Raid Gauloises
Vsd-Eider Go Ahead As Parallax Take a Rest
Raid Gauloises / 29.04.2002
As lightning flashed flooded the sky and torrential rain began to fall, team VSD-Eider took the prudent decision to sleep early and avoid a drenching in the storm that thundered through the mountains of Northern Vietnam Saturday night to Sunday morning. A gamble that later paid off, as they emerged from the initial MTB and short trekking section to CP8 with about a one hour lead over their fellow French team Ertips. The Americans of Parallax, who took a calculated and well-earned one-hour rest, dropped to a tight third position.
The strenuous 121.5km trekking section is almost a distant memory for the leading teams of the 11th Raid Gauloises. At 23h00 on Sunday, 18 of the 48 teams still in the race had already come to the end of this section at CP6. Most of them were very relieved as French team Intersport can testify: “We feel like we’ve just finished an entire race�.
Late Saturday night through Sunday morning, all the teams were caught in a violent storm, introducing an extra tactical element to the race. To sleep or not to sleep, that was the hypothetical question. The teams took shelter anywhere they could, team 6 slept at the local Communist Party headquarters while others opted for the less salubrious solution of a pigsty! VSD-Eider dealt with the dilemma wisely: “We were caught in the storm with Nokia. They opted to continue under the pouring rain, while we thought it more prudent to stop and sleep with the local villagers. They lit a fire for us which helped dry our clothes�. A decision that worked in their favour, as the rain hammered the increasingly treacherous mountainside and Nokia had difficulty finding their way. Parallax, however, saw it differently: “The rain storm was quite cool but our feet are sore and definitely very tender - a lot of miles of foot slogging right off the bat�.
Growing fatigue and sore feet were beginning to take a serious toll, especially in the section leading to CP5, at 1235m the highest point of this year’s Raid Gauloises and infested with snakes. Assailed with requests for treatment, the doctors at CP6 were forced to call for reinforcements from CP7. At the end of this selective section, Parallax, the first to pickup their MTBs, sped down the 95km route to CP7 in under 4 hours followed closely by VSD-Eider and Ertips. “It was a bit like “The Tour de France�, fast and smooth, starting downhill, then a long, gentle rise topped off by a good hill and all in fairly dense traffic�, specified one of the members of VSD-Eider.
Team Parallax, having taken no rest during the first night’s trek, decided somewhere between CP7 and CP8 that now was the time to take a short break. “We had a sleep for one hour on the short hike between the MTB and the canoe at around 08h30 to 09h30. That’s when we heard VSD-Eider and Ertips go past us. It was part of our strategy but we needed it all the same. These races are like a yo-yo, sometimes you just have to get some sleep�.
SleepMonsters
