2008 AR World Championships, Jericoacoara, Brazil

It’s often said that the most difficult part of adventure racing is getting to the start line. This race was no different. We are used to the canceled flights and unscheduled stop-overs so it didn't faze us too much when we had to spend an unexpected night in Sao Paulo and delay our arrival to Fortaleza, Brazil. Having a bike almost stolen out from underneath us while on a training ride was a new experience and not one that endeared the city to us at all. Fortunately, we were able to leave for Jericoacoara a day earlier than scheduled and after a day of cramming gear onto buses and wondering if we would get stuck on the sandy tracks (one event bus full of competitors did, leaving racers stranded in the heat for several hours) we finally arrived at race HQ, a small seaside village and windsurfing mecca. We would have two more days of traveling to get to the race start, however, for the next few days we didn't have to go anywhere and could relax in between the very low stress registration and gear checks.

After 3 days of relaxed surfing, swimming and the odd training run we were convinced we could easily continue as we were and give the world champs a miss. We were here to race though so once again it was on to buses and trucks for the two day trip to the race start. On the first night of this journey we were given our maps and course books so that we could see what was in store over the next 3 or 4 days of racing. Marking up the maps is often a long task plotting out dozens of checkpoints from their grid co-ordinates. Fortunately for this race all the checkpoints were pre marked on the maps and we could occupy ourselves with the task that was of more importance – working out how to get to them all quicker than anyone else. Another element of the race this year was the time card. Each team had to stop for a total of 8 hours which could only be taken at a few checkpoints throughout the race. A team could of course choose to stop elsewhere but that time would not count towards their mandatory 8 hours. As an added twist the 8 hours could be reduced to 4 by getting a bonus checkpoint on the first kayak leg. The bonus checkpoint was expected to take about an hour and a half to retrieve so in theory a team getting the bonus should straight away be 2 and a half hours ahead of a team that didn't. Of course a team not getting the bonus would have to stop 4 hours more but could they then race faster and make up the 2 and a half hour deficit? Many teams puzzled long and hard about the best option and there was no clear consensus among the teams with Sole (USA, NZ and Brazil), Wilsa Helly Hansen (France and NZ) and ourselves opting to go for the bonus while Nike (USA and NZ) and the rest of the field decided to skip it and take 4 extra hours sleep … intriguing.

Race day began with more bus rides of course. It wasn't until midday that we finally arrived at the start. A remote wind-swept beach backed by picture perfect sand dunes. A ferry ride took us across the river to the beach and after a few more hours sitting about in the sand we were finally ready to start Ecomotion Pro, the 2008 Adventure Racing World Championships. 60 teams were arranged on the beach to spell out a human “Ecomotion” in the sand. With the media helicopter in position above the start gun was fired and the word broke apart as teams raced for the sand dunes and the first checkpoint.

The first stage was a relatively short 28km run along the beach and through the dunes. As expected the pace was very quick and after a while we decided to ease up a little and conserve a bit of energy for the days ahead. Leaving the dunes behind teams started forming into bunches running up the beach, helping each other to shelter from the fierce head wind.

It was dark by the time we reached the first transition where our crew waited with the much hated Ecomotion double kayaks. Shorter than most recreational sit on top kayaks they are notoriously slow and not a patch on our beloved double racing kayaks. Still, it is good to have all the teams with the same boat and level the playing field. We notified the transition officials of our intention to get the bonus CP and set off into the wind and waves expecting to reach the end of the stage in about 14 hours. We couldn't see much of the Parnaiba Delta we were paddling through in the dark although the clear night sky was magnificent and dozens of shooting stars streaked across the sky as we slowly progressed. Team Sole overtook us after a few hours. Some cunning tactics from their support crew (Steve Gurney) had used bamboo poles to transform their two doubles into one 4-person kayak while we were struggling to get combinations right so that both boats would travel at similar speeds. We also struggled with the tide. We had expected a slack tide as we paddled the channel towards the bonus CP however it was such a strong current that whenever we could we got out and dragged the boats through shallow water as we made better progress that way. Somewhere in the dark we overtook Sole and also passed Wilsa when they mistakenly followed Nike who were not going for the bonus CP for a while.

The bonus collected, we turned and headed for the next transition as the sky started to brighten with the dawn. Still a long way to paddle and always a head wind! Fortunately we finally had some tide assistance and after a few more hours we were closing in on the transition. We had the option of portaging a couple of kilometers rather than paddle the last few ks. At this stage anything sounded better than more paddling so we hooked up some ropes and dragged our boats down the main street of town into the transition. Plastic boats do have some advantages!

