Tales From the Czech Adventure Race

Jan Smolik / 03.09.2017

Adventure Racing is not only about who wins the race. The rest of the teams and their stories and adventures are equally important. So this article will mainly focus on those behind the medal positions and their stories.

Fourth place was taken by the Czech team Kompar/XStream. They took advantage of knowing the local terrain (Hynek from the team annually organizes a race in the area) and managed to beat many competitors. They pulled off a big trick during the paddling stage. Instead of going to the water they headed other way to the road. It was later found out, that they attached their inline skates to the canoes and pushed them on the road. They claimed they thought it was a suggested method by the organizers as they were required to carry inline skates in the boat. It proved to be much faster than paddling as they avoided biggest meanders and returned to water with these behind them.

The battle for the next positions was sometimes a psychological battle about who will go by the longest route. The race had only one cut-off point which was a return to the TA1 after the last biking section.  The time at which point you left decided how many CPs you had to still go. Some teams decided to stay there or simply do Bolscross and quit.

Rokcpoint Klacky.cz/EPO took fifth place by deciding to continue at that point when it was clear they would go to the final stage in the late afternoon. The teams behind them – SPORTERA and Forstätt Adventure Team decided to stay in the TA and only do Bolscross, but Klacky.cz continued. They arrived only 15 minutes before the prize giving ceremony. They were longest on the course but they were still the fifth team of the race. They went to the party directly from the finish line and it is important to say they were on of the last teams to leave the restaurant.

French team SPORTERA and Swedish team Forstätt Adventure Team decided not to go any further from the TA and grabbed sixth and seventh position. EXIT Team misunderstood the rules and took the cut-off time for the final cut of the race, while it only decided which route they should go next.

They arrived couple of minutes before 1 p.m. breathing hard as they wanted to make the imaginary dead line and they missed 2 checkpoints to do this. As the real rule was that whoever misses checkpoint first is behind those who missed checkpoint later – it was actually a bad move which put them back to the eight position. But as they were in this position even before that it did not make any difference.

Copenhagen Adventure Sport pushed hard until at the half way point of the penultimate trekking stage they found out they did not have enough time upon which they almost immediately returned to the race center without taking any other checkpoints.  Almost immediately means it took them 10 hours to get there and take 9th position.

EPO Safety took the long paddling section and returned to race center immediately after that. It was also a 10 hour long return home which bought them 10th place. Adventuresport.pl decided to avoid th paddling section altogether as it was too cold. They finally took more checkpoints than teams behind them, but as they left the race first they were finally 11th.

I will avoid describing positions for the rest of teams. Teams Awesome, Leopard and Beacon Adventure Racing from the first fist checkpoints showed that racing is not their main purpose of being here and that they wanted to mainly enjoy the best parts of the course. They started to leave out the boring parts from the very beginning and enjoying only the most interesting parts. Awesome and Leopard managed to finish the race.

The Czech Ultram Team arrived from Moravia with no experience ofsimilar races. They had trouble reading the map as they only trained in places they knew very well. During the first 30 minutes of the race they lost two hours. But they did not withdraw and pushed onwards to the complete the course to the finish – even though they had to miss most of the course.

Three teams were withdrawn during the extremely cold night and rainy paddling stage. These were Běhal v dešti (it means He run in the water – it is strange that rain caused them trouble), Dziabnięci Lunatycy and Beacon Adventure Racing. They were transported to TA2 and they somehow managed to transport each other to the race center in the car.

Team Grozny pushed really hard, but they lost their lady early on. However they managed to get Tomas from the withdrawn team ColcaPeru/Team 360 to help them on the paddling section (which would be difficult with an odd number). Then they continued and managed to complete almost the full course.

Last unmentioned team is ColcaPeru/Team360. They had to withdraw due to illness of the team member.

However the race for the best story was won, as the race itself, by the team Multisport.fi. During the second night, during the heavy rain they wandered through a village looking for a place to sleep. They knocked on a door and asked a lady if there was some place to sleep. She lead them to a storage room and when they slept for an hour, she knocked on the door and brought them warm soup and a pink raincoat. To win a race you cannot be only the strongest, but you also need some luck.

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