Wenger Czech Adventure Race 2014
Close Racing at the Wenger Czech AR
Jan Smolik (Czech Adventure Race) / 23.08.2014
With teams setting out for the biking stage back to the race center, night fell. And with clear sky, it was almost freezing cold. Down in the valley it was 6 – 8 degrees centigrade and on the mountaintops the temperature was approaching zero. The organizers in the transition area were shivering even in their ski jackets and vapor was rising from every breath.
During the biking stage both Salomon-Suunto teams kept racing side by side. Salomon-Suunto/Accom/OpavaNet managed to get back to the wheel of Salomon-Suunto/Nutrend/S21 and they arrived back to the transition area within one minute of each other. But from their postures it was clear that the stage was not easy. The final descent should have been the easiest but it took both teams longer than expected. Both teams looked frozen when they arrived back to TA just fifteen minutes after two a.m.
The only other team to finish the biking stage during night was Adidas/Nutrend/OpavaNet who were about hour and half behind the leading duo. Then there was a 4 hour gap before next teams.
The race for fourth place became a close game in the transition area. With the Czechs from Wenger taking almost two hours of sleep, Czech team ‘Beautiful Men and a Strong Woman’ managed to get into the fourth place. Wenger and Russian/Ukrainian team MDK left transition five minutes behind them and they were actually mixed when they were crossing the restart line. Team Dutch Adventure left another five minute behind this duo and were back in the race.
The trekking stage had two highlights, first was the climbing section where every team member had to climb two routes. It was good it was during daylight except for very slow teams. However, heavy rain started during the day and the access route has changed to the canyoning and rocks became really wet making them hard to climb.
Another highlight was the ascent on inline skates to Dlouhé stráně pumped storage hydro power plant. It is an interesting place with an artificial lake on the top of mountain over 1300 meters high. The elevation gain for this skating section was over 500 meters.
It was the night section of the trekking stage that allowed Salomon-Suunto/Nutrend to gain an advantage over Salomo-Suunto/Accom. Accoms made some navigational mistake and suddenly Nutrends were 40 minutes ahead. At the end of the stage, they had almost two hours advantage. Adidas managed to approach these two, but later they started to lose the ground. Their gap in the transition area was almost two additional hours.
From the remaining teams MDK started to gain over Wenger, sixth place was held by Beautiful Guys and a Strong Woman.
You can follow the race leaderboard on www.adventurerace.cz/live and also in exclusive daily reports here on Sleepmonsters.
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