Wulong Mountain Quest
The Last Day at Wulong
Martin Flinta (Team Thule Adventure) / 10.09.2013
Marcel, who took the longest but easiest route, was somewhat frayed at the end but it was a good start.
There then followed 7 km of extreme trail running which took us down 700 meters of altitude on a narrow serpentine winding trail in the rainforest. The trail here was sometimes only 10 cm wide and with the undergrowth over it you did not see it.
On one occasion both me and Marcel came off the narrow trail, fell down a bit and were hanging by the elbows on to it, with our legs down the steep slope. But we managed to climb up and catch up, without anyone seeing what had happened in the dense vegetation.
At the botton in the lake the the kayaks were waiting for us and a 6 km long section waited. Team Silva Haglöfs held us off throughout the run and were going strongly on the kayaking as well. Stage race specialists, and the previous two years' winners, Team Toread with among others Coast 2 Coast champions were catching as well.
After the mandatory 15 min stop came a long bike sections. The first ascent was 500 meters of altitude that began almost immediately. Here we pushed really hard and got a couple of minutes on the other teams chasing from behind.
Team Toread overtook us half way up the ascent , but we responded strongly and got a minute on the top of the ascent.
After a few miles on the flat they caught us up again. Soon after Marcel had a flat tire on his new $10.000 bike , so we stopped and used a CO2 cartridge in the lightweight tires on carbon rims. (Of course we normally race with self-sealing tires, called tubeless with "slime" in.)
Soon after the bike problems we caught up with Team Toread again, they had chainlinking problems but we saw that they where quickly up on the bikes again. We pushed really hard on the last half-hour climb and got a 4 min on Toread. Behind them Team Haglöfs Silva now joined Toread.
The finish was magnificent. Extreme trail running including a creek down to a cave , where the stream formed large underground lakes.
We reached our goal by winning Stage 3 and did everything in power to overtake the overall leaders although it was not enough and we finished second overall.
The bottom line, we are very happy with the race. Everyone in the team has problems or down times, and this is how it should be when competing at the highest level, otherwise you don't race hard enough.
It's not possible that everyone on the team runs smoothly all the time, so we are constantly trying to maximize speed by trying to identify and help those who are currently the weakest with good and strong teamwork."
Video Stage 3: http://www.youtube.com/
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