Adventure Racing World Championship 2016
Mind, Body and Spirit
Rob Howard / 12.11.2016
The pace and dynamic of the race has changed in the last 24 hours. The first 7 stages were raced at a fast and non-stop pace for the elite teams, with places changing regularly. Then came the big mountain trek in the Budawang range, and the pace slowed, teams needed to sleep and they had very sore feet and battered bodies.
It feels today like the event has changed from flat out racing to a contest of survival and endurance, and from a purely physical challenge to one where the mental challenge is now paramount. Who can keep going and hang on?
At the sharp end of the race Seagate were the first to the caving at the Bungonia National Park and they found it a testing stage. The caves are tucked away in the gum forest and were hard to find, let alone complete. Teams had to get CP’s in 5 out of 6 caves scattered around the park and they are only identified by numbers on a simple sketch map. Once at the cave mouth the only thing identifying it was the right cave out of many hundreds was a 4cm square metal tag with a number on it, attached to the rock somewhere near the entrance! Not easy in the dark.
Seagate did all 6 caves in the end, taking the full 5 hours available for this non-competitive stage. The reason was that one of them was just too tight a squeeze for Nathan Fa’avae to get through! He had to back out and they tried another cave. With a difficult descent through the Bungonia Slot Canyon to reach the Shoalhaven river for pack rafting next they opted to sleep for 3 hours after the caving and may now try to push through to the finish without stopping again.
Adventure Medical Kits are still tracking them, despite Erik Sanders’ sore feet, which must have been a real trial when trekking around the forest and scrambling in caves ... to be followed by the canyon descent over rough ground and boulders!
Columbia Vidaraid pushed so hard to get into the top 3 yesterday, but gave up sleep to do so and this will surely affect their pace, though they are still hanging onto third. That place is under threat from Painted Wolf (RSA) on the pack rafting stage, and their continued push into the top places is all the more remarkable for the fact that Mark Collins completed the Budawang trek in his bike shoes!
He’d put his trainers in the wrong box – and a simple mistake like that can have major consequences – presumably some very sore feet in this case!
Minor navigational mistakes, bits of gear in the wrong place or wrong box, breakages, and any number of other mishaps due to a lapse in concentration can all add up. It’s often said ‘it’s the team making the least mistakes who wins’ and there is a fair bit of truth in that.
Some mistakes are penalised under the rules and at the caving transition the referees have posted a list of penalties already applied. Transgressions includes leaving a race bib behind, dropping a GPRS tracker and crossing an out of bounds road. These will be served at the last TA and perhaps the most significant among the top teams is that it was Estonian ACE Adventure who dropped their tracker and got a 2 hour penalty.
The attrition takes a toll on gear as well as mental alertness and physical strength, and Merrell Adventure Addicts were struggling with a damaged derailleur on Tatum Prins’ bike which slowed them right down. The spent a long time trying to fix it, shivering in the cold of the night and in the end towed her to the caves. On arrival they still appeared upbeat, but must be worried about the final 99km cycle stage. Hanno Smit just said, “Adversity eh!” as he passed me in transition.
All of the teams will have to cope with some kind of adversity in the days ahead, while holding together mind, body and team spirit as they push on towards the finish line.
SleepMonsters
