The AR World Championships - Costa Rica
Teams Moves at TA 03 Towards Mangroves
Alex Carrijo / 04.12.2013
Adventure Race World Championships has started 50 hours ago ( maybe a third of the predicted time for 150 hours to wining time) and had two long legs of MTB and kayak that athletes didn't seem to like that much. Although some of them have made some compliments on the long push bike trails and shores of Golfito, most of the front teams considered that they were too long sections at the very beginning of the race. As others, Mike Lindnord said the first 24 hours looked like two days of racing...or more.
After folding down their kayaks teams departed to a 6 hours trek for a hilly 27km carrying all of their kayak gear to reach TA03. All teams used their trolleys to transport gear and you could see a huge range of different solutions. Moreover, they would be even useful afterwards when teams had to portage the inflatable boats for a 10km track before reaching the mangroves, where true adventure has begun with a lot of navigation and decisions to make regarding the tides.
Race director Alex "Pongo" Baker pointed out that at very low tide it would be impossible to reach some of the 6 CPs spread at the channels. Teams could reach them randomly and looking at the gps tracker has shown different teams strategies to collect them. Also, he added that it'd be impossible to walk to them as terrain doesn't allow that.
At TA03 the first ten teams arrived and departed as soon as they could without any thinking about sleep. Usually, the girls were sent to fill water bladders at a nearby water tap while the others planned how to load their trolleys with boats. Apparently, the ones who had big wheels and mounted both kayaks inflated had more success. Adidas Terrex were the ones who suffered the most having to mount it over and over while moving less than a kilometer. Axa also had problems as their trolley fell from about 3 meters high on a bridge crossing just after they left the transition.
Brazilian Team Selva has arrived TA at 21:30 and were the first to stop to sleep. When they left at 01:00, the tide was starting to get high and that would help them. However, they didn't know that the 10km portage would take over 5 hours to finish and probably they have started with sunlight and with an opposite tide direction.
Once in the kayak leg, positions have been changing. Seagate and Thule left TA together and after 20 hours the Swedish team came out from the water on TA04 in first with an 2 hours lead over Seagate. They didn't paddle it to the end as tides were strong and against them. Instead, they opted for a 5 km portage to the TA and used their trolleys again. At least for a while all was working fine until they had a broken wheel. They looked sore and hot as temperature was over 30°. Mimi acknowledged that they didn't know if this portage was paying off but paddling against the tide was too tiring and tough.
Just Team Silva has arrived at TA04 besides those other two teams. They've made a much shorter portage than Thule to arrive only 18 minutes behind Seagate, who arrived paddling all the way. Next teams expected are Tecnu, Quasar Lontra and Merrel, BMS Multisport, Sportvia, Bones and Adidas.
At the moment, the biggest challenge is to get CP 19 ( last cp before TA04) which is underwater because of the highest tide peak. To make it even harder, night has just fallen upon them.
SleepMonsters
