Wenger Czech Adventure Race 2014
Day 1 At the Wenger Czech Adventure Race
Jan Smolik (Czech Adventure Race) / 22.08.2014
It was a cold morning in Jeseník. Just an hour prior to the race start it was raining, it was 12 degrees centigrade and the tops of hills surrounding the city were hidden in clouds. Competitors were hiding themselves from the rain in a passageway and even a loudspeaker refused to work as it was wet with rain.
But the weather improved just prior to the start, the temperature begun to rise and the sun appeared.
The race itself started at 10 a.m. Teams had to split into pairs. Two members biked to three checkpoints and two members run for other checkpoints. This presented the first strategic decision: to guess which part will be harder and whom to send to which part. In reality the biking proved to be faster and most bikers had to wait. Some even quite a long time as the other half of the team got lost, possibly due to lack of two good navigators.
Four Czech teams were first to leave the Prologue in Jeseník and bike out to the first real stage. This stage contained the first special task of cave exploration. This included the descent to the cave which was relatively difficult as the floor was steep and very slippery. One had to be careful where to step. But the cave was interesting with a bigger cavern at the bottom where the checkpoint itself was located. Stalagmites were mostly broken but at least the remains were visible. The ascent back to the light was even steeper, but ascent is always easier.
From there teams continued on bikes to the Rychlebske trails. This is a complex of biking trails, one of the best in the Czech Republic. Actually there are only a few dedicated biking trails in Czech Republic. Teams had to bike for 20 additional kilometers on these trails.
During this section another change in the weather occurred. During the day the weather was frequently changing from cold to warm. It presented a problem of adding and removing of layers of clothing. But suddenly sky disappeared behind the clouds and a storm with heavy rain arrived. This made biking even more difficult as wet trails became slippery which brought a couple of falls. We have seen some bloody knees but fortunately no serious injuries.
After the trails teams returned to the base at Rychlebske trails to leave bikes there and continue on foot. This stage included several flooded quarries where checkpoints were located so that all the team members had to enter the water and swim to them. From the reaction of competitors the water was really cold.
One of the quarries (it was actually rather a constellation of quarries) involved the popular ‘Bolscross’ which is a sort of a trademark of Wenger Czech Adventure Race. This generally involves steep descents followed by steep ascents and being wet. In this particular case teams had to swim three times in the quarry and climb all the interesting rocks in the surrounding area. Once they had to climb two rope ladders from the water level almost thirty meters up. There was a descent on a rope with knots involved and also climbing up a net.
As for the racing, early on two Czech Salomon-Suunto teams came to the lead: Salomon-Suunto/Nutrend/S21 and Salomon-Suunto/Accom/OpavaNet. These teams raced head-to-head. They arrived at the same moment to the start of the trails, but from opposite directions!
At the end of the trails, they were one minute apart, at Bolscross three minutes and finally at the end of the trails Suunto/Nutrend/S21 finally took a meager but visible lead of five minutes. Not much after nine hours of racing.
These two teams leading is not a big surprise as they are two strongest teams in the Czech Republic.
Salomon-Suunto/Accom/OpavaNet is not racing with their strongest composition but all the substitutes are working great.
A little bit of a surprise is the third place of another Czech team Adidas/Nutrend/OpavaNet. They are also a very a strong team but they competed on multiday races in Ireland and Wales during the past two weeks. It is a surprise they arrived here and an even bigger surprise they are capable of racing. They were losing 10 minutes on the leaders and at the end of the day their gap rose to 30 minutes.
From the foreign teams only Russian/Ukrainian team MDK proved to be here to race. They are currently sixth.
You can follow the race leaderboard on www.adventurerace.cz/live and also in exclusive daily reports here on Sleepmonsters.
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