European Adventure Race Finals
A Race Round the Galtees
Rob Howard / 01.08.2015
Leaving the Transition 9/10 at Kilbeheny the teams had a short ride up to the Kings Yard, a farm on the lower slopes of the Galtees which is a popular starting point for hikers and has a small shop for food and drink. So as teams set off they knew they might get some food on the return – if they were not too late back. (It’s a favourite spot for the race, having been used the past 3 years.)
Bikes were left against the hay bales in the barn and the second big trek of the race began by visiting a valley to the West which the race has not been into before. When it was looked at on scouting trips it was such an attractive spot the planners decide teams had to go there and it was made a 1000 point CP.
On this trek there were only four 1000 pointers out of 10 checkpoints scattered across the whole compact mountain range, two at the beginning and two at the end. This meant teams had a lot of flexibility in how much they took on, and they could chose to only visit any or all of the 4 nearest checkpoints to the bike drop at Kings Yard. In addition there was an ‘all or nothing’ orienteering stage as well.
Halti Adventure were first to set off at around 5am and they took in two of the harder to reach checkpoints which most other teams did not, but left the furthest two out ... which I think everyone will do. Even so it took them over 12 hours to complete the trek, and it would have been far longer had the pushed on to get them all, which is what they’d said they planned to do.
Other teams arrived throughout the day and at the time of writing (9pm) there is still one team who have not set out on the trek – and they may choose not to. This is Fenix Multisport – the Czech team which includes racers who were on the winning team last year!
Just to complete the switch around the team who look like they will be first to get to the finish line are Lunar Chicks – who were last on the first trail run! They’ve cherry picked what want to do as they’ve made their way around the course and look like they will finish well before midnight! (The race wasn’t expecting teams to finish quite so early so no accommodation was arranged for tonight and they’ve hurriedly had to get a village hall opened up!)
It’s looking like there will be quite a few early finishers, which is something of a surprise, so the finish line may be busy through the night and not just around the 08.35 finish time tomorrow morning. (Some teams also have time credits so they have the option to finish later than 08.35.)
Halti Adventure may well be early finishers too and could regret their decision to cut a stage yesterday, which may end up pushing them down the rankings. They will just have to wait and see what other teams challenging for the podium places manage to complete.
Adidas TERREX are probably still favourites and look like they will use all their time. On the Galtee trek today they looked strong and sounded confident in their strategy. (They missed 4 of the low value CP’s on the trek.) AR Team Polska are scoring highly as are Swedish teams Karlstad Multisport White and SWECO (who have a big time credit), Team Yeti (Denmark), Vallfosca (Spain) and Get No Sleep, who are the top Irish team.
The race is now reaching its end game and teams will be on Ballyhoura Bike Trails on the final night, fighting the sleepmonsters and watching the clock as they try to summon the energy to reach the finish on time with as many points as possible. None will know what their rivals are doing (or even who their closest rivals are) – they can only concentrate on doing the best they can and then wait to see where they rank.
[There are some time credits yet to be added to the leaderboard, some quite substantial, after CP39 had to be shut down last night when the landowner changed his mind about allowing teams through! As some teams had already gone through they will receive time credits because the alternative route most teams took was considerably quicker. At the moment I don’t know what these credits are or where teams will be told about them.]
SleepMonsters
