A Busy Morning at TA9

Rob Howard / 08.12.2013

After the Dark Zone held teams up there were five out on the rafting this morning, 4 having spent the night at TA8 and Merrell Adventure Addicts, who arrived shortly after the 4.30 release time, having slept at TA7.

There 5 teams are now in their own contest for 4^th to 8^th place, and were racing head to head this morning, though there was little to be gained or lost on the rafting trip. It is a guided paddle, all in the same boats down the Pacuaro River, and there is little to choose between the teams on descent times, so this makes transition efficiency all the more critical at TA9.

Quasar Lontra/Kailash were the first into TA9 maintaining their small advantage as they raced through and chased by Team Tecnu.  This left adidas TERREX and BMS in the transition together. It is set out at a compound used for the end of the rafting trip which is in a large commercial banana plantation and there are bunches of fresh bananas hung in transition for teams to help themselves. (They are very tasty straight off the tree.)

Adidas Terrex were the quicker of the two teams to get organised and on the move and said they had slept well at TA8. “The guys were in a tent,” said Jari Kirkland, “but I slept outside and wasn’t disturbed once. It was a pleasant temperature and we had a hamburger from a nearby cafe when we got there so we were sorted.

“On the trek we had a few problems, with me being ill, and Nick feeling the altitude, but we got through them and felt good again. Our plan had been to start steady and push hard on the trek, but we realised early on that we would not make the dark zone. We didn’t exactly take it easy, but were not going flat out.”

They carried their boats down to the river, after inflating them again, ready to set off on the long paddle into the canals of the Tortuguero National Park. It will be another day long section on the water with the teams battling for position.

The British team were followed by BMS, the Brazilian team who are racing with Neil Jones of New Zealand, who has not been at an international race since the World Champs in Brazil.  He is back racing at the top level and was plastered in sun cream for the paddle and had his head down in transition most of the time, concentrating on what needed to be done. It was Camila Nicolau who was the one hustling the team through the transition.

Last to set off from this group were Merrell Adventure Addicts, and they were a bit behind the other teams. They’d slept after the trek at TA7 and arrived for the rafting shortly after the dark zone was lifting. They all looked fresh and focused as they sorted out their gear for the paddle and went through the careful and extensive gear check with the race marshal.

“We thought we’d had a poor trek, taking about 42 hours,” said Hano Smit, ”but it turns out we had a pretty good trek after all!“ The team set off looking to finish the race strongly and set off to chase down a top 5 finish.

There are heavy clouds in the sky today, so the sun will not be so intense and teams on the water may welcome the periodic rain showers. If the weather is the same in the mountains it won’t such good news however.

[More photos have been added to photo wall.]

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