Racing in Russia at the Red Fox 48 Hour

Bjørn Axelsen (Team Salomon Trail Tour, Denmark) / 20.06.2014

Thinking about going to Russia for racing? Yes, so did we, and we had a great race there.

This year's Red Fox Adventure race was held North of St. Petersburg, close to Finland, by the huge Lake Ladoga. This area provides beautiful scenery, a lot of small rocky islands - and billions of mosquitoes.

Never having been to Russia before, we did not really know what to expect. Just getting a visa proved rather strenuous, but as soon as we arrived in St. Petersburg things worked like a charm. The organizers arranged the transfer for us (5 hours) and we got out to a cosy and primitive campsite on an island on the lake. Though language can be a difficult matter coming from a Western country to Russia, the organizers were very helpful.

Race Format

The Red Fox Adventure Race has mandatory and optional controls. You make your own decision regarding how many of the optional controls to pick. There are 48 hour and 72 hour classes but the course is the same, but the 48 hour racers have to leave out controls, but the fast 72 hours teams can do all the controls. The winner is the team with most controls. Like most of the teams we participated in the 48 hour competition.

Race Is On

After some 30 km of mountain biking we set out trekking in rather demanding terrain. The area does not have high mountains, but the trekking was really tough anyway. The surface was uneven, with small rocks, almost no trails and often dense vegetation. It was slow and demanding. A part of the trekking was a coasteering along the shore. Sometimes you could run on the rocks by the shore, sometimes you would have to go high up and then down again. The scenery was beautiful, however, we made two bad mistakes on the coasteering and lost more than an hour. What a poor start!

After more mountain biking we got back to the event centre to go out on the second loop of a total four loops putting our kayaks into the water and setting out onto the lake. 

A Cold Refresher

We started to feel really sleepy. But help was near: one of us had to dip into the rather cold water from a zip-line about 10 meters above the water between two cliffs. Rather than going from one cliff to the other, team member Bjørn would punch a control on the zip-line and then release himself into the water.

This did indeed take away the sleepiness! Rather than change clothes, we decided it would be better to just get into the kayak and get moving forward. Sitting in the kayaks we were already somewhat wet, and it was no big deal to be soaked in water. 

We continued to pick a lot of nice controls on peninsulas and islands before doing a short trek in a "beaver country" forest. A lot of trees were cut by the creatures, forming a lot of lakes and swamps. Also, the terrain was rocky, so we moved very slowly.

Mind Your Own Safety

Next, we were in for rock climbing followed by jumar ascending and descending down again. This was not the child-friendly kind of rock climbing we most often find in adventure races. We even picked the "easy" route, missing one point compared to the "hard" route. 

First we did regular and demanding rock climbing some 15 meters straight up the rock. Having raced for about 20 hours, our brains were not really fully functional. We got a bit nervous here. Unlike back home in Denmark, the organizers were not checking the security of the individual racers. This was our own responsibility. We did double check each other and eventually we did complete this part of the race. Still, we did felt somewhat uncomfortable.

Mosquito-Time!

Moving out on the 3rd loop on mountain bikes the lack of sleep started to slow us down. This was the afternoon on the second day and we had not slept yet, but we managed to keep moving. One reason for not sleeping was that lying down would mean that you would get eaten by mosquitoes. So we pushed on.

By late afternoon we reached the last trekking stage. In total the race only had some 40 – 50 km of trekking, but this was some really hard trekking and our feet started to feel sore. Again, the last trekking was demanding. And also this time we would be out in natural forest with only very few trails. Again we would have a lot of trekking straight through the forest, sometimes through dense swamps and a lot of ups and downs.

Heading back on mountain bikes to the last loop we had a hard time keeping awake. We had been racing for about 38 hours without sleep. Bjørn was close to falling asleep on his bike and we searched for places to take a nap, but we could not find any place where the mosquitoes would leave us alone.

Eventually we did find a very uncomfortable truck container. It was very unpleasant but with no mosquitoes, so we had a 15 minute nap and moved on.

Wind In You Face

The last loop was another great kayak stage and the wind was suddenly very strong. We managed to form a sail from our big spraydeck (for our 2-seater kayak) and a paddle. This meant that we could move fast forward and only one of us would paddle. Great - but soon the wind and water would be straight into our faces.

We also decided to push the limits in terms of how many controls to go for. And we really did not know if we were too optimistic and would fail to meet the 48 hour time limit. Failing would incur a hard penalty and we would be out of the top of the game.

Working hard in the kayak and having water spraying into your face proved to be a really good way of keeping awake. We managed successfully to keep our pace up and get to the finish in time.

1st On The Podium

Not really knowing how many controls the other teams had punched, we were happily surprised to find ourselves on top of the result list and got some nice prizes from Red Fox, a Russian outdoor clothing manufacturer.

Remarkably High Quality Of Maps And Courses

The maps were 1 to 30.000 and 1 to 50.000 and included a lot of rock details but no forest density graduation (if you could go fast or slow through the forest). They were of a very high quality.

So was the course setting. It was clear throughout the race that the 70 control locations were the result of careful and dedicated course-setting. Definitely, the course setter had been to each of these places and picked just the right spot for each of them and thought about how to allow for alternative route choices.

A big thanks to the organizers for a great race!

(Bjørn was racing with Per Jessen.)

You can find out more about the race at http://www.adventure-race.redfox.ru/en/

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