Raid in France
A Technical and Challenging Course at Raid in France
Helen Smith / 12.09.2014
The race briefing was held tonight near the beautiful cathedral of Puy-en-Velay.
We discovered the race is going to be a logistical challenge with lots of transitions, so teams will need to think hard about what to carry with them for the next leg.
Teams will meet tomorrow at city hall at 3.30pm for 4pm start. The Prologue will be 45 minutes of orienteering in the city. Complete teams must run together but can leave their bags in transition. At 5.30pm they will cycle 35kms to the bivouac where they will camp overnight.
The first leg on Sunday morning is a 3km kayak, the teams ranking following the prologue will determine their kayak start time. They will be set off at 2 minute intervals.
The kayak legs will be on rivers of class 2-3 rapids and sometimes no portages available, with quite a long canal kayak towards the end.
The race will go through the beautiful Cevennes national park and we were told there will be some tricky navigation to deal with and teams must follow the route book carefully.
We are to expect river crossings with mountain bikes in kayaks, technical mountain bike sections, grade 3 rapids with some potential blockages and tricky rope work not to mention the caving and horse riding. This is going to be a very exciting race to follow.
We are also to expect some sort of magic on trek 7! So watch this space!
SleepMonsters
