Post race recap

Hi everyone,
firstly I'd like to thank the Super-crew- my parents Julia and Robert who did a tremendous job supporting us throughout the race. The race was originally to be
"unsupported" format but this changed leading up to the race and we were lucky they had already decided to attend. It was such a huge advantage to have support, and even more to have one that was willing to stretch the rules in the "unsupported" transitions that it became a bit of a joke. Anyway Julia could tell many stories of their behind the scenes look at a very dysfunctional race organisation.

And a second huge thanks to Big Dave Provan for all his post on this blog site. Dave obviously spent many days trying to understand the format and if only we had understood the rules so well. I was expecting the official race coverage to be really good based on last years event, but the organisation much have had other things on their minds.

Dave was correct in his assumptions on how the race was to be decided:
1. Number of Mandatory CP's - if team are equal then
2. Number of Bonus CP's - if teams are still equal
3. Lowest cumulative time

But these assumptions- most of which came from the head organisers mouth were not always correct
1. The most important thing is to finish each stage inside the cut-off time
- Not always true- and there were no penalties anyway
2. Get as many of the Mandatory CP's along the way inside the cut-off
- Often the cut-offs meant nothing so you were better of just getting as many CP's and taking the short cut that was better.
3. Get as many bonus CP's as you can inside the time limit for each stage

As stated in the last post- we officially finished 14th. This was a little below our expectations and the first time we have left a race wondering what went wrong. Our team, along with most others, failed to realise early enough that it was not always the most important goal to make the "cut-offs". In the race briefing it was stated that you would be greatly disadvantaged if you didn't make a cut-off, but in several cases it was actually an advantage. In a few situations we rushed through parts of the course, missing valuable checkpoints on the bike (our strength leg) to make a cut off but we should have looked more in detail at what each long course/short course actually entailed. There were in fact no compulsory CP's which meant it was advantageous to miss most of the fun challenges (such as the climbing/canyoning). Other challenges such as the orienteering legs were only bonus controls so virtually no one did them which is a real shame.

Anyway that's enough of an explanation of the race for the moment. Damon with get around to the full race report next week when he returns to work (an hence is paid to procrastinate).

Team Blackheart Finished ARWC

Team Blackheart finished the Adventure Racing World Championships at 9:50am (local time) just making it 10min before the zip line cut-off. I just got off the phone with Kim and everyone is fine but happy to be finished. Seems the race was just as confusing for the racers as it was for us spectating over the internet. Classic quote from Kim "we didn't even know the rules for the first 3 days".

Congratulations to Helly Hansen Prunesco for being (unofficially) the 2009 Adventure Racing World Champions and to our guys for a great race somewhere in the top 15???

The team gets on a plane tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the race report!

14th at end of Stage 4

So the leaderboard has been updated for the end of Stage 4 and the Team went from 36th (end of Stage 3) to 14th! Even though they missed the cut-off they must have charged the long Trek and MTB legs collecting a lot of cp's before 12am and have also been recredited with the cp's from Stage 3.

http://www.arwc2009.com/en/live.php?page=leaderboard

I haven't heard from the Supercrew or the Twitterati but can only assume that the team is presently their on MTB's between the start of the Stage 5 short course and the end of the 45k leg 3 MTB.

You can also see that Lundhags who also missed the cut-off but collected extra cp's like our team and have moved up to 2nd place overall. Can't help but think there will be many more changes over the last 24 hours of racing.

Just as I write this I see the latest Twitter update:

@arwc2009leite teams #24 and #03 leave T14

So ... correction ... they have just finished the MTB and have left on leg 4 of Stage 5 which is a 40km Trek, then it's just a "short" 75k MTB and 25k Trek to the finish!

Just before hitting the submit button on this post Fleur sent me a message after she spoke with the Supercrew so here's an earlier update.

Blackheart arrived at the end of Stage 4 at 4am and had to have left by 6am. So after 75 min sleep the Supercrew dragged them out of their beds and threw them onto the trail like zombies hoping they knew which direction they were headed - Apparently they're pretty tired now.

How's this for a funny tweet

@arwc2009claudio #01 team captain of Orion have been lost by 3 hours from the rest of the team, nike found him in the trekking (S5S1) and they will continue

It's much easier than you think to lose team mates after 5 hours sleep in 5 days. Glad everyone's ok. Look for an updated story on Sleepmonsters shortly. There was also a twitter post suggesting that the organisers thought Helly Hansen may now be leading the race ... Going to be hard to go to sleep tonight - thankfully the Blackheart GPS tracker isn't working.

