Wulong Mountain Quest
Day One At Wulong with Team Thule Adventure
Team Thule Adventure / 05.09.2013
Stage 1 started off with a mass start and 1.5 km of running towards TA1. We started of very well and shifted to the kayak section together with Team Toread ( with among others Coast 2 Coast champion Braden Currie and the Usshers ). We managed to get a good pace and grip of this section in the strong flowing Wulong River.
We made a good transition at TA2 onto the following run section when Marcel realised that he had forgotten his camelback and had to turn around to get it, within a few moments Team Tinelli (with Coast 2 Coast runner-up Dougal Allen and Jacob Roberts) caught us up.
The pace was insane on the hill with 700 meters of climbing. I (Martin) felt worn out almost directly at the ascent, yesterdays towing and the 1 km sprint against Team Tinelli made themselves felt. With good teamwork we managed to keep a good pace and minimize the distance to the chasing team to within a minute and to close the gap on Team Toread which were also noticeably weary.
Next came an 8 km long biathlon which ended up in a 3 km long upphill section where you had to carry the bike.
At this point my (Martin) legs were still in “heavy” shape and at the same time we had some bad timing at the transition where we switched at the bottom of the hill. Jacky and Mimi could run without bikes on their backs so they arrived before us (Martin & Marcel) and had to wait a couple of minutes for us to arrive.
At TA4 we refuelled with energy bars and drinks and felt the power was coming back.
At the start of the 34 km long mountain bike section we felt strong and could keep up a fast and strong pace. Haglöfs Silva almost caught us up at the transition but on the following ascent we stretched out a 4-5 min lead on them. Unfortunately at this point Marcel’s chain broke and we had problems fixing it as we can couldn’t find the 10 speed chainlink , so we temporarily fixed his chain with a 9 speed chainlink.
Now Haglöfs Silva had caught us up and together we managed set a pace to chase down Team Tinelli, who also had chain problems in the wet and muddy conditions.
Along with Team Tinelli we increased the pace and dropped Haglöfs Silva, then suddenly Team Tinelli crashed badly and had all sorts of problems with the rear derailleur. Soon after that we saw Team Toread in front of us and begin to chase them down, while trying to hold Haglöfs Silva behind us.
The final section of today was a rope skill section at the amazing Three Natural Bridges site and we where only 1:17 minutes behind Toread, but sadly Mimi had some problems with her ropes here and we lost approximately 4 minutes on Team Toread by the end of the day.
We finished second after the overall leaders Team Toread and Haglöfs Silva took 3rd place today.
Provisional overall standings after stage 1:
1. Team Toread
2. Thule Adventure Team + aprox. 5min
3. Team Silva Haglöfs + aprox 3.5min after us (Thule)
Ed. We hope to bring you the full official results later on.]
Ed; Todays course was as follows; Run 1.5km, Kayak 12km, Run 4km, Biathlon 8km, MTB 34km, Ropes. Total distance 54km.
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