ITERA - Presented by Open Adventure
In Transition at Machynlleth
Rob Howard / 13.08.2014
Transition 5/6 is set up in part of the Machynlleth Leisure Centre and the race has made good use of the lawns outside the building, which has been turned into a temporary race campsite.
As part of the race equipment checks teams were instructed to put their tents up here – to prove that they had them, they worked, and they’d all fit inside. Naturally enough most chose to sleep for a while then. It’s a cunning piece of race directing to encourage teams to sleep at this stage, without forcing a stop on them.
Most were quite happy to sleep after the crossing of Cadair Idris through the night, which was punctuated with heavy showers. The ascent and the forest navigation to the checkpoints after it were difficult and on the trackers teams could be seen going the wrong way at times, or more often taking the direct route, which often wasn’t the quickest.
[In each transition there is a large screen set up with the tracking maps showing and course planner Tom Gibbs is happy to explain to those who gather round what he thinks is the best route.]
The three leading teams arrived Tuesday night, all looking very weary, but none of them stopped for long. Gibbs spoke to them all to explain about the equaliser penalties at Elan Valley, and all the teams took it in their stride and understood the reasoning behind it.
Pavel Paloncy of Czech AR was still grumbling about ‘too many time-outs’, but there was nothing else that could be done in the weather and his team will have one of the shortest stops at Elan Valley. When I spoke to him they were busy taking their tent down, and they hadn’t chosen to sleep. “We plan to push on in the daylight,” he said, “and maybe sleep on the next bike stage if we need to.”
Others were more than happy to stop and rest for a couple of hours. Team SEGA’s only concern whether their watch alarms would wake them up!
Dutch team Lowland Leopard were getting ready to sleep and Axel Posthumus was busy putting their tent up. “We are finding it tough just doing the short course,” he said, “but are all fine and are doing well. The trekking took far longer than we expected, but we are having a great time. The scenery is spectacular, so beautiful, and I feel stupid that I’ve not come here before. The organisation if really good too – I am a race organiser myself so I know how hard it is.”
Danish team Skandia were also planning to sleep. “We slept maybe an hour at Barmouth,” said Thure Fuhrmann Kjaer, “and will sleep again here. Then we aim to make the cut-off for the final kayak, which I think we should do. We hope we can still complete the full course and the kayaking cut-off being moved back by 2 hours is great.”
Another Danish team still on the full course are adventureteam.dk/Salomon and they left ahead of Skandia, but spent a long time in the transition getting ready. Multiatleten from Denmark are also still a full course team, but are falling behind and may struggle to make it the cut-off for the final paddle stage down the river Wye.
The final Danish team are Hopla who are taking a very different approach. They are the short course team which is furthest forward on the course having opted to miss most of the trekking controls in Snowdonia, which may prove to be a very effective tactic.
When I spoke to Team Nav4Adventure2 after the Snowdon trek they said they’d overstretched themselves, but here at Machynlleth John Allen was much happier. “I think we were the last team to get to Portmerion,” he said, “so we only just made it in time to stay competitive. We missed out Cadair Idris on the last stage to move us further forward and now we have things in hand and should be able to finish in time.”
Leaving Machynlleth the teams are on their bikes again for the Nant Y Arain stage, where they can collect 4 controls on the Syfydrin MTB trail, before continuing to Devil’s Bridge for an orienteering stage.
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