Night 1

There haven't been too many updates since the end of the caving but I'm sure that's because it's presently 2:30am in Spain. The guys were just over an hour behind the leaders after the first 3 legs but they took a bit longer in the caving than some of the teams in front and that time will come off their total. By my calculations they are well less than an hour behind the leaders. Probably at this stage they're happy just to have not crashed on the first skating leg of the race.

The first MTB leg of the race was supposedly 56km (far left to far right above) but would take the fastest team 7 hours. Judging by that sort of average speed the 3 mountain ranges they had to climb must have been pretty serious hills! The race passes the small mountain town of Valdorria, mentioned in the latest sleepmonsters report before the first kayaking leg.

Looking at Google earth ... again, there is a fairly big dam that (I now think) seems to be the logical place for this paddle (picture below). Although this is Adventure Racing so remember this is only my guess!
Section 5 (Kayak / Run) is referred to on the race web-site as what's commonly called a "Split" leg. The team of 4 will split into 2 teams of 2. One pair will start the leg kayaking while the other pair run. They will meet up and swap disciplines. The time for this leg appears to be a sum of the time of both pairs. These legs really test the teams that rely on only 1 navigator.