Training Log Archive: nmulder

Expedicion Guarani (Paraguay) with Team Cyanosis (Mac, Rob C, Susan C-B)

Race Report:

When Team Cyanosis sat down in late 2016 and outlined our racing plan for 2017, we took a careful look at what we wanted to achieve as a team and planned our racing calendar based on those objectives. The decision to race in Paraguay this year was made with great enthusiasm as despite having competed in 11 overseas adventure races, the team hasn’t travelled outside of South Africa since 2012 and had only raced on the South American continent once before, at the Patagonia Expedition Race in Chile.

The Cyanosis team line-up for early 2017 was forced into a few changes with Hilary Bruss taking time off for motherhood and Alex Adie unavailable due to a heavy study commitment. Additionally, long term team stalwart Nathan Thompson was now based in a new job in London, UK and would struggle with work leave for some races. This left team captain Clinton (Mac) Mackintosh with navigator Nicholas Mulder needing two replacements for this race. Cyanosis thus approached Susan Macpesh (formerly Susan Carter-Brown), who had raced Expedition Africa with the team in 2013 and then gone on to compete with fellow SA team Merrell at the AR World Champs. She was 100% on board and supportive of the team objectives for 2017 and raring to have a good crack at Paraguay. Robert Crichton meanwhile was asked to stand in for Nathan’s place in the team. Rob comes from a very successful paddling background, with a few South African expedition races under his belt. There was also an added challenge for Rob and the team, in that he is a type-1 diabetic. This brought a whole new set of considerations and risks that we discussed in advance. The medical condition would require changes in race strategy and pacing at various points in the race, but the team believed we could effectively handle these extra elements without any problems emerging.

Paraguay
Upon arrival in Paraguay, Cyanosis were welcome at the airport by some of the event organizers, Gustavo Borgonon and his team. After a traditional Paraguayan meal at his home, we moved onto San Bernadino, the lake-side holiday town that would be the race headquarters as well as start and finish location. The team were treated to top-class hospitality, staying in the private residences of family and friends of the organization. We shared the luxury waterfront house with two other international teams (Columbia Vidaraid and Bosi Adventure), so there was a great atmosphere pre-race.
Expedicion Guarani is quite unique in the Adventure Racing World Series, being the only race in our experience that limits officialdom and pageantry to the barest minimum. There was no opening ceremony, no race briefings, meetings or Q&A sessions and we definitely didn’t miss them! Instead all the information was well laid out in the race book by Course Director Urtzi Iglesias. Simple and clean, it was fantastic and allowed the team to relax and focus on the race itself.

The biggest problem that Cyanosis was going to face in Paraguay during the race was the language barrier. We had almost no experience of Spanish except for “Hola” and “Gracias” (Hello and Thank You). Sign language and charades would quickly become a big part of the team’s skills, whilst the words “Agua” and Camino” (Water and Path) were soon added to our dictionaries. This proved particularly entertaining when Rob had to resort to charades to explain to the house caretaker that our toilet was not working…

Sunday 05 March 2017
Pre-race check-in and bike / race box hand in.
Teams were given really clear instructions here: 4 race boxes, one per team member; 4 bike boxes and one paddling bag. Race boxes to weigh less than 20kg and bike boxes less than 25kg, and they even weighed every team’s boxes and bike boxes before they accept them. We had to do a little shuffling around between boxes to make sure we were at the correct weight but this was quickly accomplished.

Expedicion Guarani are a bit different from other AR World Series races in regards to their use of race boxes. In Paraguay, each team member had their own personal box that they saw at all transitions (as opposed to 1 big team box used in the other World Series races). This was effectively possible as Expedicion Guarani is a true expedition style race, with long stages and few transitions, leaving the organizers enough time to ensure the transport of support boxes between the transitions before the team arrives at the next one.

More commuting into and out of town.

Morning run with the team around a small part of the village. Already very hot and high humidity.

Assembled our bikes and rode into and out of the local town, San Bernadino.

Flew to Asuncion, Paraguay for the Expedicion Guarani, World Series AR with Team Cyanosis (Mac, Susan Carter-Brown, Rob Crichton).