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!

Stages 3 & 4

I started this update then put in what is now the daily call to the Supercrew ...

The Leaderboard on the website has been updated with the guys in 36th position and Stage 3 has been hashed out indicating that they missed the cut-off - I can only assume that this is an error and will be fixed. Last night briefly there was a spreadsheet in the place of the Leaderboard which had the guys in 23rd place. After they dropped all of the CP's on the MTB to make the cut-off this seemed to be pretty accurate. There was only 3 CP's seperating 10th - 30th place so there's a long way to go.

It did however appear that dropping a couple of CP's in the Stage 2 Trek and getting more on the Stage 3 MTB was definitely a better strategy and disappointingly there are a couple of team our guys are faster then that are now in front. Oh well - That's racing.

I just got off the phone and it's now 1 hour to the 12am Stage 4 cut-off and Blackheart hasn't arrived ... Yet. The Supercrew weren't able to shed any light on the internet results and in fact had seen exactly what we see but can't get any answers.

Anyway, Blackheart left on the MTB after the Trek 4 hours behind the Orion and Orion had just arrived at the end of Stage 4 30 mins ago. But we don't know how many CP's they got and whether it will be possible for Blackheart to shave a couple of hours of the route to make the cut-off. Either way this one's going to be tight. I asked how many teams had been through at the end of the Stage and althoughthere have been quite a few no one know how many CP's teams have got or whether they're even short course teams from the Stage 3 cut-off.

The guys are tired but in good spirits as evidenced below. I'll call the Supercrew again in an hour for the cut-off result. Fingers crossed.

Did they make the cut-off?

YES

As reported by Sleepmonsters 21 teams made the 9pm cut-off at the end of stage 3 although there are a few team numbers missing from the list - Orion, Nike, etc so it is probably a few more than that.

I placed another call with the Supercrew as they were in the aftermath of cleaning up the transition area. The TA was absolute bedlam as almost 100 adventure racers were frantically organising themselves for the next Stage before the cut-off. Some Teams were starting to look a little worse for wear and maybe a couple of days hard racing is starting to take it's toll. Blackheart finished the paddle, taking the shortest route and dropping another couple of CP's like almost all of the other teams. They then went about the usual TA business of organising gear and planning the next leg and left after shovelling in as much pasta, noodles and pizza as possible. Blackheart are flying! They were all really excited to have made the cut-off and to have survived the last roller blading section (well almost). After I hung up the phone last night things got a bit more interesting on the roller blade leg. The guys were doing nicely until they came to a reasonable downhill. Josh, Rob and Kim took their skates off a decided to walk down while Damon thought "hey, I can skate that" apparently he was doing ok for a while, then a crash and now a bruised a$$. After the initial worry I'm sure the rest of the team would have been appreciative of Damon's sacrifice for their amusement.

In an innovative show of teamwork on one of the shorter downhills to save time Josh took his skates off and Kim and Rob left theirs on. Both Kim and Rob held a trekking pole behind them and Josh walked down with his skates around his neck and the other end of each pole in his hands acting like an anchor keeping both their speed under control. Apparently the first comment when Blackheart arrived at the end of the Roller blade was a big sigh from Josh and a comment "How did we survive that?". Teams are now on Stage 4 which starts with a short paddle across the river then a ropes / jumar section that we assume is up a castle wall. Then there's a 60km Trek followed by a 160km MTB. Hopefully the pace will speed up a bit with far less elevation gain on these legs however this is likely to still be a 30 hour Stage. Photo of the Maps below - have fun Rob!

I can also confirm a few assumptions I have made to date. The guys did take 90 min sleep on the first night (Stage 2), followed the second night by another 90 min in transition at the start of Stage 3. They will sleep somewhere on the Trek tonight and apparently now that they're out of the high mountians the weather is far more mild and so should get a comfortable sleep.

Update from the Supercrew

So I finally couldn't take it anymore so when I could see the guys were in the MTB to Roller blade transition I put in the call to Rob's mum for an update. Today was the first real day that they got a chance to see and talk to the guys and here's what I managed to scribble down.

