From Highest to Hardest

Rob Howard / 07.11.2014

The second day of the AR World Championships registration has now come to a close with all the teams completing the compulsory tests, registration, and assembling their gear and food, ready to go into their race boxes.

This was all taking place at the Bicentennial Centre, which is the old Quito airport, which was a spacious venue, but not always easy to get to through the Friday traffic – Quito is almost grid locked at times and the race hotels are a distance away. It was the international teams registering today, while yesterday all the Ecuadorian and Spanish speaking teams had been processed.

The international teams are all very experienced and the registration process and simple checks on skills they all mastered long ago are a tiresome necessity. Some did have administration still to do – including the Yogaslackers who were counting out from large rolls of dollar bills to pay their entry fee!

Other teams were dealing with the inevitable late issues thrown up by international travel; missing bikes, late arrivals and in the case of the unfortunate Peter Spagnoli from Team Irish AR an inexplicable and somewhat worryingly prolonged interrogation by customs officers!

However, it was the briefing given at a table in the centre of the room which focused most attention as it gave some more detail on the plan of the race, and of the potential hazards ahead. One surprise was that there seems to be no mandatory rest stop this time, but there are dark zones on the paddling and with 12 hours of darkness they are significant.

There were warnings to take precautions at the high altitudes of course – though there is not much the late arriving teams can do now! They will be at a huge disadvantage in the early stages of the race.  Not surprisingly altitude issues have been the main focus of attention in the lead up to the race, so the main point to stand out from the briefing was “the last third of the race is the hardest. Plan!”

This refers to the Amazon jungle trek and estuary and sea paddle which finish the race, and teams may been thinking too much about preparing for the cold at high altitude and enough not about the finish in equatorial jungle and mangrove swamp! 

The warnings for the Amazon trek include danger from snakes, heat, and also a ‘lack of maps’ plus ‘GPS only navigation, plenty of batteries!”  The teams will trekking without maps in the jungle, following GPS directions and finding their way along forest & animal trails and waterways.  I think an adventure race stage without maps of any kind may be a first.

All of the teams preparing pre-race have been busy climbing volcanoes, but one racer who went down to the Amazon basin is Nick Gracie of adidas TERREX and he said, “I think that may be the toughest stage, the humidity and heat are intense and progress will be slow through the jungle.”  He added, “I think this may be the hardest ARWC ever,” and he’s raced in most of them.

The final stage is a tidal mangrove swamp paddle and that too will ring alarm bells after the effect a similar stage had in last year’s World Champs in Costa Rica.  Some teams were lost and stranded for a day or two and there are many racers here who will be nervous of the difficulty of that stage.

There is no doubt the high altitude start and Andes trekking will be challenging, especially for those who have not been able to acclimatise, but it would be a mistake for anyone to think that once teams start to descend to lower altitudes the hard part is over – the hardest and most decisive stages will come at the end of the race!

You can follow the race live at http://live.huairasinchi.com/

­

See All Stories On This Race