Raid in France
Seagate Takes The Lead
Anne-Marie Dunhill / 06.09.2016
Temperatures continue to be warm during the day. Teams that had been further back on the course yesterday were struggling as they pushed through to finish the hefty trekking stage leading to the rafting. These back teams hadn’t had the same luxury of a full night’s sleep at CP7 as the lead teams had. The unique adventure racing “hobble-hop” walk was already making an appearance.
At 14:46 it was 30° and team DSN 74-Yogi Tea was waiting to start the rafting when Gilles “Le Lapin” Lievre who is in charge of the water safety came bounding up from the river saying, “Hang on a ‘sec, there’s no water in the river!” The water levels had dropped considerably as apparently EDF decreased the flow for maintenance work. This meant that teams further back in the pack needed to wait in the hot gorge until EDF turned the proverbial tap back on.
Lead teams had already started the long (91 km) mountain biking section that would take them up to an altitude of over 2,000m. The sun was blazing and a hot wind blowing.
In the first half of this section Seagate overtook 400 Team Naturex and maintained a lead of over an hour through the night.
CP10 on this section consisted of two women camped out at a refuge who signed each teams passport. There was a herd of cows grazing on the path looking suspiciously on as Seagate and 400 Team Naturex came through. Seagate arrived at 16:09. Isla Smith was on the tow rope and they just stopped briefly so that Chris Forne could empty trash and then they continued climbing.
400 Team Naturex arrived next at 16:56. They were smiling and chatty and stopped in the shade to eat and empty trash. Nicolas ‘Colo’ Seguin was having a hard time and team captain Sebastien Raichon told him to get out of the sun while they were refueling. They left at 17:04 joking that they were off to pick some ripe kiwis. RaidsAventure.fr arrived third.
The elevation gain is considerable on this section but as the saying goes, what goes up must come down. The descent into transition area 4 is on a very steep single track in the forest. Seagate came in at 19:27. Teams have access to their assistance barrels here and Seagate ate and administered to their feet. As they left at 19:44, there was a trail of water behind Nathan and he looked over and joked, “My bladder’s leaking.” (It appeared that his water bladder had sprung a leak.) Chris Forne was looking at the map for 37km trekking section that they were embarking on and said, “That’s a friendly looking start.”
400 Team Naturex arrived at 20:35 and the team rallied around ‘Colo’ who was still having a hard time. He couldn’t keep anything down and was dry heaving. So when leaving for the overnight trekking section the other team members took his backpack and put him on the tow rope in hope of giving him time to recover. They also said that they planned to stop at the refuge further along on the section for sleep and they left at 21:13.
Although the first two teams had finished the first mountain biking section in daylight, teams further back arriving through the night will find the single track descent into TA4 challenging in the dark.
With the lead teams engaged on the trek that took them through the night the race is spreading out and we’re going to get stories from teams further back in the pack today.
SleepMonsters
