ITERA - Presented by Open Adventure
On The Move - Finally
Thure Fuhrmann Kjaer / 10.08.2014
[Part two of three blogs from Danish adventureracer Thure Fuhrmann Kjaer about his teams endeavors taking part in the Itera adventurerace in Wales. The prologue is now over and done with and the team is getting ready for departure to the start.]
When you are an adventure racer you want to race. You do not want to sit around, be that on a plane, a bus, in a room packing gear or at a meeting. You want to be out on the course moving forward.
In that context yesterday,s prologue was a godsend. Finally we were alone and could concentrate on racing. For a short while we were free from faffing with our kit, looking at dotted lines on the maps and trying to determine how long this and that stage will take.
Doing the prologue was like a cloud lifting from the whole team and we went from being tense and a bit irritated to smiling and laughing again.
Obviously you cannot tell the outcome of a five day race in the mountains from a 1 hour prologue in the city.
What you can tell is which teams are over estimating their own capabilities. That will be the teams who start off blazing and go straight to the front. For about two kilometers. Then they are spat out the back huffing and puffing. We saw our fair share of those last night in Cardiff.
The thing is that if you push a bit too hard in the prologue and explode, nothing will really happen. You may finish some minutes after this and that other team, but no real harm is done.
But if you do the same thing in the hills, you are asking for trouble. Because the push usually lasts for hours and when you bonk, it can take a long time to get back in the game.
Our plan for the prologue was to avoid that. It worked. The plan is to also avoid it in the race. And I hope the other teams will too, because the course is so brutal that everybody has enough to worry about as it is.
Looking at the course we will be happy if we finish the whole thing. Where that will put us in the ranking, I have no clue. And right now it is the least of our concerns. Our concern is bike bags, paddle bags, food bags, kit bags, finish line bags … and … and … and ...
Catch you all on the flip side. If any of you are in Cardiff on Friday: I'm a Lager man.
(Skandia Adventure Team were second on the prologue, Ed.)
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