The"Swiss Fix"

Anne-Marie Dunhill / 13.11.2014

The tracking system showed that teams had been arriving late into the night to TA5; CP14 was the likely cause as teams invariably mentioned their difficulty and time lost in locating it.

After teams transitioned to their bikes, they had a 159km mountain biking section from Meridiano to TA 6 in Independiente.  The press road book stated “poor road conditions” which qualifies as the understatement of the year. We stopped off at CP 19 on the mountain biking stage to try and untangle our limbs.

Dusk had fallen and there was once again a thick fog. Talking to the race volunteers we learned that team number 43, Poland AR-Team Polska (one of the two teams to hadn’t been served the infamous four hour penalty) had dropped their race passport here, in front of a tiny store. The woman who owned the store picked it up and handed it to one of the volunteers but the team had already left.

The next team in was USA-Yogaslackers. The race volunteer casually told them “You guys just gained a position ‘cause the team before you left their passport.”  They instantly volunteered to take the passport and drop it off at the next CP that was four hours away. This selfless attitude saved the Polish team the eight hours it would have taken round trip if they’d had to return from CP 20 to CP19 to recuperate the left passport.

Getting in to Independiente was on a dirt road and it seemed at times that we were playing chicken with the oncoming buses and trucks shipping out the crops from the cacoa and palm tree plantations. The overhead clouds were replaced with clouds of dust.

Following team number 17 Ecuador Finalin in from further up the track from the TA, it was immediately clear that the captain Gustavo Cevallos Fuenzalida had a problem with his bike; he was advancing by push kicking it with his right foot on the uphill and holding on to a teammates handle bar on the down hills. We learned in the TA6 that he had broken his bike chain five kilometers further back.

The team made a quick transition and there was noticeable tension in Spanish between two team members. They had decided to divide the tasks and one team member was to carry the food and the other the mandatory gear for the next kayak section. Two other teams members silently prepared the transition, munching on a large dried sausage.

Rebecca Law from New Zealand is racing with this team and on the inside lid of her bike box she has taped photos of friends and her boyfriend. When asked if she spoke a word of Spanish she said, “No! And when I asked how we were supposed to get to the kayaks from this section the guys told me to read the road book, but everything is in Spanish!” Despite the rush of the transition she remained incredibly calm and centered as the team set off.

Team number 18, Ecuador-Guambras Biosil-Powerade came into TA6 at 10:42. The team is captained by Maria Valleja and they are racing with two men and two women. They had a different strategy then the previous team, deciding to take an hours rest here. Maria said, “Let’s stop here, get some good food, look after our feet, pack some good food and then finish the paddle tomorrow. We’ve been racing smart so far, why stop now?” Her teammate Daniela Leon wholeheartedly agreed with this plan as she had found the section so difficult that she said she had cried at one point. The inside lid of her teammate Dayne McKnight’s bike box contained scribbled personal message such as “love you” and “keep going.”

The TA is in the dirt courtyard of this tiny village and at one point uniformed school children sat on the slope outside their school and shouted a deafening “Ecuador, Ecuador!” when team Finalin was leaving the transition. The children aged ten to fourteen then went to a class in first-aid taught in an outdoor classroom. (How many of our own children would love to learn in these conditions?)

Teams in the lead pack had transitioned in the dark and there were some very funny stories from this time as well. Simply the best has to be the Swiss team R’Adys AR’s solution to a bike problem. They arrived at 22:36 and the front hub bearings were gone on one of their bikes and it was metal rubbing on metal. . They applied what we have now christened the “Swiss Fix”, using “butt cream” and duct tape to form a cushion that would allow them to continue using the bike. The American volunteer J.D. Eskelson showed me the picture and it was ingenious.

The longer the race goes on the more there is to laugh about and finding the humor in the absurd in this extreme race is one of the joys of adventure racing. As the race nears its’ finish in Mompiche for the lead teams, teams further back in the pack have all of our admiration as well. There has been a lot to laugh about over these last few days, some printable, some not!

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