The World Championships
For 2010 Spain hosted the Adventure Racing world championships in the Castilla y Leon region, starting and finishing in the historic cities of Avila and Salamanca respectively.
Team OrionHealth.com
Our team for this years world championships consisted of myself, Brent Edwards who has raced with Orion for the past 4 years, and new Orion team members for this year, Fleur Pawsey and Nathan Peterson. We had all raced together at the Wulong mountain quest in September but this was the first time that this combination was racing together in an Expedition style race. Team OrionHealth's races this year had been plagued by injury and illness and we were especially keen at this the world championships to have a good race and get a good result. In addition to the team we had Brent's father Roy and my partner Fiona along to help with logistics and cheer the team on.
Baggage problems
Unfortunately our arrival in Spain coincided with a general transport workers strike and in the ensuing rescheduling of flights and baggage chaos we arrived in Spain missing half of our luggage. Most of the missing items were found the next day however by the time of our transfer from Madrid to Avila we were still missing Nathan's bike box, which as well as containing his bike had several other crucial items of race equipment including life jacket, paddle and inline skates. Hopeful that the airlines would find the gear we carried on with our pre-race preparation over the next few days in Avila. With race day fast approaching and still no sign of the gear the backup plan swung into action and Fi and Roy were dispatched off to a nearby city where we had arranged to borrow a bike and some other race equipment off a friend of one of the Team Buff competitors. New inline skates were purchased from the local sports shop and we were back on track to start the race with a full complement of equipment.
Race underway!
9am on Sunday 3rd October the start gun for the 2010 Adventure race world championships was fired and we were off and racing. A quick foot orienteering section on the streets of Avila got us warmed up as we navigated to landmarks in the city. Running under the ancient city walls that we had walked around the top of during the opening ceremony the evening before, we zigzagged our way through the streets before taking to bikes and settling in for a long ride through the countryside.
Early struggles
After getting a good start in a bunch of 6 or so leading teams we had to ease off the pace and let the front runners pull away as Brent and Nathan struggled with the pace and I got out the tow line to help them out as much as I could. This first ride was split by a few hours of foot orienteering and I was hopeful that the change of discipline would be enough to help the guys recover. Nathan seemed to come right but unfortunately Brent seemed to be getting worse and worse and we were looking at a long ride of damage control as darkness descended and the rain started to fall. At least we had good gear keeping us warm and we made slow but steady progress though the stage until about 10km from the next transition, when Brent could not physically continue and we were forced to stop and rest. After a pretty uncomfortable hour and a half lying in a farmers field we carried on to transition.
Splitting up
Added a bit of a twist to the racing the following stage involved splitting the team into pairs; two would kayak while the other two ran, then at the far end of the lake kayakers and runners switched and returned. There were different routes to take for each pair so we gave Brent and Nathan the easier option with the hope that they could get a bit of rest as we expected the hard route to take significantly longer. Fleur and I kayaked first, had half an hour rest waiting for the guys at the far end before setting off on our run leg. Given how much quicker we were on the kayaking we expected guys to beat us by about an hour on the way back to transition so we set a good pace and ran as much as we could to try and make up some time. Surprisingly we were first back to transition. Brent and Nathan arrived about 15 minutes later having had a lot of difficulty locating a partially hidden checkpoint on the lake, which several other teams had struggled with also. So the guys had not had the rest that we had hoped for, but on the positive side Brent seemed to be on better form as we took to the bikes again for another tough bike ride.
A serious accident!
A few hours into the ride we were making our way up a never-ending vehicle track though forest and farmland. Having been riding along for a while just focussed on the front wheel I looked around at the team to see Brent and Fleur, but no sign of Nathan. Figuring that he had just fallen back a little we stopped and waited for him to catch up. After a minute or two with no sign we realised that something must be wrong – probably a puncture or other mechanical - so I started riding back down the hill to see what the story was. A few corners down I came across team Merrell stopped on the track. Down the side of the steep bank was Nathan lying prone with two of team Merrell in attendance. Having obviously had a serious fall and hit his head quite hard (his helmet was fractured and had been torn from his head) it was quickly decided that we had to get medical help, and so the emergency beacons were activated and we did what we could to keep him comfortable until the helicopter arrived. With no-one having seen the accident and there being risk of head or spinal injury the medics took no chances and got Nathan on a stretcher and into the helicopter to be flown to Avila to be checked out.
Team Merrell and Cynosis who had stopped to help carried on racing, while we kept on with Nathan's gear and bike to the nearest road where we met Antonio the race director who would shuttle the gear on to the next transition. With our race officially over we took the shortest route possibly to the next transition, where we were relieved to hear that Nathan had been checked out, and apart from a mild concussion was otherwise fine.
Carrying on
At this point morale was pretty low. Our world championships bid was over and our friend and team-mate has been hospitalised. We had come a long way to race this course however, and we had so far only completed about a third of it. Brent decided that he had had enough and would not continue but Fleur and I were keen to finish what we had started, so once we had gotten the ok from the race organisation we kitted up again and re-joined the race.
Two go the distance
Over the next four days we raced as a team of two. At times it was tough continuing knowing that we were not a ranked team, however the challenge and beauty of the course reminded us that it is the adventure part of adventure racing which is the great attraction of the sport. Five and a half days after we started in Avila we completed another street orienteering stage through the city of Salamanca to finish the 2010 adventure racing world championships with a spray of champagne and cheers from our friends and retired team mates. We were unranked, only half a team, but had overcome adversity and terrain to complete a truly challenging adventure.
Many thanks to our incredibly supportive sponsors. It hasn't been the podium finish we were aiming for, but we hope we've still put in a worthy performance for the OrionHealth.com team, facing challenges, and never giving up!
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