Huairasinchi - The 2014 Adventure Racing World Championships
Peaklife Sport Finish and Close the Race
Rob Howard / 16.11.2014
Just after 22.30 on the 7th day of the race, team PeakLife Sport walked into Mompiche. They were the last competitors on the course and the final full course finishers, in 22nd place. Their race time was exactly 206 hours.
The British team had raced last year in Costa Rica and been short coursed, though they said they had ‘a great holiday’, but it felt ‘a bit incomplete’. Not this time! They’d covered the full distance with some time to spare and were clearly delighted and a little stunned by their reception and what they had achieved. It hadn’t really sunk in.
The team is composed of two couples, Karl Webster & Christine Howard, and Jo Inge and Wendy Fjellstad. All are in their mid-forties, they have children (and were at pains to thank both sets of grandparents for looking after them), full time jobs, and only occasional adventure racers. They’ve not trained together at all since racing last year in Costa Rica and yet here they were on the finish line of the Adventure Racing World Champs, in 22nd place.
“If you look at our track you’ll find a few times we went round in circles,” said Webster, “and tonight we had problems in the dark in the Mangrove. When its dark one sand bank is very much like another!”
Wendy Fjellstad described the rapids on the first paddle as, “a near death experience” and Howard added. “We could see what was going to happen and do nothing about it. We went under, then up again, under again and so on. We hit some rocks and somehow came out the other side!”
Webster said, “Somehow we managed to get better sleep between each stage in this race and I think it made a difference.” And Howard added, “There was always somewhere reasonable to sleep for hour or two at transitions and we seemed to arrive at night, so we could sleep in the dark. My favourite was the chapel we slept in, it was amazing.
“So was the route. It went through so many rural areas and we always felt we were out in the country seeing the real Ecuador.”
The team had many adventures. “On the second trek the heavy rain made a small stream a torrent and we couldn’t cross,” said Webster. “So along with the Argentinean team we built a small and very shaky bridge with some logs and crawled across. Later on we helped them by picked up a buoyancy aid they dropped and when we capsized in the rapids they rescued one of our paddles and later gave us an inner tube. You get some great relationships develop with other teams.”
The team also walked in on a festival during the Amazon jungle trek. “We arrived at a village only accessible by foot or mule and it just happened to be their annual carnival,” said Howard. “It was clear they were having a good time, the cock fighting was over and the drinking had begun, but they immediately invited us in to eat with them and gave us some strange berry juice drinks. Even though we were in the jungle they were all busy taking photos of us with their mobile phones!”
“I guess that is the difference between us and the fast teams,” said Fjellstad. “We don’t go fast but we want to get different things out of the race. I don’t imagine Seagate would have stopped to join the party.”
“Adventure racing is such a great way to see a country,” said Howard. “You arrive on foot or a bike, with nothing but what you carry and not as a tourist in a 4x4, and you are accepted so much more easily. Everywhere the people were as helpful as they could be – it’s been an amazing experience.
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