ITERA - Presented by Open Adventure
A Wet Night in Wales
Rob Howard / 14.08.2014
On the third night of the race the weather continued to make the challenge all the greater for teams at ITERA.
After a spell of fine evening weather the showers returned and they were torrential. Race Director James Thurlow described the rain the Elan as “apocalyptic”, adding “everywhere was pretty much flooded with water inches deep on the roads around the visitor centre. When team Sega arrived at the end of the ride from Elan they said, “It was like riding through rivers much of the time.”
Others took the weather in their stride more easily. Eddie Whinthorpe of Nav4adventure said, “Yes, it rains, and we had full Goretex suits on in the worst of it, but now I am standing here in the same clothes and they’ve dried off again. Once the rain stops it’s OK again and you get on with it, until it rains again – trouble is the cycle of wet/dry/wet keeps continuing.”
I was speaking to him at Glasbury, at the end of the ride from Elan, and where the paddle down the river Wye begins. His team were not stopping to sleep and were pressing on. “We knew at our level we were a short course team,” he said, “so you have to do the smart thing and decide what you can do, and what you want to do. We’ve been a bit self indulgent, going to the checkpoints on all the main peaks when the smart thing might have been to miss them out. Teams who did that may beat us in the ranking, but that’s OK, it is what we are here to do and we’re getting on with it.”
He was called away to help Team Sega fix a bike problem. They had just arrived and were in good spirits. “We actually got some additional checkpoints not on the shortest course last night,” they said, “so we worked pretty hard.” They were delighted to be reminded they didn’t need to box up their bikes at Glasbury, they are being transported forward on the course as they are.
As a novice team to expedition racing they’d been keen to “do the whole course” when they set off, despite advice not to even consider it, and have learned to adapt through the race and are moving around the course well.
There are many teams behind them, still riding to Glasbury from Elan, where the visitor centre transition became a refuge for exhausted teams through the night. The brilliant staff there stayed until 2am as teams were still coming in cold and shivering, and all the teams coming through got hot drinks and food, most got some sleep inside before the centre closed. One of the race medics said it looked like a film set of a gas attack as there were bodies strewn all over the floor as odd angles!
It’s not 100% clear at this stage how many teams are still on the full course as the previous stage was a very long one and there have been quite large areas where the trackers had no signal. (The leaderboard will fill in as they regain signal, but won’t have been up to date through Wednesday night and into Thursday morning.)
Several teams do look to have dropped from full course status overnight however. French team Vaucluse Aventures Lafuma were the last to leave Elan so they are struggling for time to stay on the full course. Spanish team Gallaecia Fridama cut the Elan trail run short in the night when they realised it was too much for them and both Ellis Brigham and Skandia Adventure also dropped cycling CP’s in the night to get to the next transition.
Those who are on the full course are now moving much more slowly and they are in a race to get to Glasbury before the section closes at 16.00. (They have to be on the water by then, but if they leave it too late it will still be hard clear the rest of the course.)
At one stage it had looked like several full course teams would get to Glasbury in the night and sleep while waiting for the river stage to open in the morning, but as it was only adidas TERREX did this. They arrived at 00.38, and when they left again just after 08.00 no other full course teams had arrived. As left on the paddle stage Nick Gracie said, “We are racing well and trying to keep our pace up as good training for the World Champs in Ecuador.”
With the teams taking a bit longer than expected and the difficult weather conditions the race has made the call to cut a couple of checkpoints in the final stages. Teams are being told at Glasbury that the course will be shortened and given the details when the stop at Hay on Wye for an orienteering section.
Checkpoint 54 on the final cycle stage is being taken out, and so is checkpoint 59 on the final run. The deadline for the caving section on Stage 9 has also had its deadline extended to midnight on Friday.
These changes will mostly affect the full course teams who are still striving to get to Cardiff without dropping any checkpoints.
[Just as I was about to post this Haglofs Silva UK and SWECO arrived in transition at Glasbury.]
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