In, Out and Waiting

Rob Howard / 01.05.2014

As the second day of the race took place around the hub of TA1 (which served as checkpoints 9, 13 and 24), the teams were taking longer to transition after each punishing stage . The weather was helpfully overcast and relatively cool, and teams said it wasn’t cold or wet during the night and second day, but the terrain and navigation, and the length of the stages are pushing them hard.

In the case of Buff Adventure Addicts they had pushed too hard, forcing a recurrence of the leg and ankle injury that Brazilian racer Sabrina Koester Gobbo suffered at the last world championships. The race director brought her down from the ropes stage after she reluctantly retired from the race. “It was a long time for the injury and I came back too fast,” she said, “then we raced too hard and with so much trekking still to do I can’t go on. It’s a great shame as we were in 3^rd place. “

The ropes stage has been causing some problems with queuing as evening approaches. It is set up with a 40m abseil followed by a Tyrolean, but teams are taking a long time. This is partly because the organisers here insist on the use of Figure of 8’s, which teams are not very familiar with and which are slow and hard to use on the long abseil and Tyrolean. Chris Hope of adidas TERREX commented, “It is a lot of heavy rope to pull through.”  He added, “They were also allowing teams to set off on the Tyrolean with instructions shouted from the far side, which assumes they know what they are doing.”

Some racers were getting stuck on the Tyrolean and teams were taking an hour or more to move down the two ropes and the traverse. As a result there was a queue mid afternoon with half a dozen teams waiting and the ropes due to close at 19.00.  Before setting off from the TA Team Russia, who had completed the whole course were angry to be told the ropes would close and they would not have time to get through. They hadn’t got the message at the race briefing about the closure time, and after some debate were told the ropes would close but the CP’s remain open for them.

The first team to finish all the 3 stages based around TA1 were adidas TERREX who arrived at the transition for the final time at 16.30, taking 9 hours on the trek and ropes stage. They were in good spirits and brisk in transition, leaving with heavy packs as it is a long time until they see their team boxes again. They also took sleeping bags as they’ve not slept yet.

Nick Gracie said, “The trek was tough, with lots of route choice making it hard to find a way between CP’s, but it was beautiful, with lots of flower meadows, the best bit of the course so far.” The team found CP23, but the timing box was missing so they photographed the CP flag and continued. They were looking forward to the ride followed by the river paddle to rest tender feet.

The Estonian ACE Adventure team were the second full course team to arrive having completed all the TA1 activities and they were 90 minutes behind the leaders. “We just to run a smart race from here,” said Silver Eensaar. “The trek was OK, but we were held up for 30 minutes at the ropes by a Danish short course team. Later on we were cliffed out and had to take a steep route down, which we wouldn’t normally choose.”

These two teams were first to complete the next cycling stage and begin the river paddle section. The cycle route took them to a spectacular Roman hill fort and theatre complex where CP25 was positioned, and this came as a surprise. It hadn’t been mentioned in the briefing and the CP description just said ‘Arch Gate’. 

Adidas TERREX reached the river paddle just as dusk fell but were having problems as Tom Gibbs ran in pushing his bike with a burst tyre wall.  It is something the team will have to make a fix on as they have one more long cycle stage to complete, but no access to their gear box, where the spares are, before the ride. (The organisers would not allow them in the bike boxes.) They packed the bikes away to deal with the problem in daylight tomorrow, but it could allow the chasing teams to catch up some of their lead.

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