At the end of Stage 2 - Trek - MTB - Trek Blackheart were the 2nd last team to arrive but from what could be worked out (by the Supercrew) may have been the only team to get all of the CP's - Nike and Orion included - although this can't be confirmed. The problem is that they have spent heaps of energy on what the organisers described as the toughest part of the course in the high mountains. Unfortunately the tactic may not have paid off and while to team took 90mins sleep at the end of the stage Rob's Dad (also Rob) plotted a new course for the guys on the major MTB leg of Stage 3 that they just completed to give them a chance of making the cut-off.

So at 1am (12pm today AEST) the guys left on the Downhill MTB leg then had to Trek the paddle before starting the next MTB . Unfortunately the guys skipped 10-12 CP's by smashing along a main road to catch up some time. All of the legs have been longer in time and distance than the organisers predicted. Unfortunately the couple of bonus CP's the guys have collected aren't "worth" as much as the mandatory ones they missed today.

If they don't make the cutoff in 8.5 hours then all the early effort will be wasted. It seems that right from the start tactics will prove to have been really important and the teams that dropped the last couple of hard Trekking CP's at the end of stage 2 and got most of the MTB ones today probably made a better decision. Still, it's very easy for me to say that from the couch.

The guys seemed to have worked out how to race and have a better plan for the remaining stages (still possibly 500km and 60 hours racing). All seems to be going well considering it's day 3 / 4 with no reported issues. Damon's pre-race health scare seems to be having no impact, Kim's really keen for some Chicken Noodles (apparently), Rob broke a couple of spokes on his new MTB but the guys managed to "borrow" a replacement wheel of a Finnish Team that was pulling out only losing about an hour in the process, now that I write, I realise I got no word on Josh so assume the Donkey's ok too. The official opinion of the Supercrew was "I wouldn't say they're unhappy" which is good enough for me at this stage.

I think there has been about 10 teams withdraw at this stage leaving about 50 teams still on the course. Some of the GPS trackers have been a bit on and off so what we really need is an update from the organisers .... but ... Don't get the Supercrew started on the organisers (I learned that the hard way). From the ground the race is a "Shamozzle" and in fairness to our guys this same opinion has been published by No. 1 Twitterati and also an organiser of the Untamed New England World Series AR Race on his blog. Anyway, apparently the rules are quite "fluid", there's not a lot of helpful information for the support crew and the "bending" of the "rules" during the apparently "unassisted" gear drops as one example is ridiculous.

At this point I must clarify that the 1 hour car navigational mistake by the Supercrew on night 1 was a result of the organisers directions saying turn left in "11 km" instead of "1.1 km" leading to everyone (except the organisers and the bus) getting lost.

So back to the current situation, I was getting this entire update while the Supercrew in the Supervan were following the guys on Roller blades with their hazard lights (mandatory for this section) on for safety so the story included a running commentary, most memorable were "oh sh!t cobblestones" then "round-a-bout, 2 of them went around and 2 through the middle" and "railway line" and "whoa downhill they're picking up speed now" and "traffic light - Josh and Rob got through and Kim and Damon stopped" and finally "phew ... the open road, that's a bit better, time for a photo".

The race is on for the cut-off. And to add even extra confusion, all of the reports say that the teams have to have finished Stage 3. However the word on the ground is that not only do they have to have finished the last leg (kayak) but they have to have actually started the next Trek. For clarification to make it even un-clearer, in case this was still to obvious, the Supercrew were told that they have to have even reached the first CP (which looks like a ropes section) 3km into the Trek. How much of this is fact, can't say, but I'm sure we'll know soon enough.

So while I still have no idea where the guys are placed, we do know they are healthy, "not unhappy" and still racing as hard and fast as they can.

Stage 3 - ???

For today's post there's not a lot of new information. It appears that I was right that the cut-off of 9pm (8am tomorrow AEDST) is for the end of stage 3. I was wrong however that the organisers might update the leaderboard after stage 2.

No news about Blackheart although the GPS tracker has started working again. I know that they missed the paddle cut-off (dark zone) so had to trek the stage instead which wouldn't have been fun after a couple of days on the legs. The real race for all teams now is the cut-off in 11 hours time.

