Yesterday, Cyanosis did indeed skip the small skating loop, missing out a few CPs. Merrell Adventure Addicts recovered from what looked like a really bad section on the big skating loop during Wednesday night.
This race is odd because teams can skip CPs or even sections and not be unranked. They just receive a time penalty, which they sit out before the end of the race. This could be a good strategic move, or not. Cyanosis skipped the skating because they were concerned about the paddle darkzone, which they knew they’d catch on Thursday night. The crucial part is that the paddle started on a lake and then then on to a river… and the dark zone only applied to the river (and/or getting on to the dam by a certain time). Teams were back on the water at 07h30 this morning. It’s a train of teams on the river now.
Rob Howard from Sleep Monsters saw Cyanosis on CP68, on the cycle leg towards the dam, during Thursday and he had this to say:
This team had completed the whole course up to the final trek/ropes/skate, but then felt they had miscalculated the effect of the dark zone on their chances of finishing before the course closure and decided to miss that stage. It was a hard choice for them to make.
“We thought we were in 12th place and will now be ranked nowhere,” one said, “we are not too happy with that! I thought this was going to be an A to B style course not have all these loops and options all over the place. After the fiasco in Portugal last year we were told it would be a straight line course but now we really have no idea of who we are racing.”
It was a comment echoed by several other racers we’ve spoken to, as without knowing who has cut which parts of the course and what penalties and credits are applied no one is really sure of the rankings as the race comes to a close.
According to the provisional leaderboard on the race website this morning, Merrell Adventure Addicts are in 6th and Cyanosis is in 8th postition! But, this ranking is from before the skating loop, which is pre-cycle and paddle. Also note that these are provisional placings and that times and other bits still need to be calculated and included. And just last night I was saying that I so hoped for our teams to be in the Top 10 but that they looked to be in the teens. And it may still happen that both finish Top 10. Wow! This would be amazing for SA adventure racing (and them, of course).
Big story yesterday was around Team Blackwater’s Nathan Fa’avae. The whole team made a big bloops in not packing running shoes into the team barrel at the bike/run transition. The others got shoes from marshals at the race but no one had big enough shoes for Nathan. This is what Pyro says about this on Sleep Monsters:
Blackwater, and especially Nathan Fa’avae, had had a hard time on the overnight trek/ropes/skate stage. They are limited in which of their kit cans they can access at the various transitions. At the end of the MTB stage prior to the trek, the only one they could access was their MTB can, to deposit biking gear – meaning they would need to be carrying their trekking shoes with them on the bikes. While Buff Thermocool had read through this correctly, Blackwater were not carrying their shoes, and at transition, rapidly realised their mistake. Faced with an agonising 23km trek in their bike shoes, Monique, Mike and Chris managed to scrounge shoes from the marshals, but no-one had anything to fit Nathan’s size 48 feet. As a last-ditch solution to keep them moving, he took the insoles out of his bike shoes, stuck them inside his socks, and soldiered on.
Blackwater made their way steadily through the trek, losing time only to Buff Thermocool gradually, but at the next transition they again had to deal with the wider ramifications of their error – on reaching the next skate section, Nathan’s feet were too swollen to get his skates on. The big Kiwi was forced to continue, in his sock-and-insole combination, for another 11km of tarmac road, before they could get back onto their bikes to try and gain some time back on their rivals.
As of now (11h10 Friday, SA time), Team Buff Thermocool are race winners. They crossed the finish line Thursday afternoon, in daylight. Team Blackwater were second, a few hours after Buff Thermocool. Team Silva Gerber is approaching the finish. They are expected within the next 20 minutes.
Comment from Pieter Mulder:
First impression, regrettably and apparently, it is questionable that the event was worthy of its World Championships status.
There was no reliable guidance or information available for the competing teams unless someone in the team spoke Spanish. “Supporting crews” made life much more easy for some teams, our two SA teams did not have that luxury. The cherry on the top: Merrell had no choice but to cycle from the dam to the finish, due to the fact that there were no more canoes available. In doing so, they arrived at the finish before teams that had been in front of them. Team Cyanosis were never aware of their position or that of the leaders. Their decision to miss out on the 4 control skating, ropeworks, hiking loop was based on official information received that the dark zone was to be enforced for the entire canoeing leg. However, it later turned out that the paddling on the lake section did not fall under the 20:30 – 08:30 dark zone period. Had they known this, their decision might have been different as they were gaining in strength and overtook 12 teams on the MB leg to the dam and further overtook some 5 teams on the paddling leg.
Both our teams stopped to assist with the Orion incident which will provide them with a bonus. At the time of writing the results, apart from no 1 and 2, are not up yet and will only be finalised after the last teams finished.
Clearly we are grateful to all organisers for their willingness and energies but surely the lessson to be learned is to “keep it simple”.
Incidentally, these are my personal views and not those of any of the participants.
It will be interesting to read Rob Howard’s reports.
The teams are both in. Merrel came in by bike. That brings to an end a busy week at the office for them and a rather distracted one for me.
Ooohhh… am gonna look. I thought it was a tracking glitch seeing their tag off the river a moment ago. Actually, I’ve just checked their track and it doesn’t look like they got on the river at all! They got to the dam and looks like they’ve been transported by car to Salamanca. Mmm… all will be revealed later.
Looks like Merrel aren’t in the river anymore, but heading up the road towards Salamanca. I hope that doesn’t mean medical problems.