ARWC 2015 Team Switzerland- R'ADYS
Nathalie, James and I gave up looking for a 4th to join us for the ARWC ’15 around the beginning of Sept. I had saved enough vacation time for the event anticipating we were going so I started lining up days to take it like a drunken sailor while the great weather stuck around.
The weekend after USARA’s I received and email with the heading: ‘ARWC ’15- URGENT!’ It was from the captain of R’ADYS and they need a fourth to complete their team for the event. I quickly jumped at the chance and signed on. They were currently positioned 11th in ARWS points and had finished 11th in Ecuador the year before and had raced together for close to 5 years. Up until this point in my career I had a rule which stated I would not race with a team I didn’t previously know. Given the circumstances I thought this was a good chance to break that.
Little did I know what a pain the run up to the event would be relative to getting a travel visa. 2 trips to NY City would be required to gain visa approval. Fortunately I was able to hire a firm to provide the back end support once my application in person was submitted via a 14 hour round trip to Manhattan mid-October.
On the training front I didn’t think I was too far out of shape and put together a solid October (87 hours) with lots of paddling. I also included 2 long packrafting days using new trails I’d discovered connecting my two favorite lakes. I felt well prepared as November arrived and my taper began.
With my experience of traveling to Chile a few years ago I knew getting to Corumba was not going to be as easy as Rochester-Newark-Sau Paulo-Campo Grande-busride to Corumba appeared it would be. Sure enough, at my gate in ROC I was informed my bike box would not fit through the plane cargo door and I was re-routed through Chicago on a larger plane. (My suspicion is the flight was overbooked, the box fit on the way home). The flight through Chicago got into Sau Paulo 1 hour later and I ended up missing my flight to Campo Grande along with ¾ of the Yogaslackers. We were re-booked on a later flight with no problem but this would make us miss the shuttle bus to Corumba Tuesday afternoon and with only one running on Wednesday the end result was we wouldn’t get to the hotel until Thursday morning. Fortunately we were able to arrange a private shuttle to the hotel once on the ground in Campo Grande, arriving at the hotel at 4am Tuesday, 32 hours of traveling done.
The pre-race festivities went pretty smoothly with gear and skills checks, pics, etc. I had brought 95% of my food down with me and because the race organizers had informed us of distances/est. times for each of the 13 legs I had already pre-sorted all of my food. All that was required was to add clothing changes and batteries to the mix and then place them in the proper gear bin.
The last leg of getting to the starting line after the airplanes and shuttle busses was actually a Brasilian Navy ship. We boarded them Friday night and traveled 12 hours overnight up the Paraguay River to the start line at a small school. We were handed race maps 1 and 2 as we boarded and we quickly set upon route finding until the daylight was gone then ate our pre-cooked pasta for dinner. At 9pm most teams had turned in for bed in the ship bunkhouse.
The 'sweatshop' bunkhouse
One thing I’ve failed to mention up until this point is that Brasil if F’n HOT! You sweat just thinking about moving. The bunkhouse was supposively air-conditioned but sweat poured off me all night and I’m pretty sure I was severely dehydrated when I woke up. I again began the task of downing liter after liter of water in an attempt to re-hydrate before the start just like every other morning leading up to this one.
The pre-race ceremonies were kind of fun with a tour of the village/school by the school kids and then a small feast of local cuisine. Once that was over teams started to get ready for the start and outfitting their sit-on-top kayaks with seats/sails/tow ropes, etc.