Blackheart are way-off the MTB course but it looks like they are doing a road ride and trying to drop a couple of CP's (~5) in order to make the cut-off. They have about 30-40k to ride, then 20k to skate then somewhere between 30-54k to paddle depending on the course they take and the number of CP's they get along the way. On the plus side the paddle is downstream so that should make it a bit faster. It's still going to be very close for them depending on how they are feeling. They've got 11.5 hours and I reckon there's at least 10-11 hours of racing distance left with no mistakes and good conditions. Fingers crossed.

Most, if not all the teams will have to drop CP's during the race but the real luck (or good decision making) will come down to which one's are skipped. Some teams dropped 2-3 on the trek whereas our guys are dropping 5-6 on the bike. I assume that all the CP's are of equal value.

Even Twitter has let me down today so it might be time to place a call to the Supercrew Mr and Mrs Preston for a better update. Haven't even found a photo. To make it interesting, we should run a sweep on what place Blackheart will be in when the leaderboard finally get's updated. Leave your comments on the post ... I'm sticking with 10th.

Stage 2 - Still

Ok ... So the race is now nearly 28 hours old (not including the prologue). Things are starting to get interesting. This is what I can figure out with my extremely biased and selective research.

All sources seem to suggest that Nike and Orion are out in front pushing the pace, followed by Lundhags and Buff. After that no team really gets a mention as being up there. What I can tell from the tracking is that Blackheart are about 8-10km behind Lundhags. It's morning over there now and I also thought that our guys were stationary for a while last night even though the GPS was transmitting ... Possibility they banked some early sleep ???? We do know that they only got a couple of hours on the floor the night after the prologue so a sleep last night (if they had one) could be a very smart decision with 80+ hours of racing left.

Rumor is - from Rob's mum via text message to Kathryn - that they got lost for over an hour on the drive from the Prologue to the start of Stage 2.

There's an update on Adventure Sports Magazine and it appears my most useful twitterer will be on the ground in Portugal from Thursday. There seems to be a major cut-off at 9pm Wednesday (8am Thursday AEDST) I can only assume this is for the end of Stage 3. If correct this will be tight but should be possible for Blackheart to get all the CP's along the way as stage 3 looks like at least a 24 hour stage. Although, it starts with a 24k downhill MTB - part of the course I'd put my hand up for - check out the profile.

Fingers crossed for an update in the morning as the majority of teams finish Stage 2. I'll put in an early tip our guys will be Top 10 ... Any takers?

twitter & photos

Thanks social networking for at least some updates. And to my IT Deptartment at work ... you may have blocked Facebook but I can still access Twitter. The best updates seem to be coming from support crew and people on the ground who are tweeting. Team Multisport Finland - ranked as a favourite have withdrawn after a bike crash - Nike are going for a difficult bonus CP on the bike, etc. Even the organisers and volunteers are tweeting rather than updating the web-site.

Go to wwww.twitter.com, sign-up, go to "Find People" and follow:

@arwc2009
@arwc2009claudio
@arwc2009fred
@arwc2009leite
@teamcyanosis
@Untamed_Adv
@teamhellyhansen
@TeamKinetic

And of course we could all use more followers
@daveprovan
@kimwillocks
@robbiepreston

Any questions ... google it!

Stage 2 - Continued

The race (saga) continues. The coverage was good enough that I reckon I can almost figure out what's going on but not good enough to keep me up past midnight.

From the start of the stage teams seemed to go in many different directions which seemed odd since I thought most of the CP's were mandatory. Anyway here's what I can figure out about winning the race (each stage is like a big multi-discipline rogaine)

1. The most important thing is to finish each stage inside the cut-off time
2. Get as many of the Mandatory CP's along the way inside the cut-off
3. Get as many bonus CP's as you can inside the time limit for each stage

The race will be decided by the following criteria (I think - but I'm happy to be corrected if someone has worked it out differently):

1. Number of Mandatory CP's - if team are equal then
2. Number of Bonus CP's - if teams are still equal
3. Lowest cumulative time

Confusing enough for everyone.

Sleepmonsters have another report but Blackheart didn't rate a mention. It appears as though Nike and Orion Health are fighting out the early lead followed by Lundhags Adventure, Team Finland, Quechua, Buff Thermocool, etc in no particular order.

Twitter did however provide me with the following update - Verbatim.
"RT: @arwc2009 Live is stuff for the Australian Champions, #03 blackheart.com.au . They just missed the mandatory CP 8b at Aigra Nova"

It does appear that many teams even at this early stage as just picking and choosing which CP's they visit - Mandatory or otherwise. I expect we'll have to wait for the end of Stage 2 - Trek, MTB, Trek before the teams sport-ident sticks are downloaded and we get some updated results ... Back to work.

