#ARWC2013 – 48hrs in

What a day our team has had! It’s been such fun keeping an eye on them throughout the day and before I go to sleep I can’t resist another look at the live tracking and a quick perusal for any updates that have come out (like in the past 30mins since I last checked *grin*).

I’ve been keeping an eye on the #ARWC2013 hashtag too. Quite useful.

So, as I take one last peek for the night first, second, third are Thule (far ahead), Seagate (they’ve slept for a few hours last night) and Haglofs.

Then, looks like we’re in 4th, only just ahead of Tecnu. Actually, I think we’re with them. Difference in distance on the map is probably ‘cos of tracker update time (few mins apart).

We’ve got 12km or so left of this paddle. Must be seriously kuk in those boats. This section 4 took Thule 20 hours! 23hrs for Seagate! Moving at say 4km/hr in the boats… We’ve got another 3hrs on the water… That makes it… mmm… (time sums)… about 22hrs for us.

So, what’s next…

While we’re sleeping they’ll get on to Section 5 – a 101km bike ride. If they get into transition around 19h00 it will be in the dark (Sunset is 17h15). They’ve got the zip line on this stage – that should be fun. They’ll probably do it in the dark tho… Seems they’re in for STEEP hills and bike pushing…

Probably a REALLY good idea for them to sleep in transition for a few hours and then to head out… they’ll have food, extra clothing and nice stuff there in their boxes. Less comfy on a roadside. I don’t think they’ve slept at all and we’re now 48hrs into the race. If they have rested it probably hasn’t been for very long.

By the time we wake up, they will probably be on the go again.

Night-night team.

(section description from Breathe Mag)
Section 5 is a 101 km bike ride to mid camp, with a brief stop to experience the longest (2km) and fastest (145kph) zipline in the world: the Tirolesa Superman Osa. If there is a bottleneck here, time will be neutralized as this is more to showcase the attraction rather than a race.

[Steve Burnett found the code for full screen tracking – http://maps.opentracking.co.uk/arwc2013.cfm. Pure bliss!]

P.S. Do you know that a lot of South African AR chatter actually takes place behind the scenes on an email group list? The list has been around since about… mid-2001. Things posted on the list are notices about events, some race reports and, at times like this (the AR World Champs!) there’s great commentary from local racers following the event. You can subscribe to the list by sending a blank email (from the address you want to subscribe) to advracesa-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Settings can be changed from individual emails to daily digest etc.