Ready to rumble!!! It has rained so much over the last couple of days that paths and bridges have been washed away. The race course will be adapted. These are our last few minutes in the dry, almost time to start. Woohooo, see you on the other side!! #adventuretrophy
Preparations for the Adventure Trophy 72h adventure race in full swing in our AirB&B turned expedition basecamp...
This is a 72h non stop adventure race, and is supposed to be ‘only’ a training race for La Réunion in November (ok, I admit, when you do training races that last 72h non-stop you know you belong to the crazier half of society.. ;) ). The idea is to just to go slow, and to practice transitions, race strategy and racing. We’ve never raced together as a team with Sil being new to expedition racing, and there have been injuries. Finishing will give us the confidence that everything is ready for November. Unfortunately Janne had to drop out due to a broken leg, so we'll start unranked and we'll be racing as a team of 3 instead of 4. It's a real shame, but she's working hard on recovering well and being as ready as she can be for the World Championships Adventure Racing in La Réunion in November.
Annnd.. We're in!!!
Team Vertical Dissidents (Sil, Maarten, Arjan & Janne) have been accepted to the World Championships Adventure Racing in La Réunion November 2018. So it looks like we have something to train for! November is still far away, but we're super excited!
Pic: Organisation Raid in France
Pic: Kirsten Oliver
Team Vertical Dissidents had a 6 day and 6 night non-stop race in the French Pyrenees. The 2016 Rif (Raid in France) was the 9th World Cup of the season and proved to be a true adventure!!
Thanks Harm, Janne and Arjan for these 140 hours of non-stop fun, laughter, sports!
We did it!!!! We finished the Raid in France in 5 nights & 5 days. We even managed to finish 14th overall. This was the longest race we ever participated in. Before we started we weren't sure whether we would be physically capable of doing such a race. This would be the first Adventure Racing World Series Race we would participate in, and we were very aware that this is the highest level of adventure racing, a level we have not yet experienced before. From the other hand, looking at the distance, it didn't seem too much. 'Only 450km'. We've done more kilometers before, in a shorter timespan. Harm, who already participated in 2 Raid in Frances before, warned us that the amount of kilometers would be misleading. ‘They’ll send us over very technical terrain, there won’t always be paths, it will involve a lot of bike-carrying, there will be a lot of altimeters, and we might be struggling to meet deadlines’. We couldn’t wait to find out and see.
The start wasn’t great for Arjan. He’d caught a stomach bug just 3 hours before the race start, and only 15 minutes before the start he was still hugging the public toilet in Font-Romeu. I also wasn’t feeling well and still struggling with a cold and high temperatures. We decided to just ‘suck it and see’.
We started with a prologue for which we had 50 minutes. Maarten’s navigational skills are excellent, and we easily managed to find all the CPs within the timeframe. We then got the maps for the first part of the race.
Keep going. Just keep going. Day and night. Whether it's 10, 40, 75 or 175 hours non stop. Running, mountain biking, kayaking, climbing, swimming. Whilst knowing where you are and where you're going to. Navigation is crucial. Cereal bar after cereal bar. Fighting sleepmonsters. Pursuing your own strategy. Twenty minutes of sleep or 'hanging on' to your team mates to be able to 'sleep on the move'.
Welcome to adventure racing.
