The Coastal Challenge
The Coastal Challenge: How The Race Categories Work
Jackie Windh / 17.03.2016
The Coastal Challenge allows racers to select to run the “full” Expedition distance - 225 km with nearly 9,000 m in elevation - or a shorter and much easier Adventure distance of 150 km (which avoids some of the trickiest terrain).
The route is identical for both categories on the first and last days. Here are the Expedition distances and elevation changes:
Day 1 32k 917m
Day 2 38k 1811m
Day 3 45k 1788m
Day 4 35k 2054m
Day 5 52k 1822m
Day 6 23k 584m
TOTAL 225k 8976m
On Days 2 and 3, the Adventure people run substantially shorter and easier routes. Day 2 is 16k and flat (half of it along a beach) and Day 3 is 12k and mostly flat (nearly all of it along a beach). Day 4 becomes a bit tougher - the Adventure people start at our 20k mark, missing out on over a kilometre of climbing, but still with a fair bit of up and down, rough navigation, and ascent up a river, and then a very tough 1000m technical descent. Their route is only 15 km, but they are some very tough km!
This is followed by everyone’s longest day - 52 km for Expedition, and 37 km for Adventure. Again, Adventure racers bypass the first big hill, and start at out Checkpoint 1 - still a very challenging route.
Now, how these categories actually work:
First - one thing I absolutely LOVE about this race is that no one ever gets booted out. It’s not like a Reality Show (sorry you’ve been voted off the island). Anyone who DNFs a stage, or just decides to skip a stage for any reason may continue to run later stages (albeit unranked and, of course, provided that medical personnel deem them fit to continue).
HOWEVER... if you want to be in the actual ranking of the Adventure stage, you must initially sign up for that stage. Anyone who signs up for Expedition and later downgrades to the Adventure category is issued a 2 hour time penalty, and also their time so far on the course stands as their total time. This makes little difference on the first day, as both categories run the same route. Anyone who chooses to downgrade after the first day would just receive the 2 hour penalty. But after the second day - their time on course for that longer day would still stand (as well as they would receive the 2 hour penalty).
So, even though you can downgrade along the way, it definitely pays to choose wisely in advance which category you are entering in ...
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