Beach holiday or an Adventure Race?When teams lined up for the start, nobody would guess these people are here for an adventure race. Vast collection of flippers, snorkels, goggles, air mattresses or tire tubes rather suggested, that they are here for holiday. The reason was simple. First trekking stage was around a lake, and very often it was quicker to swim across than run around. And it was allowed not only to swim but also to use any swimming aides teams chose. They only had to carry them for the whole stage.
Race started exactly at 10am. After mandatory section to the nearby junction, teams dispersed to all sides. Although it looked strange seeing teams running in exactly opposite direction, all choices were good. All teams had gotten to the CP1 at approximately same time.
From the very start Finish team Omjakon took the lead. On their futuristic looking air mattresses they moved through water like fish and at the end of the 4-hours stage they were already 40 minutes ahead. But other teams were also fast and thus the race started in higher speed than organizers expected.
In the following stage the teams did no leave water. They continued on canoes and going 25 kilometers on the flat water in plastic tourist canoes is only for really tough people. Fortunately, an orienteering section broke the almost infinite ride. Teams could split into pairs and pick all the checkpoints in the special map. Fastest to sweep through the forrest was Nev-Dama, who was slowly moving from the middle of the pack to the fourth place and even to medal positions. Good jobs for team of three adventure race beginners. They are undoubtedly the biggest surprise of this year’s edition of Czech AR.
During the second stage the order in the pack created. First was Omjakon, followed (after big gap) by last two years winners Tilak (Czech), and (after another break) by Sport2000 (Czech). Then rest of the teams arrived in about 30 minutes apart.
Finally, the night biking stage broke the pack. The main reasons were two special tasks. In the first, teams had to descent on the rope to the hole in the ground and get out of there through the narrow tunnel. Tilak’s Ales Ditrt twisted his ankle a bit during the descent but it seems he is OK as he continues. This CP also included mandatory equipment check. Team Hi-Tec (currently fifth) incurred 15 minutes penalty for not having lighter.
Second special task was a bit tougher. Teams had to descent on the rope from the Zvikov Bridge that looms 40 meters above the lake. That would not be that bad, especially when they arrived on dark, but they had to ascent back. The best team here was Tilak with two excellent mountains climbers. Omjakon was not that good and lost half an hour on Tilak. However Fins gained their lead back soon. Biggest problems had Exit team who almost were not able to climb back. However they managed that. The teams in the back of the pack had to wait for the ropes so the time differences between them increased a little.
After the first biking stage Omjakon is ahead by about an hour, followed by Tilak. Sport 2000 and novices from Nev-Dama were going head to head fighting for the third place. However in the last kilometers of the biking stage Nev-Dama lost a bit and they are now 20 minutes behind Sport2000.
You can watch the progress of the teams live on www.adventurerace.cz in the results section.
Written by Jan Smolik
Photo by Jana Rejmonova |