This is where we decided to serve out the first 2 hours of our compulsory 4 hours stop time as it was the last chance we would have for another 24 hours. Nike were already half way though a 4 hour stop so that when we started again we would be even on the course but they would have 4 hours stop time remaining to our 2, and they’d be 2 hours fresher.

Making ourselves as comfortable as we could on the concrete floor we tried to get a bit of sleep but all too soon it was time to get up again and continue on our way. It was 11 in the morning now and the heat was intense. Some navigation errors in the maze of tracks we were walking through dropped us back a few places with Wilsa and Powered by Velvet overtaking us. Sole also caught us near the end of this stage. This wasn’t a bad thing as Nora from team Sole is Brazilian and was able to ask some locals for some cool water to pour over us all. Just what we needed as we were getting a bit fried in the heat. We pulled ahead of Sole again as we started a short kayak at the end of which we would finally see our support crew again who we hadn't seen for the last 20 hours.

As pleased as they might have been to see us they rushed us through transition and sent us out on bikes into the Ecomotion Boiler, so named because of the extremely high temperatures and lack of wind which makes daytime travel very difficult. Fortunately we only had a few hours of daylight left so did not have to carry the massive amount of water that we would have needed during the day and concerned ourselves instead with negotiating the very sandy tracks and tricky navigation.

While not setting any speed records we had a good solid ride through the stage and picked up several places so that when we reached the next transition we were told by our crew that we were in third behind Nike and Wilsa. Wilsa had in fact only just left and were a few hundred metres up the road.

Another quick transition to trekking gear and then we gave chase, catching Wilsa as they were searching for the start of the track up the valley. We searched with them for a while then having differing opinions of where it would be went our separate ways and got a jump on them when we found the track first. Pushing reasonably hard to get a break we made our way uphill towards the next checkpoint. As we neared the checkpoint we heard voices in the bush behind us and figured that Wilsa were catching up again. We got a surprise at the checkpoint though when we learned that we were the first team there! It must have been Nike that we heard in the bush and now we were in the outright lead and on top of that we only had 2 hours of compulsory stop time remaining while Nike had 4 and Wilsa had 3. We were barely halfway through the race but could not have hoped to be in a better position. No time to waste, we pushed on through sticks and brambles on an overgrown path down through the next gully and to the top of the descent that would take us to the next transition. A little disappointingly we lost the track for a while at the top of the descent and were caught by Nike just as we found it again. Both teams were feeling social so we stuck together on the descent catching up on how the race was going for everyone and learning that due to a navigation error Nike had spent a couple of hours or so blundering around in the bush while we went past them.

Jogging into the next transition the race was on again and Nike raced out on their bikes a few minutes before us. We passed them as they stopped to fix a puncture but then they came past us again as we were deciding which way to go at an intersection. Unfortunately we followed Nike the wrong way and missed a chance to get ahead again however we were still close enough by the end of the short ride that we started the next trek practically at the same time. This was the toughest trek of the race. Carrying our climbing gear we started with a brutal climb up from the plains onto a ridge top. The route up was supposed to be marked with tape however much of this had disappeared. (Our guess was that the wandering cows had eaten it) Nike got a jump on us here by charging into the thick vegetation in search of the track while we tried again to follow the tape from lower down. Giving up on the tape we followed Nike's lead and subsequently found the rest of the tape leading up onto the ridge. We had a short out and back to a checkpoint on a plateau with magnificent views all around. Timing from when we saw Nike coming back from the check point to when we got back to the same spot we worked out we were now about 12 mins behind. The rest of the trek turned to survival rather than racing as the temperature soared into the 40s and our water supply dwindled. Nike must have had the same problem as we were able to take a time split again when we saw them on a road and the gap was the same at about 12 minutes. One of the highlights of the race occurred shortly after this. We called out to a boy for some water and a little later he came biking past us into his house and then beckoned us in where his father served us ice-cold water and pineapple juice. Nothing could have tasted better than that did then. Refusing our offers of payment they cheered us on our way again and we carried on to the abseil site visiting some unique rock formations on the way.

We had decided to sleep out our remaining 2 hours at the abseil, the 2nd to last place in the race where teams could take their compulsory stop. The last was a little further on at the jumar ascending site. We found Nike asleep when we got there, having arrived 20 minutes before us. They only slept for an hour before carrying on to the jumar where they would sleep out their remaining three hours. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible on the rocks and tried to rest as well as we could, hoping that we would not need to stop again until the dark-zone at the sailing – essentially the end of the race.

