Raid Gallacecia Expedition Race
The Gallaecia Raid – Expedition Racing in Spain
News Release (Rob Howard) / 20.01.2015
The Gallaecia Raid was born in 2005, the same year as foundation the of the Gallaecia Raid club, a club of navigation and adventure runners from A Coruña-Galicia.
A group of friends, nature lovers and adventure racers decided to start organizing their own race to show other adventurers the spectacular opportunities this area can offer.
Places such as As Fragas do Eume, Cape Ortegal, the Mandeo biosphere reserve, Estaca de Bares, have been the scenery of some spectacular races where some of the best teams in the world have run.
In those 10 years the organizers have done their best organizing international races with a maximum length of 28 hours.
Many runners from different countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Finland and New Zealand have come expressed their love for this land and this race.
Our organization is made up of adventure runners; some of them have a wide experience in regional, national and international competitions. Our team has competed several times in AR World Series races. This has given us the chance to know other races and to improve our own work, being even more thorough and rigourous.
The quality of our maps and their update has always been a maxim in our races, trying to offer a race where we ourselves would like to compete. The 6 main members of the organization have a wide experience in international races, in cartography and in map updates and creation.
We’re ready for an ARWS expedition event and we want to offer you a race with unforgettable landscapes. Our land and our people will welcome you with hospitality. We love having an event like this in Galicia.
About Galicia
Galicia is a region placed in the north westernmost part of Spain. It’s an area surrounded by the sea with more than 1500 kms of coastline. It’s the region in Spain with the most rivers, coastline and cliffs, besides being the most mountainous region, making this area a spectacular place for adventure sports.
It’s a fertile land with rich vegetation and some of the best preserved atlantic forests of Europe and the race will cross constantly small villages.
Galicia’s hospitality is well known to visitors. In fact, A Coruña is known as “the city where no one is a foreigner”.
Galicia is also famous for its excellent gastronomy and wine, where the sea products, both fish and seafood, are among the best in the world. It also has excellent cropland for vegetables and pastures for cattle. The albariño wine, together with the Ribeiro, are renowned worldwide.
The Race
For the organization of the Raid Gallaecia Expedition Race it has been difficult to choose specific places to hold the race. It’s complicated to choose between so many incredible places, and if we decided to visit all the sites we love, the race would have millions of kilometres. We hope we succeed with our choices.
The race will cover an approximate distance of 520 kms, so we estimate it will take around 74 hours for the winning team, and there will be an available time of 102 hours to complete the distance. There will be several cut-off points, so every team can enjoy the experience and cross the finishing line.
You’ll find disciplines such as mountain trekking, mountain biking, sea kayaking, river kayaking, canyoning and rope activities.
Regarding trekking, you’ll have mountain trekking through rugged terrain, some trekkingsto be made with specific orienteering maps and also coastal trekking, covering spectacular mountainous regions or cliffs, crossing rocky areas, dense vegetation or even beaches.
Mountain biking will be a mixture of rideable paths and other technical areas, singletrack and trail riding.
Galicia has many population centres and so there are numerous tracks and paths, which will increase your choices when planning your route.
Sea kayaking will be in the open ocean. Galicia is the land of the “rías”, a kind of sea inlet into the land, where kayaking is delicious. Galicia has a lot of islands and small islands, and some other peculiarities offered by our coast line. For the river kayaking we have countless places in our land, with many rivers and dams with calm waters.
In Galicia, there are many cliffs to practice canyoning. As a common feature, all of them carry water, as Galicia’s rivers are very fast-flowing. You’ll have fun, as they’re full of jumps and slides.
Maps
We’ll use maps of different scales. From 1:10000 for some specific orienteering section to 1:50000 that will be the general scale for mountain biking. The maps will be perfectly updated. We’ll create some specific maps for the race.
Transitions & Assistance
The organization will provide the logistics and assistance for all the teams. All the team members will leave their gear to be delivered at the different transitions. Around 12 transition points will be set throughout the race, always in villages, having hot and cold food arranged at some of them.
Race Follow-Up
The race can be followed through www.tracktherace.com a GPS tracking platform that will enable a live presentation of the race where you can encourage every team and see all the information concerning competitors. You can also use this website to register for the race.
Teams
In the classic format of the ARWS circuit the race will be for mixed teams of four with at least one member being female.
Race information and registration