Training Log Archive: nmulder

Quick disassembly of our bikes, not wanting to be caught by Red Fox and needing to sprint race the final leg.

Final leg of the race, a short descent into a river valley, then a short packraft and a beach hike to the finish line. Nothing too spectacular.

Finished in 12th position, well away from the Top 10 we were hoping for. North Face were 11th about 45 mins ahead and Columbia Vidaraid another 2h ahead of that. Red Fox were 45 mins behind.

For me the big dissapointment was blowing on Day 1, but more impotantly, not recovering. I never felt truly back to normal after that, suffering at Piton de Neiges, and then again during the heat of Day 3 along the coasteering. My MTBing suffered a lot as a result and I made too many mistakes in the Urban-O coming into St Pierre. As a result, we felt were were always about 2h behind schedule, and this was notable at each darkzone restart, where we needed to be there 2h earlier to get some good sleep and restart with the pack. We were as a result, always racing on our own off the back, a tough place to be.

I didn't enjoy the route as well and this played heavily on my mental stength. There was very little navigation and the course planning was masochistic and brutal, with the intention just to create as much climb as possible. Felt very dispondent on the finish line and for a few days afterwards. Body-wise, I haven't had such a tough race since my very first expedition, and the body is going to take a long, long, long time to recover.

Quick disassembly of the bike in an awful transition.

Abseil into a kloof. Both were a big disappointment, dirty and incomprehensible in the greater scheme of things.

Got into transition at 04:03 in 12th place. With darkzone ocean paddling lifting at 5am, we weren't going to make the race restart with teams 6th - 11th and opted to rather recover and take 3h off the sleep card, leaving 1.5h for the last night (needed 12h in total). Managed to sleep for just under 2h.

Left T7 at about 08h30 in the morning in 13th place. Team Red Fox had come into transition whilst we slept (they had made up the 12h packraft darkzone on us) and left almost immediately, so we had to chase them down.

I paddled with Lance and managed to get about another 2h of sleep on the boat out in the open ocean. Luckily we had mostly a tailwind paddling NW along the coast.

Scorching transition in the boat club house at the beach. Red Fox had arrived about 15 mins ahead of us but were flat on their backs, probably taking some sleep card time as well. We didn't take any time, intending to use our final 1h30 at one of 2 CPs on the mountain on the final night. They still weren't moving when we left.

Final long leg of the race, which we knew would also be a bastard. We left in 12th place. Assumed Team North Face were the next ones ahead of us about 2h or so. Leg started with a hike a bike up stairs and didn't get much better. Lots and lots of hairpin bend climbs on the lower levels of the mountain, with more push-biking on the upper levels towards the ridgeline. I had to dig very deep on this uphill, just keeping my legs spinning for hours at a time.

We used our final 90 mins on sleepcard (about 75 min sleep) at CP18, leaving just as Red Fox arrived (and they also then slept for at least 30 mins).

The last section to CP19 was the worst hike-a-bike. Only to be beaten by the descent down the extreme downhill track. We pushed most of it, only riding the last sections about 5km later. Team even got seperated for a while with the various splits in the track. After that more downhill into urban areas and a horrible tour of the suburbs before cycling into St Gilles-les-Bains. Traffic was awful and the route course found some final hike-a-bike sections for us.

Change onto bike with trekking shoes for some portaging. No other teams in transition. Took 30 mins on our sleep card to make it 7h30 in total so far. 11th place in transition.

Downhill on tar off the mountain top to start with, then we dropped into a massive valley. This was compulsory portage, but at least we had trekking shoes which helped a lot. Got passed by Team Welands here again who had major trouble with the coastal kite CP, pushing us back into 12th. Got to a caving section where we had a 1h deadzone to do the caves. Then more pushing down the gorge. Finally could start riding after CP15, just as darkness fell. We dropped our tyre pressures to handle the loose gravel of the valley bottom and speed improved, but not helped by our 3rd and worst downpour of the race. Eventually put on waterproofs in a quarry.

From there did a whole lot of urban riding (all up and down, no flat) across the south coast to St Pierre. Struggled to find T6 down a dark alleyway.