Stage 2 ... Race Re-Start

Now waiting for the race re-start. Here's what I can figure out (no Fleur, unfortunately I'm not in Portugal). Team had the option of getting the bonus CP credit at the start of the prologue. From a hidden link to the results that I found it appeared that 25 out of the 59 teams completed this section. The strategy in this decision was that teams still needed to finish the stage within the time limit including getting all subsequent mandatory CP's.

The results are now posted and as you can see - leaderboard - a number of teams had to miss mandatory CP/s later in the stage to make it back in time. Big mistake, and we can see the impact of the decision making with the bonus CP's.

Only 18 teams in the end got the bonus and completed the stage with Blackheart sitting pretty in 16th place. It's probably a bit hard to know what this means as far as how well they're going, but it's always good mot to make big early mistakes in a 100+ hour race. Team Nike appear to be the only big name team not to have got it right on Day 1.

The start of Stage 2 and non-stop racing is supposed to have started ... and it may well have, not that you'd know from the coverage. Sleepmonsters website appears to have a man on the ground who is reporting for the site. Anyone find anything else let everyone know. I'm happy for anyone to call Rob's mum who is support crewing for the team - if you need the number let Kathryn or I know.

Prologue

After months and months of speculation and high expectations ... the race coverage ... is ... well ... disappointing (so far). However the race did get underway yesterday and the teams completed a 7-8 hour prologue. The first part of the stage involved a score multisport rogaine (ala City Chase) followed by a rollerblade, trek, MTB, trek. It appears as though the score event was for a bonus CP and so from the race tracking that I could follow, half the teams set out straight on the rollerblade ignoring the stage, whereas the other half went for the bonus.

Haven't found any reports (ed. Sleepmonsters has just put up a story) or results from the stage, but the GPS tracker for the team was next to the finish line for the stage this morning. The teams then boarded a bus for the start of the non-stop stages that will continue for the rest of the week. Presently they should be asleep in a sports hall somewhere in Portugal awaiting the 8am restart local time (7pm AEDST).

Blackheart prepared for start on Estoril Coastline

Hi again,
the team is now prepared for tomorrow's race start in the gardens of the Estoril Casino. We had 3 days in Lisbon in nice apartment near Cais do Sodre station. Lisbon is pretty small and it was easy walk to most of the sights. On Wednesday we spent most of the day riding around the outdoor shops and supermarkets looking for a few crucial pieces of missing equipment. On Thursday we were picked up by the race organisers and moved to Vila Biluca near Cascais. Casais is a holiday destination and there is some beautiful coastline and surfing destinations. The weather has been really nice so far and we are hoping it will continue, but the race is sure to head to the mountains where it will be much cooler.

We know a little about the course- there are 5 stages including a prologue stage of about 7hrs. We then move to another start location before Stage 2 start at 8am Monday. There are several bonus checkpoints that teams will need to decide whether they have time to collect and still make it to the next transition area before a defined cut-off time. Race strategy will be very important and we are hoping our experience in navigation and planning will help.


The race website looks great and there should be plenty of coverage of the race. You can follow our team on this page.

Team Blackheart arrives in Portugal for World Champs

Hello from Portugal!
Team Blackheart is back on the road again at the Adventure Racing World Championships, this year being organised by Portugal XPD. We qualified for the championships by winning the XPD Australia race (the Australian qualifier) last November in the Snowy Mountains around Thredbo.Its been a very long wait, but the race is nearly here.
We arrived in Lisbon yesterday after a long Melbourne-Sydney-Singapore-London flight schedule and have spent the last day or so doing a bit of sight-seeing and resting up. On Thursday we will head to Estoril, about 1hr west of Lisbon, to the event centre. On Saturday we have race accreditation and competencies and receive the course during the event. The race starts at 10am Sunday local time- which is 9pm AEST.

The race involves 5-6 days of non-stop adventure with over 920km of trekking, mountain biking, kayaking, inline skating and other sports. Live reports and GPS tracking of the teams will be shown on the event website http://www.arwc2009.com/en/

Thanks again to our sponsors
Blackheart.com.au
Salomon
SILVA
Carboshotz
Merida Bikes