A Tough Prologue in The Rain

Rob Howard / 08.09.2016

There were a few days of glorious sunshine and high temperatures leading up to the race ... it couldn’t last!  Thursday dawned overcast and damp after a night of heavy rain, and the heavy rain continued all through the first day of the race.

Today was prologue day, the traditional introduction to the race with a course set around the race host town of Carlton Sur Mer, and combined with a junior race for local school children.  After a briefing in the morning, impressively conducted completely in 3 languages (French, English & Spanish) the race teams met  at the prologue start line for 13.00.

This was set by a lighthouse at the end of a long spit which encloses one side of the seawater lagoon which the town is built around, and the lagoon and its surrounds would be central to much of the action during the day.

All of the races set off together with the adult competitors competitors in the main races jumping into their canoes after a short sprint along the beach, and the juniors running further along the coast to pick up their bikes.

The international racers circled back past the start line in their canoes to enter the lagoon, which involved a fair bit of time taking their canoes for a walk as it was too shallow to paddle.  There was soon a long line of teams pulling their boats along, some close in-shore, others further out  as they headed across the lagoon to a local park to pick up their bikes. 

Not that they were on them for long. Fairly quickly they had to enter a small stream and carry or push their push their bikes along this, then pass underneath the main road. Only once they were past the road did they leave the river and start riding. It set the tone for the day – a day of fun and quirky challenges, all combining into a tougher than expected opener for the race.

On their ride teams had to find a checkpoint on a railway wagon, and they were happy to ride along the tracks as the trails were saturated and the mud thick and sticky. I found dozens of racers clambering over a set of 3 wagons, all looking for the checkpoint ... which was on some more wagons further up the line! It was a classic case of ‘follow the leader’ – which is not always a good idea!

Given the weather conditions the course had been shortened, taking out a tough bushwhacking trek, and as it turned out that was a good move. The course was quite long enough without it. Teams were now heading up into the hills towards a section of the route around a dam, with a zip-line and a toboggan slide into the water. They couldn’t get any wetter, but at least it washed the mud off.

While the main race was in the hills I headed back to see the schools racers arrive at the local wharf for a jump into the ocean.  It was about a 10m jump off the dock side and very few of the teenagers I saw hesitated – they jumped straight in!  Only one of the pair had to do it, then swim to checkpoint floating nearby and climb out up a ladder.  Some came well prepared with googles as they knew they’d be doing it.  (The competitors in the main race will do the same on the last day and I suspect more of them will hesitate about the jump.)

After a bit more riding the junior racers took to the water in the canoes to reach checkpoints on some of the small islands in the lagoon. Getting back out wasn’t easy in the thick (and very smelly) mud and quite few lost their trainers in the gloop as they struggled to pull the canoes up to the shore.

Then it was a short run to the finish line, to celebrate, do interviews with the race announcers and have their photos taken.  The leading juniors finished before the adult racers, but the majority were coming in at the same time, and it was great to see they were part of the big occassion, starting and finishing with the international athletes and being treated just the same.

Meanwhle the international racers were heading back down into town, on some very wet and technical trails, to arrive by the local school for another unusual challenge.  This time they had to descend via a manhole into a drainage channel to make their way back under the main road to the coastline.  With all the rain there was a noisy rush of water and the tunnel was narrow so it was intimating, especially in the fast flowing thigh high water. One of the marshals joked, “we had to send them down there as it was too dangerous to cross the road.”

There was a control punch in the middle of the 180m tunnel and not all the teams remembered to find it, so quite a few had to go back in again. After this it was just a short run along the coast to the finish line, to meet up with support crews and get a ride back to hotels and B&B’s in town to dry out and clean up.  Both racers and supporters will be busy washing and cleaning bikes caked in mud and trying to dry out while they have a chance.

I spoke to Ruben Mandure of the Uruguay Ultra Sports team who said, “Some of the riding was very technical, but the wet conditions were OK for us as it wasn’t cold at all. It was fast as always and very competitive, you only had to make a mistake of a minute for 4 or 5 teams to pass you.” He added, “The tunnel was something new – I’ve never done anything like that before and it was so long. You couldn’t see the end so didn’t know how far it was to go. I prefer to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Another of the early finishers were Team Green Things of South Africa.  Jeremy Green made the point, “We have canoes in South Africa ... but we prefer to actually paddle them, not pull them along!”  He went on to say, “I definitely wasn’t expecting the prologue to take 3 hours, it looked much shorter on the map.”  His race partner Nathan Thompson was still getting his breath  back and just managed to say, “I’m glad that is over – the prologue is not really my thing.”

The full results will be out later tonight once all the control cards have been checked and they will be added into the teams race times, so they are significant. “Some teams almost lost their chance on the prologue last year,” said Race Director Daniel Poirier. “A couple missed controls and had penalties and that is hard to come back from.”

[Unofficially I’m told the Estonian ACE Adventure team are leading.]

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