After 60 hours of racing, both Merrell Adventure Addicts and Cyanosis are well placed and racing steadily. Their position is uncertain as there is no online leaderboard.
Yesterday, when Orion’s Nathan Peterson crashed, Merrell and Cyanosis were the other two teams on the scene who also activated their emergency signal for ‘send helicopter immediately’. Nathan was whipped off to hospital, where he spent the night; tests were conducted and he is A-ok. He returned to the race today to wait at a transition for his team, which is now down to only two people. It’s a pity that Merrell and Orion and Cyanosis didn’t have the opportunitiy for a good duel.
This morning, our teams were coming off the trekking section and onto their bikes for a short 22km stage to a transition where they stopped for four hours (compulsory) to rest. It appears that Merrell and Cyanosis must have arrived close, if not, together. Merrell’s track indicated a time at the transition of 14h06. And a note from the race to me said, “Team 15 – Cyanosis arrived at the mandatory 4 hour stop at 14:08. They are sleeping at the moment. They are fine.”
So, if they got in at 14h00-ish, they would have only been able to leave at 18h00-ish. Pity that they had to rest for four hours during daylight…
From here, back on to their bikes for a 34km stage to a kayak/trekking transition. From Buff Thermocool’s track, it looks like the teams paddle up the dam and then do two little orienteering sections and then paddle back. Then on to bikes again (38km).
I’ve just check the tracking and this is what the field currently looks like:
This next image shows where Cyanosis (#15), Merrell Adventure Addicts (#13) and Buff Thermocool (#5) are located. The black track is Buff’s. I did check Cyanosis and Merrell’s track and they had not yet started the paddle.
So, our teams will be on the water tonight. I haven’t heard any talk of a darkzone, so I presume they’ll just keep going, especially after a long (four hour) rest.
As for conditions… they seem to be fair during the day – some rain – but that it has been very cold (and wet) at night. Rob Howard, editor of SleepMonsters, posted the following about the second night (Monday night).
The second night of the race was another cold one for the teams, who were spread out on the high altitude mountain trek on the Sierra de Grados and the long cycling stage towards them. At TA7, where teams set off for the mountains the temperature dropped to -2C last night and there was a heavy frost covering everything by morning. What the temperature on the difficult trek and ropes stage was at higher altitude we don’t know, but it was most likely several degrees colder.
A good number of teams have withdrawn and a number of unranked. I recall seeing something pre-race on SleepMonsters, in an article written by Rob Howard, that race director Antonia de la Rosa – a very competent and experienced adventure racer – expects only 15 of the 51 teams to finish the complete course. I’m hoping that our two teams will be in this 15. Rob adds, “He has designed the route with multiple loops so that it is easy to short-course teams and any that are 24 hours behind the leaders at any transition will be directed to cut the next stage/loop, and will presumably be lower in the rankings.”
That’s it for now.
UPDATE: Tracking just updated. We’re on the water. I’m counting a possible 11 teams in front of our teams. There may be two teams together, in which case I only see one tag, but my guess is that we’re Top 15 and closing in on Top 10. Go teams!
