We’re into the fourth race day and our teams have been out there for 72 hours already.
I found this comment on SleepMonsters from a post by Pyro. He met up with Cyanosis at the end of Monday night’s hike, which they finished Tuesday morning.
The remaining two members of Orion were in good spirits as they arrived at the transition, and they were followed within half an hour by Merrell Adventure Addicts, with the other South African team, Cyanosis hot on their heels. In fact, Cyanosis’ only comment on the day was “It’s too hot. And it’s not often you hear a South African say that”.
The weather has been unseasonable good today, up to 27 degrees, meaning the teams swaddled up against the cold overnight have been gradually stripping off all day to compensate.
An image of the spread of the field as of around 09h00 Wednesday looks as follows:
This next one is a zoom in showing only Cyanosis (#15), Merrell (#13), Buff Thermocool (#5 – race leaders) and Blackwater (#2). The black track is Buff’s – yes, there’s a track glitch (the ‘spike’). I count 15 ranked teams ahead of us.
We’re on bikes (36km from the lake); so is Buff (59km section). That ‘loop’ is a Trekking + ‘Patines’ section. I have no idea what ‘patines’ are…
Looking ahead… we’ve got the trekking and patines (6 + 8 km) section plus trekking (27km), then bikes (59km), then trekking and ropes (23km), the skating (11km), bikes (71km) and then paddling (78km – a sting in the tail if ever there was one – lake and river) and a final 4km urban orienteering…
First team expected tomorrow morning. Buff Thermocool has a decent lead after working really hard on the trekking on Monday night.
In case you didn’t know… Team Blackwater – formerly Team Nike – has the legendary Kiwi racer, Nathan Fa’ave racing with them. Yes, for over a decade Fa’ave raced AGAINST Nike – a constant duel for Eco Challenge, World Champs, Primal Quest and every other title. And now, he’s racing with Mike Kloser. I think it is fabulous! These guys have always gotten along well, although they’re competitive rivals, so it is just cool to see them racing together, especially as Kloser is thinking of retiring from competitive AR. This team combo is a bit like having Nic racing with Tweet.
From Pieter Mulder…
“Patines are skates and as it is “too hot” for ice,
must be in-line skates, surely.”
Pieter seems to be right – photos are coming in on Facebook from today’s inline skating. On the stage breakdown they called the first inline stage “Skating” and now it is “patines”. A word that was skipped by the translation machine 😉