Lycian Challenge Adventure Race LC 2014 - AREC
At TA One
Rob Howard / 01.05.2014
The focus of the race is now all on TA1 which is set up in a small municipal building and compound in a broad valley high in the mountains. There is space for the bikes, a few tents and access to a store room and toilet block. The marshals have a small cook fire too, but it’s not been too cold or wet through the night, though there is some fresh snow on the high mountains above.
After the leaders arrived at dusk last night the transition saw a steady stream of teams arriving, returning and setting off again. They check in by using a Sportident dibber to record their presence and time, but unfortunately no one is writing down any times or recording which teams are skipping stages, so until the Sportident boxes are downloaded and read, there is no way to tell which teams are doing what, or when they came and went. (Translation; I don’t know what is going on.)
However, the lead teams do have a supporter here and they’ve kept notes on the front of the race. The last recorded times were after the leaders finished stage 4 (the mountain biking loop) and the order of arrival was adidas TERREX (07.00), Estonian ACE Adventure (07.30) and Buff Adventure (08.07). adidas TERREX were once again the quickest in transition so set off on the final loop (trek and ropes) with a good lead, though it’s still a very close race. They are not expected to return from that until 15.00.
They didn’t report having navigational problems in the night, though navigator Tom Gibbs was having a low point and tired. The British and Spanish teams had taken a different route to one of the checkpoints and adidas TERREX arrived first and could see their rivals headlights in distance, clearly searching for the CP. So they switched their own off so as not to give the location away and gained some time.
The value of the team having Anthony Cooper in support was shown this morning as once they’d passed through he was allowed access to the team kit and to assist. He cleaned the sticky clay mud off of the bikes (the cycling stage had been hard going and really slowed the teams down) and replaced Nick Gracie’s damaged gear hanger and derailleur. (The team pack those spare parts and all use the same bikes.) He also filled bottles, dried shoes, cleaned clay out of the bike shoes and made sure the team gear was not moved or mixed up in the melee at transition.
Other teams I have spoken to have had mixed fortunes, and all are starting to say how tough the terrain and the ups and downs of the course are. Marek Navratil, who runs the AR European Series, said; “We made some navigational mistakes, but not big ones, and are finding the broken rock on the tracks hard on our feet.” Most of the trekking is on broad tracks, rather than footpaths.
The all female team Arena, from Russia completed the trekking stage this morning, walking back into camp along the road and said they were OK but looked glad to have finished trekking. They are a team who stick really close together and always seem to be walking side by side.
Danish team Merrell Denmark were leaving transition for the second time around 09.00 and had decided to skip the mountain biking stage altogether and move straight onto the next trek. “We did the first trek,” said Lars Bukkehave, “but it might have been a mistake as it took us 8 hours for just 3 checkpoints and now we are well behind and have to miss a stage.”
The most unfortunate team of the day so far are the Irish team Ballyhoura/Roe Valley. They arrived at the TA for the first time, after a night of navigational problems which Peter Cole described as “horrendous, the worst ever”. He said, “At one point we took a chance to follow the Turkish orienteering team, thinking they would know where they were going, but they were totally lost!”
Things got worse at the TA when they found they’d lost their Sportident dibber which records their progress around the course. One of the team stopped to take off a shirt and laid it down by the roadside 2km below the TA, but though they went back to look for it they couldn’t find it. It means the team will be unranked, but they can continue if they want. They are now trying to get over the disappointment and raise their morale before deciding what to do.
SleepMonsters
