Skandia Island Explorer
Island Explorer Adventure in Denmark
Tom Davies (Team adidas TERREX) / 03.10.2014
A few weeks after the Itera AR World Series race in Wales, Mark and I decided that it was time to see if our legs had fully recovered from Tom Gibbs’ excellent but strenuous course, so we took up an invitation from Thure Kjaer to participate in his 24h race on the Danish island of Bornholm. Having previously experienced the fast and well-surfaced bike routes on the island, I packed my cyclocross bike and Mark spent a couple of evenings fitting skinny cyclocross tyres to his 29er. Our secret weapons were ready!
A 4am drive to Gatwick started off what was going to be a very long day, seeing as the race started at 6.30 pm that evening, so we tried to get a bit of sleep on the flight and managed to snooze most of the way there. On arriving in Copenhagen things started to unravel when our bikes failed to turn up. The baggage company couldn’t trace them, and we had a train to catch.
This was bad, as we had packed all of our race kit into our bike boxes rather than pay for an extra bag. We exchanged a couple of texts with Thure, who said that he would try to borrow some bikes for us, so we abandoned any hope of getting reunited with the bike boxes and jumped on the train with no bikes or kit. The adventure had started!
On the train we laid out the contents of our hand baggage to see what we could muster between us. It didn’t look great – we did at least have food and waterproofs, but in addition to bikes, we needed to source skates, shoes, helmets, wetsuits, clothing and some lights. Another text was sent to Thure, with a new, longer, list!
We got onto the island in time for a late lunch, about 4 hours before the start of the race, and were greeted by Thure, now sporting a fetching Tom Selleck moustache for reasons probably best left unknown. Avoiding the tickly subject of facial hair, we were shown to a pile of kit and skates that he had somehow managed to assemble – things were looking up! A pair of bikes showed up a few minutes later, generously loaned by another racer. One was sized small, and the other was XL, but we were in no place to be choosy so we did the best we could with saddle height adjustment and borrowed some bike shoes that nearly fit us. Game on!
We spent the afternoon chatting to Anna and Soren, two Danish racers with whom we’d shared accommodation at the Itera race, and working out which of the bits of clothing and equipment best fit each of us.
Looking like rejects from an AR jumble sale, we crossed the start line at 18.30. There’s a popular maxim that getting a team to the start line of a race is the hardest part of adventure racing – in this case it certainly felt like it!
After all this, the first stage of urban orienteering went well, we led the pack through the first few controls and transitioned to the inline skates safely in the front pack of teams. The less said about the skating stage the better, but suffice to say it’s not a strong point of UK teams in general, let alone when they are borrowing some racy looking but poorly-fitting carbon speed skates with no stoppers.
Somehow we survived the 26km skating stage with only a few new grazes, a medium-sized dent in a local resident’s hedge and some impressive blisters, and gratefully abandoned the skates, which by this time felt like implements of torture. Needless to say that by this point we were no longer part of the front pack of teams – it would appear that inline skating is a very popular sport in Scandinavia, judging by the speed of everyone else there!
A long coastal run took us into the growing darkness, where it was broken up with some technical sand dune orienteering. Choosing safe attack points, we blitzed through the section, only slightly overshooting one of the controls and we arrived at the kayak transition at about midnight. The sea was quite rough due to a strong onshore wind, and as we launched into the darkness there were waves breaking over the front of the boats. This wasn’t a problem until my borrowed spraydeck decided to part company with the cockpit, leading to a swamped kayak. Desperately trying to turn back to shore in order to bail the flooded boat out, I got caught broadside by a wave and promptly took a swim in the Baltic!
This freaked me out a bit – it was pitch black, I was a fair way offshore, my headtorch was in no way waterproof, the safety light that I had attached to my PFD had instantly failed on entering the water and there was quite a strong cross-shore current. Mark stayed nearby but couldn’t paddle back to me because of the wind and waves, but fortunately my head torch kept working and after a few tense minutes in the water I managed to get myself, the boat and my paddle back to the shore again. Deciding that it was too risky to try to paddle this section, we resorted to following the example of several other teams and dragging the boats down the beach.
After a seemingly endless 5km slog dragging the 30kg sea kayaks, we rounded a point with a lighthouse and became sheltered from the wind, so we gratefully got back into the boats and paddled the rest of the way on calm water, stopping once on shore to replenish water supplies from a handy tap as we had both lost our water bottles in the waves when we first launched. I was shaky and weak at this point - I think that the stress of the swim, the cold water and the lack of food had really hit me, but after a litre of water and two caffeine gels I felt completely transformed within a few minutes!
Transitioning after the paddle, we picked up our borrowed bikes and rode across the full width of the island to start a coasteering section. We were working hard on the bikes to try to warm up a bit, so the ride passed quickly. The coasteering included a short abseil and a long via ferrata section, although most of this was a case of following the rope across the rocky shore rather than using it for protection. As we returned to our bikes the dawn was breaking, and after another few km on the road we enjoyed a short sprint-orienteering course around the town of Gudjheim as the sun came up, using a map and a course that had previously been used for the Nordic O-Championships.
Another bike leg, this time uphill and heading inland and we arrived at a climbing centre, similar to a Go-Ape setup, with high wires, zip lines and rope ladders to negotiate. Taking to the trees, we disposed of the stage in short order and left for the final long bike stage. We had been steadily overtaking teams throughout the coasteering and on the bikes, so we were slowly working our way back through the field after losing places on the inline skating and while we were splashing about in the sea.
The biking went well, but the weather worsened and soon we were riding through steady rain. We didn’t have any spare clothes beyond what we were already wearing so there was no point in stopping, so we huddled inside our goretex and squinted against the spray coming off the tyres.
This stage was about 75km long and covered what felt like most of the island, which appeared to be almost completely deserted, presumably because the holiday season was over. Passing spookily empty houses in the mist and the rain, we spiked control after control, working our way towards the forested centre of the island, where we had to complete a fun memory orienteering course. Fixed to each control there was a map showing where you were, and where the next control was located, and it was up to you to remember the way there!
There were 5 legs to complete, all of them quite technical, and we overtook another couple of teams here, resorting to some childish hiding in the bushes at one point as we didn’t want to show them where the control was!
Reunited with our borrowed bikes once more, we had just three more controls to get before the finish, and looking at the map we were going to make it inside the cut-off time. The ride was relatively uneventful, if rather wet and we crossed the finish line with half an hour to spare having cleared the course.
The race wasn’t over yet however, as there was a televised finale leg which was a one hour score orienteering course. According to the number of controls collected, you could either lose one CP from your total score, remain the same, or gain a bonus CP. We had a solid if not spectacular run in the rain to collect 6 of the available controls and maintained our total of CPs to secure 8th place overall. It wasn’t as good a result as we had hoped to achieve, but one which we were reasonably happy with considering that we were fortunate to be able to start the race at all!
I’d highly recommend the race – it’s easy to get to, the Danes are incredibly friendly and welcoming (and all speak excellent English), and the course was surprisingly varied and challenging for what looks at first glance to be a fairly small, flat island! Next year it hosts the Danish National Championships, so the competition should be fast and furious.
Huge thanks to Thure and all of the kind racers who helped out and lent us kit, clothing and bikes – without you we wouldn’t have been able to race at all. Thanks also to Mark’s wife Heather who phoned the airline constantly to try to find our missing kit, and who arranged for us to be reunited with our bikes just in time for the flight home – we were able to put a pair of dry shoes on for the first time in 48 hours!
SleepMonsters
