Missed cut-off

As of 15 min ago (~2am in Portugal) Blackheart had still not arrived at the end of Stage 4 so have missed the cut-off time. I just got off the phone from the Supercrew and will try to provide an update on what's happening over there and what the missed cut-off means for the team.

As a aside. from my point of view Soical Networking (e.g. Twitter.com) now exists solely for the purpose of live adventure racing coverage. It's been amazing to be able to get real time updates from support crew, media, volunteers, etc. I spent the best part of the 30 min before the cut-off staring at Twitter until work inconviently got in the way of my ARWC following, so I apologise for this being a couple of hours late.

Anyway, the current situation is that teams who arrive at the end of Stage 4 after the first cut-off (12am) will be short coursed. They will skip the next Trek and Kayak and leave the TA on MTB and head straight for the end of the Kayak, and re-start Stage 5 at the start of the Leg 3 MTB. To go onto this short course option teams have to have left the TA by 6am (i.e. in the next 3.5 hours). If they leave after 6am there will be an even shorter course that I have no information on and we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.

Now for the race rules as we know them. As with most of the rules in this race there's a lot of speculation and rumors about what happens if a team misses the cut-off. The main rumor was that Teams lost all of the CP's that they had collected on the whole stage. In this case this would mean all the Trek and MTB CP's since the last cut-off. The Supercrew clarified this with one of the organisations "head honcho's" (not to assume the same answer would be recieved from one of the other's) but the answer was this - At the 12am cut-off the Stage is closed and this means that teams can no longer get any further CP's on that Stage. The electronic sport ident system that records time allows the organisers to know when each CP was collected so effectively from the cut-off time teams will head straight for the end of the Stage. The Penalty therefore is the time wasted getting to the end of the Stage without collecting CP's as well as missing the possiblity of getting CP's on the following legs that get skipped on the short course (i.e. the next Trek and Kayak). Gee, I hope that made some sense, but please remember none of this should be taken as fact. Race on!

In a strange strategic twist, Lundhags who have been racing at the front thought that it might be better to miss the cut-off (whether they intended it or not, can't be sure) because they now get a good sleep, miss a Trek and Kayak with only a few CP's and charge the last part of the course to the finish. Positive thinking!

Links:

Best Twitter updates - @Untamed_Adv

Another interesting read is the Orion blog. If an Australian Team can't win I suppose a Kiwi Team is the next best thing.

Latest Sleepmonsters article describes nicely what Expedition Racing is "all about" - emotional & confusing!