ITERA - Presented by Open Adventure
Finishing Through the Night
Rob Howard / 15.08.2014
While Cardiff enjoyed a Friday night, slept, and woke up for the weekend, ITERA continued through the night and into its final day, with teams arriving at a slow but steady rate at the finish line at Cardiff Bay.
The final ride into Cardiff was taking teams 6 to 7 hours, sometimes more as they struggled to stay awake and concentrate on the navigation to stay on track. They didn’t always succeed and there a few detours along the way. Moxie Racers lost the TAFF Trail altogether for a while and Cosmic Chancers set off to explore the grounds of Castell Coch for a while. There were many other detours too.
It wasn’t so easy to find a way through the city in the early hours of the morning either. Team 33, chAR had a frustrating time, knowing where they wanted to get to, but unable to find the right way there. “We kept finding diversions and loch gates that were open,” said Steve Eastwood. “That final 70km took so, so long. I’ve never known a ride take so long. It was over 7 hours– you can race an ironman in that time!” (chAR are members of Chester Triathlon club who have taken up adventure racing.)
It was possibly an even long wait for the hardy family members who waited for teams for many hours through the night. The speed of teams at the end of an expedition race is slow ... and getting slower, and most enthusiastic supporters arrive hours and hours too early. It was a chilly wait for them, and especially for the race staff, who are all very sleep deprived and tired themselves and are standing still through the night. It might be summer, but a down jacket is still essential marshal clothing!
When team Nav4Adventure2 came in John Allen said they had been stopping every 10km to lay down on the ground and sleep for a few minutes, until they became too cold, then continuing. This team are all regular Open Adventure racers, taking part in many Open5, Open12 and Open24 events, as well as the previous expedition events. Ben Shannon said, “It was awesome, and I think harder than the previous two expedition races in the Lake District and Scotland.”
When the teams came in they were shuttled with their bikes back to the race base at Cardiff Metropolitan University campus and had a finish kit bag waiting for them. There was also a Dominoes Pizza menu on the table! It was just around the corner and open until 4am – one of the advantages of finishing in the city centre!
Around 04.30 there was a ‘rush’ of 4 teams finishing together and all said they’d had difficulty finding their way into Cardiff. Sega Adventures ‘gave up and took the A470 while the Cosmic Chancers, the only team in the race with 3 women and one man, said, “We ended up coming down the Rhonda Valley somehow – we’ve seen another side of Wales tonight.”
Novice team SEGA Adventures experienced a good selection of SleepMonsters towards the end of the race, including “Sharks swimming up the road towards me”, and that expedition race regular, talking to imaginary people.
Through the morning to the 10.00am cut-off the final leaderboard will gradually complete. At the top are the 6 Full Course teams. It was expected to be 7 but checking the timing chips the scorers found SWECO had missed a checkpoint on top of the Brecon Beacons, and the tracker confirmed this As a result they were demoted to the short course category, effectively finishing 7th overall, but still a bitter disappointment to a team who raced so well and were pushing for second place at one point.
UK team adidas/Facwest.com moved up to 3rd and Walhalla rallied well to finish in 4th place. The other full course international team were adventureteam.dk/salomon in 5th with team endurancelife the last of the full course UK teams in 6th.
The Short Course results will take a while to confirm and this can’t be done until they have all finished. The results will then be announced at the prize giving buffet which starts at midday.
SleepMonsters
