and coming to reservoir, we swam across just before taking the kayaks.
Now we had to paddle for 7km and with a strong wind blowing it seemed that were at sea rather than on a reservoir.
Next we were skating, 6km uphill to find the mountain bikes. This bike section was very fast and we visited some fantastic places, especially the pit where we had a special test shot with a blowpipe! In this section we left Haglofs behind and caught the Sherpa team, although the latter left us a few kilometers before the transition.
Now came one of the key sections, difficult navigation that would take us to the town of Ronda. As we had at the start we aimed to make no silly mistakes or waste time and we managed to pass the Sherpa team. Now it was time for climbing quickly and to separate again, one would make a rappel and jumar about 45m, another was going to complete a via ferrata and the third had to cross the river by a kind of canyon.
We arrived at the transition and took the opportunity to eat well, then grabbed the lights for a bike ride, the toughest section of the race with 32km of mountain biking including 1300m of ascent and 800m of descent. After about 5 miles we realised something is wrong! We don’t want to fail now, then we see some antennas on top of a mountain. We have a destination. An hour's climb and a quick drop and we take the track down to transition.
Now, we eat well, marinated tomatoes! Xavi is a genius, who would have thought to prepare a "tupperware" with marinated tomatoes? Now we have only the 17km walk to complete.
Finally, after 17 hours of racing we arrived back at Ronda where the first stage had taken place.
On Sunday, the race would be explosive. First came an orientation stage in which we could separate, two on foot and one on a mountain bike with the same 3 maps. Looking at the map we decided we would split: Gerard and Ju walked together, reaching 16 of the 42 checkpoints and going straight to the transition, while David aims to do the rest. We were really successful and completed the stage in an hour, the fastest time predicted by the organization. We nailed it.
We had maintained second place overall and victory in the Championship of Spain the first mixed team to finish the race.
We raced for enjoyment and the result is the icing on the cake. The four racers in the team complement each other well and this team work helped us to become the Champions of Spain.
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