Tecnu on the Ropes

Rob Howard / 12.11.2014

On the morning of day 4 of the race the leading teams were spread out across a wide area of the course. 

Seagate were the first to arrive at the river paddling stage, checking into TA6 (cp23) at 05.37 and opting to take an hours sleep as this TA allows teams to discharge some of their 8 hour sleep allowance.  Once they were awake they still had a cross country trek of around 10km to reach the kayak put-in point, carrying all their paddle gear with them, but fortunately not portaging the kayak!

With all the recent rain the river waters were higher and faster than expected, so the paddle was quicker, but Seagate (New Zealand) had no worries about getting caught in the dark zone, nor did Colombia Vidaraid (Spain) who are chasing them. It will be closer for Movistar (Ecuador) and Team France ... more on how that turns out later.

We decided to wait at the ropes stage, which was set up at CP22, on the cycle ride to TA6. The expectation was that adidas TERREX (UK) would be the first team to arrive while we were there, but Tecnu (USA) beat them to it and were surprised to find this out on arrival as they’d not seen the British team.

The ropes stage was set up on a small bridge over a canyon, and in a side stream nearby. First the team were lead to a small jump into the side stream, which was followed by a short swim, one which Mari Chandler seemed uncomfortable with, but her team mates stayed very close by.

After clambering out the next task was a Tyrolean traverse over the main river, starting beside a broad curtain waterfall in the side stream. The main river was turbulent after the recent rains, the mucky brown waters flowing very fast and channelling under the bridge, so it was an exposed traverse.

There was still one more task left, to cross back under the bridge, walking on a high wire and holding on using another wire set up as a handrail. (Rob Preston was really fast at this!)

It took Tecnu about half an hour to get around and back to their bikes.

Despite a 180 degree nav error that saw them almost return to transition at the start of the previous trek, they all seemed in good shape and good spirits.

“We’ve been riding on roads of different types on this stage,” said Kyle Peter. “It’s been pretty muddy, especially one section of road repairs that was all sticky clay.  The bikes are really trashed and we stopped to wash them off for 15 minutes with a very weak hose.  Rob wasn’t keen but it had to be done.

“I also had a chain break in the night. It was really hard to fix in the pouring rain but we got it done. I’m riding all the way on the big ring now as a result.”

The team quickly set off again to finish their ride, continuing on a hot and humid day along dirt roads through the jungle into large palm plantations. Piles of palm hearts and harvested pine nuts were laid at the road side ready for collection and there were occasionally wooden homes, some raised up on stilts. It was a remote and beautiful area to ride in and the map they were using at the time had only one, tiny settlement name on the whole A3 sheet. It wasn’t quite the blank on the map (that is the next trek in the Amazon), but it was pretty close.

Knowing they would be caught by the dark zone and that they might only get on the water for a short while the team opted to stay at the start of the river kayak stage, for what must be the longest the sleep stop an elite team has ever taken in a World Series race!  (They arrived at 14.45 and can’t leave until 05.30 in the morning.)

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

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