Raid Gallaecia - Warm Wet Wednesday

Carrick Armer / 10.05.2017

When the first time cut off rolled in at 10pm last night, only three teams were still on the first set of maps, the two Cambate las Patas pairs and the KWT Extreme Team. The international 4 had arrived at T4 after the cutoff time in the pouring rain, and ended up bagging more sleep than they bargained for, having set alarm for 5, then opted to snooze till 6, slept through their alarm and woke up at 7. They were slowly getting their gear together to leave, in good spirits but tired.

The American team Chaos Machine made the time cut off, but opted to short course anyway. One of their team is struggling with a sore ankle so opted to ditch the long trek and canyon, avoiding further damage. They had managed to bag 6-7hrs of sleep at transition and were then heading out on the bike, saying they would likely see more of course this way. Ahead of the Americans, but also having chosen to short course were the Desert Dogs, who were planning to get their heads down after our short video interview with them yesterday. Since it's never easy to get peace and quiet in a busy transition, they took the chance to wander over the road to a small Bed & Breakfast, getting a comfy bed for the night, and were therefore in slightly better shape than a free of the teams around them. Certainly, they were looking fresher than the team leaving transition just ahead of them, Omjakon, who said they'd had an hour sleep on the first night and maybe two on the second night. Not long after them, the South African team Cyanosis were ready to head off. They had also grabbed some sleep at transition after a long night on foot, and were, according to Nicholas Mulder, "going okay. Nothing great but nothing outstandingly bad either". They left transition on their bikes after a brief pause to try and find Clinton Macintosh's sunglasses.

Out on the course, both the route and the weather were somewhat up-and-down. The coastal trekking loop took the racers into some high terrain and through the leg- and trouser-shedding gorse once again, as if they hadn't seen enough of it. The early morning mist cleared from the tops, blown through by a strong breeze that was spinning the multitude of wind turbines up in the hills round at a rate of knots.

Unfortunately, blown in behind it was a warm but unsettled day of bright sunshine interspersed with heavy thundery showers. In between those, the warm ground steamed, lending a hot, humid feel to the course, and causing those agonising "do I put on/take off the waterproofs now or will it change again in 5 minutes?" arguments with alarming regularity. 24 Hour Meals looked tired as they trudged down from the first CP and climbed the gravel road at the furthest point of the loop, the three Swedes quiet while Urtzi chatted a little about tactics.

After some gravel trails, some road, and some more bushwhacking, the teams finally returned to transition to set off on the long coastal bike leg. The early part featured a big up-and-down, through the windfarms on gravel roads onto a recent Vuelta a Espana KOM finish up at Garita de Herbeira, before a long descent on good tarmac to San Andres de Teixido. The cafe, at what Omjakon described as "a very pretty little village", did a brisk trade with racers and journalists alike.

Team TrackTheRace, sponsored by the platform hosting the events's live tracking, asked the cafe owner about anywhere they could get some sleep locally, and were given the keys to a local church hall. After a quick drink and some food, headed across the square to put their heads down for a couple of hours. BarCarRaid and Desert Dogs, the leading teams in the Pairs category, both stopped in as well; the British pair taking their time over a coffee con leche, the Spanish duo in-and-out in short order. 

Taking the time for food and drink would stand them all in better stead for the climb ahead, up a single-track lane, loose and steep in places, where even some of the short declines were too rocky to ride. Regaining the higher plateau was a hard-fought trudge in places, with no easy tarmac option (even the tarmac was steep!). The payback, though, was some long descending heading south towards Ferrol on rough lanes and back roads, via the lighthouse at Frouxeira and its Spanish Civil War-era military remains (the lighthouse location is on the site of a coastal gun battery, and while the metalwork is gone, some of the tunnels and pillbox emplacements still exist) and onwards to the transition in the Odeon Shopping Mall, in the heart of Ferrol.

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