The Equaliser

Rob Howard / 12.08.2014

I’m confused, you’re confused, the teams are confused – nobody is quite sure who is where in the race as there have been several enforced stops and course changes due to the windy weather, and teams have been affected to different degrees.  

Two teams racing side by side might be hours apart in race time so Course Planner Tom Gibbs and Race Director James Thurlow have come up with a plan to sort out the confusion – the Equaliser.

[Editors Warning;  The following is a bit complicated, so if you want to cut to the chase jump to the last paragraph now.]

They’ve worked out the total amount of time all of the 14 full course teams have spent in enforced stops during which they were timed-out of the race – i.e. the clock was stopped during the delay.

These happened at;

Bangor Pier (when the first paddle was cut short)

The Zip Line (as teams had to wait at the top for their turn to go down)

Portmerion (when teams were stopped from paddling due the tide/weather conditions or forced to wait for the 8am restart)

A summary of all these time outs is on this spreadsheet and there is an additional column for teams adidas TERREX and Haglofs Silva who spent some time paddling towards CP21 before it was pulled from the race.  The time they spent doing that has also been counted as time-out.

Armed with this information Tom Gibbs is now waiting at TA5/6 in Machynlleth to brief teams on how the race is going to be equalised, so that every team is back in their correct position.

He is going to explain that at The Elan Valley (a stop on the next stage where teams have a trail run to complete), the team with the greatest time-out total will continue as normal.  This is adidas TERREX who have had 04.01.32 minutes of time-outs.

All of the other teams will then serve a time penalty there to put the teams back in the correct racing order.  

So, the team with the next highest time-out total are AdventureTeam.dk/Salomon, who have spent 4 minutes less in time-outs.

They will be stopped for that 4 minutes and will then set off - and so on for all the other full course teams.

Sweco Adventure will serve out the longest equaliser penalty, stopping for 2;41;29 before being allowed to continue. This might seem harsh, but it’s fair as they’ve only spent 1.20.03 in time-outs.

Teams won’t have access to their gear boxes at the Elan Valley while they are waiting, but there is shelter there and they can buy some food. They’ll also know what is going to happen so those with the longest stop can decide if they want to carry a sleeping bag from TA5/6.

[Teams will also be told the cut-off to start the Wye Valley paddle has been extended by 2 hours to 16.00 on Thursday and the final cut-off for the race has been extended to 10am on Saturday.]

What this means is;

When they leave the Elan Valley all the full course teams will be in the right racing order with no time credits owed.

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