Raid Gallaecia Expedition Race 2017
Tales from Transition 4
Anne-Marie Dunhill / 09.05.2017
On day two of racing, the first three teams to arrive in T4-T5 were Estonian ACE Adenture, at 06:10, followed by the French team FMR at 06:22 and the Finnish team Omjakon at 06:42.
All of the lead teams did a rapid transition except for Omjakon who made the decision to sleep in the TA located in the village sports hall in the costal town of Ortigueira. This choice may later turn out to be an important one as the next section is a “treat”; 64km of trekking that will include an abseil, canyoning and swimming.
Teams have to carry all of their equipment for the aforementioned disciplines, for the entire 64km section; wetsuits and harnesses included. They left the transition area looking like pack horses with backpacks stretched to the maximum to hold all the gear.
Talking to teams it was clear that no one knew what to expect from this section, including the timings. As Felix of the Norwegian team USWE said, “The next trekking section will be groundbreaking (sic), it will be somewhere around 12,15,18 or 20 hours.”
Mariana Pontes the incredibly tough Brazilian racer who won NORCHA in Portugal last year, and is racing here on team Tracktherace, was having a rare low moment at this transition. She was sitting on the cold gymnasium floor, glassy eyed and staring into the distance. She said softly, “I’m not doing well. I need to get better, I pushed past the limits on the kayak section yesterday and I want to be better by the end of this trek. But when you want to win a race, you do what you have to do.” She added that the other teams are “really good and it’s a good race.”
Mariana then put her head on her knees and curled up for a 2 minute power nap before her teammates called to her in Spanish, simply saying “Mariana time to go,” and she shot up, showing no signs of the weakness she had just expressed.
The first French team to arrive at the transition, FMR, changed gear quickly and Lucie Croissant was very focused, making sure that her team got out of there quickly, saying “Allez, allez, go!”
As far as the racers are concerned, the organization up to this point has been spot-on. At TA4 there was a surprise gear check and the volunteers appear to be handling the language barriers quite well. Locals are supportive of the race and have come out to different points to cheer all of the teams on and there is even three generations of one family following a local athlete.
The weather is predicted to change this afternoon with forecasted rainfall. It will be fascinating to watch todays stage unfolding and the effect that this tough stage will have on the rest of the race.
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