(Thanks to some great photos from Zunyi Race photographer, Amanda Lu)
Well, what do you know – things went well for us. If I’m going to curse the racing gods when things go bad, then I gotta give them credit when things go well. And today things went well. We got to stand on the podium in 2nd place today, 14 minutes behind Thule (Jacky, Mimmi, Martin) and 30 minutes ahead of Team Sportzhub (Marcel H, Dougal A, and Simone M.)
Chilling during the opening ceremony
Here comes a very short and concise race report, followed by a whole bunch of pics (I managed to strike a deal with the race’s official photographer, Amanda Lu, who speaks fantastic English: I gave her some of my GoPro footage from today in return for some of her professional photos. We both won on this one – you’ll enjoy some of the pics below.
But first the race recap
- We had an urban start, with a run around a football stadium and then a “team challenge” where we had to climb over a wall (see pics below), and then we had to assemble an orienteering map that was cut in to puzzle pieces. This took some time and was a bit tricky, but once we taped everything together, we had 3 different challenging orienteering courses: we split up and ran out to find our control points.
- We met up halfway through to do a rappel from a building, and then met up again at the end to do a “bamboo pole balancing” act out in the water (as you’ll see from the pics, I didn’t manage to do it standing up, so I sat down instead
- Once through with that we headed out on our bikes in 4th places, hot on the heals of Team Karlstad from Sweden (being top orienteers, they had a great start !), Team Thule, and Team Moxie Gear.
- Then an amazing thing happened – we pedaled hard (climbed up in to third place), and finished the bike without a mechanical problem or a flat. How refreshing.
- The final leg was a steep climb up a set of never-ending stairs to a fantastically scenic overlook (sorry, no pics for this one because Amanda couldn’t keep up with us going up the stairs )
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So that’s enough words … check out these pics from Amanda Lu !
Chaos ensues as 25 teams of 3 approach the wall at the same time !
Whatever it takes to get over
Reaching up to James’ outstretched arms to help me over the wall … good pull James !
Once I got my left foot (red Inov8 shoes on left) and left hand (with watch on it) then I was good to go …
Putting the map puzzle together
My thick fingers were not so good when it came to taping the map pieces together (Yes, Grant, I was just giving you a lead to leave a comment on my blog…)
Trying to navigate with my “taped together” map was not so easy. As you can see, the edges of the puzzle are not exactly “lined up” so well
Team Moxie had pretty good balance …
… but I didn’t so I sat down instead.
When I reached the control under the bridge, I had to stand up to “check in”
I made it …
Nic swimming hard, pushing my thick bamboo stick along….
Cooling off before the last stair climb section (during our mandatory 25 minute rest).
The team heading off to the “time check out” to make one last hard 25 minute effort to the finish
These stairs were a killer. Near the top we had to switch over to these super high stairs, which required a giant leap just to get up them … and that was with my 6 foot 1 inch stride. Nic is only 5 foot 2 (on a good day …). But she hammered this section!
Amanda didn’t make it to the top for us, but here is another team finishing at the picturesque finishing line. (Check out that super expensive “GoPro Helicopter” in the background. They’re gonna have a cool film of this race afterwards … I hope I can find it somewhere on Google China in the coming weeks…)
Making the long slow walk back down to the buses after reaching the finish line on top. We were going to camp up there on top (there are no roads up there) and then start the race from there tomorrow morning, but because of bad weather coming tonight we had to walk back down and get the bus back to our hotel.
Sleep well !
Scott C
