Ecomotion/Pro
Day 4 - Making Sense of the Course
Louise Foulkes (ARWS) / 15.08.2013
Well those trekking legs were certainly the make or break legs. Timings for both of them have blown right out and the course has been chopped and changed in order to speed things along.
On the ground, teams are still really enjoying it out there. There is a lot of interaction with local villagers as they look for food and importantly, ask the way! Villagers are welcoming them into their houses and in some instances cooking them food and giving them areas to sleep.
Now to those squiggly lines on the trackers and how to make sense of them ...
Firstly, there was a short course (cut as they call it here in Brazil) that took effect at 7am this morning. Any team that left CP21 after 0200 had to proceed straight to CP34. If you look closely at the map, you can see a lot of teams headed in this direction already.
This 7 am cut off means that only 4 teams are on the Full Course. These are Columbia Vidaraid, Equipe BMS, Seagate and QuasarLontra.
Columbia Vidaraid are starting to look quite tired. In particular their navigator had large red rings around his eyes at CP34.
Equipe BMS are looking tired as well. Nick Gracie said he is “feeling like the team Dad” and that they are getting along well. They had a lot of fun trekking with Seagate from CP21 to 24.
Seagate have now banked close to 11 hours of sleep in the race. 5 when they were lost and 3 at CP21 and 3 at CP24. Dougal Allan (the late ring in) said “it is a lot of fun racing with the team. They are only worried about their own race and don’t even think about the teams around them”.
QuasarLontra are the last team still on the full course. Again, they are the anomaly. They look fresh, happy and have a bounce in their step. According to race reporter Nicky Cameron, “they even smell fresher” than the other teams. QuasarLontra are one of the most experienced teams in Brazil and look very at home with the race. One of the team members, Rodrigo de Sousa Martins, lives in this region and while another, Tessa Roorda, is a biologist who spends a lot of time cutting her way through the rain forest.
The next change to the course occurred as the trekking between CP18 and 21 was taking a lot longer than planned. Teams leaving 18 from about midday yesterday were given the choice of continuing on the full course OR skipping CP 19 and 20 and going directly to CP21. This involved a lot of road walking. Interestingly, all but 2 of the teams decided to stay on the full course. The only team to opt out was Team Enigma Selva Aventura and Team Nomadas Columbia.
None of the teams who opted to get all the CPs made the 2am cut off. The 2 teams that skipped it did make it back onto the long trek route. We don’t know if they will be ranked before or after the 2am cut teams.
The next big change to the course is that ALL teams are to miss CP 31, 32 and 33. This will speed teams up along the 80km mountain bike leg. Apparently it can be extremely muddy. Teams were warned at the welcome brief that these might be removed.
There are a few other teams such as Team China and Oskaba that are being moved up in the course to “catch up” to other teams. If there are long straight lines in a team’s route there is a good chance they are in a car being moved forward.
Team China decided to ride to the coast in yesterdays mountain bike as they had no food or water. They couldn’t communicate with local people. They also said the maps were very difficult to follow. The team found a hotel on the beach and slept the night. They were picked up by their supporters and driven to CP26 where they will continue the race. They are reportedly happy and healthy.
Now an ETA on the winning time. Of course this is very hard to predict, but looking at the organisers expected times, the front team will not arrive for another 30 hours. This takes us to midnight Thursday. Add in the extra 3 hours for sleep as well as a few mistakes and we could be well into Friday before they arrive. Of course anything can happen and we are predicting the tides will really impact team’s progress.
SleepMonsters