Up again after a very broken sleep I was first away on the abseil. A bit of a cross between an abseil and a flying fox we were attached to one static line that sloped away from the cliff and used the abseil line to control our speed. That was the idea anyway. In practice, it was such hard work just to keep our safety prussic moving on the abseil line that we were a long way from being concerned about any excessive speed. Brent and Anna followed me down and then it was Wayne's turn. All was going well until he was about 20 meters down the line when there was a great twanging of ropes and Wayne dropped out of sight. Meanwhile his safety gear came sliding down the flying fox line, all by itself, no Wayne attached. Fearing the worst we called out and were relieved to hear a reply that he was okay and needed the tension taken off the one remaining rope so that he could abseil down. He was then able to scramble across the rocks and abseil the last section down to where we were waiting. Luckily he was completely unscathed but the outcome could have been much more serious if he had been further down when the safety failed. A strong reminder that even with professionals setting up your gear you should ensure that you are satisfied yourself that you are set up safely.

With the light fading and a tricky scramble between us and the jumar we bounded our way down the gorge before finding the marked route leading us out of the gorge up a steep and exposed ridge. The scrambling was tricky at times and at one point I had to grab hold of a cactus when I started sliding. As unpleasant as that was I figured it preferable to a 20 metre drop onto rocks. From the top of the ridge it was supposed to be a marked trail to the jumar site although we were learning in this race that so called marked trails can be anything but. After losing and finding the trail multiple times and despairing that we were in the wrong place we finally arrived at the jumar. A relatively straight forward 30 metre ascent up ropes completed we left Nike where they still had an hour and a half sleep remaining and carried on to the next transition where our support crew where waiting with our bikes. From here all that remained until the dark zone was a 58km ride, a 60km paddle and another 44km ride. Didn't sound like a lot however the river was expected to be very low and times for that stage were predicted to exceed 12 hours. The first ride went okay apart from Wayne copping a 2 inch thorn in his toe. Nike were obviously pushing very hard and unknown to us had closed the gap to 1 hour. There was no compulsory stop time remaining so it was a race to see whether we could hold off a charging team Nike.

The river, as expected was very low. So low, that almost half of the nearly 14 hours it took us to complete the stage we spent dragging our boats through water too shallow to paddle in or simply across the sand where there was no water left in the river at all. To top it off we all suffered from attacks of the sleepmonster at some point, talking to people who weren't there, reaching out to pick up non-existent objects and generally fighting not to fall asleep on our feet (or in the boat on the odd occasion we got to paddle). We did see a dead crocodile in the river although in my befuddled state I swore it was a power drill (I couldn't then explain how it happened to be floating!). When we finally thought the worst was over and we would be able to paddle to the finish we were confronted by 2 kilometers of rocky rapids down which we had to drag the boats gaining lots of bruises in the process. Finally after 13 and a half hours on the river we made it to transition and an excited crew. Another speedy transition and we were off on the final stage before we could rest. A brief scare when Nike was ‘spotted’ as we were leaving turned out to be a false alarm. Everyone was tired but we knew that we were very close to winning the world championships and all we needed to do was push to the finish and not make mistakes – the race was ours to win!

A few hours later we had the final checkpoint and were on the beach, a gale at our backs and only 5km till the end of the stage. We flew downwind and clocked in at the stage finish and dark zone. Now it was a waiting game. Although there was still a sailing leg and a 10km run to do the next morning, any gap more than 15 minutes would be virtually impossible to overcome. 15 minutes went past, then an hour and we went to bed. Our crew stayed up and finally 3 hours after we had finished Nike reached the end of the bike stage. They had closed the gap to under an hour at the start of the final bike but in their rush to try and catch us they had made a huge navigational blunder and only recovered when Team Sole caught up to them and led them the right way. In one of those clever tricks that goes wrong Sole tried to fool Nike by riding past the checkpoint pretending not to get it. Nike didn't fall for it however and it was Sole who ended up worse off when they realized a few km further along the sandy track that none of them had got the checkpoint so they had to return to get it. In the morning the crew told us the good news, that so long as we didn't break a leg on the way to the finish line that the race was ours.

The sailing was a bit of a thrill, strong winds and big seas made for a rough ride and more than one competitor was seen emptying their breakfast over the side. Back on land with a 10km run to the finish, we put our heads down and charged into the ever-present wind. Finally, we crested the sunset dune at Jeri to the best view of the race – the finish line, with a cheering crowd welcoming us in as the 2008 Adventure Racing World Champions. We stepped up on to the podium, sprayed the champagne and basked in the glorious feeling of have taken on the worlds best and won!

-Stuart Lynch

Team OrionHealth.com 2008 Adventure Racing World Champions