Diary of an Ace Racer

Day one was a baptism of fire. Having assembled ourselves and become briefly acquainted over breakfast, we made our way outside to chose that with which we would become oh so familiar with over the next few days. our bikes.

It didn't take long to get sorted out. To make sure that woman and machine were suitably well introduced, we took a 25k cycle along various routes, not forgetting the 5k, 45 degree hill that had me weeping at its summit. A hill that we met only 10 minutes into the first ride of the week! I kept telling myself " It can only get easier ".

At the end of the ride, and being suitably well acquainted with our steeds, we proceeded on a 6k run up and down hills, over a nice soft and dusty ground. My knees were thankful for the lack of concrete and my backside thankful for being off that saddle. Not being a strong runner, I was cursing those in front, but the reassurance of food, water and hot soup at the end kept my leaden legs moving.

Having eaten and drunk to our hearts content during what can only be described as the transition from Heaven, I was ready to call it a day as the food was sitting comfortably in my tummy. I then remembered we had to get home, 25k away. I soon realise that comfort is going to be something of a valuable commodity this week. Slept like a baby.

Day two. 8:15 am ( 7:15am real time ). Not happy. My bleary eyes check the itinerary. Cycle to a mountain, climb it, cycle home. My choice; 1169 meters of ascent (we were already at 900m). or stay in bed. I roll over and close my eyes. If Phil's knocking hadn't been so persistent, I'd have managed sleep. Curses. Sadly today one of the crew, who was already feeling ill, got worse. Pam Butler had to sit out most of the week because of illness, but she helped Paul with the logistics so we all owe her a big thanks for that. To be honest it could have been a blessing in disguise because.

.it was a pleasant 9k up hill struggle. Honestly, I'd been better, but all in all, it wasn't too bad. We reached the base of Maroma. Everyone's getting changed, trying to stay in the sunlight and eating while they can, AR top tip. They all look psyched, this'll be a breeze.

In fact, it wasn't all that bad, not too physically demanding (but don't tell Phil that). However, the snow that capped the mountain really was the icing on the cake. Descending wasn't so much a case of skilfully walking, more a matter of tactfully sliding. At one point, it wasn't really so much of a decision as a mistimed discovery, to find out that Salomon's don't grip on pure ice. So having found this out and finding myself on my rear end, I took a thankfully brief trip off the beaten path and towards the one million foot edge. Ben, who was behind me, decided it looked like fun and so ended up following me. He bumped into me where I stopped and nudged me a little further. We waited a second for the typically Hollywood moment where the snow beneath us gave way and we fell thousands and thousands of millimetres. but it didn't. What could have been a disastrous situation really wasn't very climatic at all so we got up, dusted our selves off and carried on. The rest of the trip down ended up in trying not to fall over, not because it hurt, but because of the lack of sympathy and over abundance of ridicule from everyone behind. But we're all skilled adventure racers, so we all got down unscathed. mostly.

Our 9k uphill slog became a 9k down hill blessing on the way home. Beauty.

You'd think that after all that we'd be rewarded with food? Well you'd be wrong. We sill had to earn our food by walking into town. Not a hassle I hear you think. Well it wouldn't have been if Phil's navigation hadn't got us hopelessly lost. In a town no less!?! We wondered around for half an hour looking for Paul who was the only one who knew where the restaurant was. Rest assured Phil wasn't allowed to forget his navigational mishap. The food was good and bed was calling. If only we could have taken a taxi. Going against Jo Spivey's advice, I used caffeine to wake me up for the journey, sorry I mean walk, home. A massive mistake as the caffeine kept me awake way beyond the walk home and into the wee hours of the morning.

Day three, Tuesday. I was shattered and Jo was unsurprisingly unsympathetic. Today we have some cycling, canoeing and abseiling. The cycle out was fantastic. We came to a downhill section. I'd not done much down-hilling before, so this was new to me but I loved it. As I was careening down this hill, barely in control I see Phil ahead. He'd only gone and got a puncture and being the sympathetic person that I am I rode straight past and onto the bottom. There were some twitching moments in that 5 minutes I can tell you. Again, everyone made it down in one piece. The route choice hadn't defeated anyone yet. Then we were onto a bit of glorious tarmac and down to the canoes. It's amazing the difference between tarmac and off road. Your backside almost verbally thanks you.

While unloading the canoes, we all enter a discussion about the difference between a kayak and a canoe. There were some interesting and diverse theories, but we didn't come to any sort of agreement.
So we take our kayak / canoes over to the calm lake and begin to make our way to a couple of check points, merrily paddling along until the wind begins to pick up and Chris Harris gets knocked by someone else in a double canoe. In he goes and by the look on his face it isn't very warm in there. " What's that Chris, I can't hear you. cold ? Yes it looks it. You're going
where ? To the shore ? What about your boat ? I'm not sure I can do that with a boat Chris. Chris. " He's gone to shore. You've never seen someone in a life jacket move so quickly. Once we have him and his boat on shore, the rest of us, in our usually sympathetic way ( are you spotting a theme here? ), carried on. By this time the swell was getting large. In fact, it was so large that by the time we turn around to go back having cut our original journey in half, Mark Wood's boat was beginning to sink for the amount of water that had made it onboard! Powering, and I mean powering our way back to the start point, we were cutting through the swell like knives through butter. We were machines and not one of us complained once about being cold, wet, tired, hungry or mildly delirious. Well that's how I remember it anyway.

From the kayaking, we made our way to an abseil section. This was fairly novel. I've abseiled before, but there was something about the situation that didn't entirely fill me with confidence. It could have been that the men holding the ropes didn't speak English and none of us spoke Spanish. I'm not sure, but we all had a go, all except one, but I won't mention names Steve, and we all made it down unharmed. All apart from Gavin Thurlow who was hit by a falling pebble which he claims was more like half a mountain. No bruise, no proof.

After that, we took a leisurely cycle back to the hotel, ate and crashed out.

Leisurely is not an entirely accurate description. Within it, was a mountain time trial! The plan was to all start at once and get our times at the top of the 5k slog uphill. I'm not really sure what happened in this as everyone spread out quite quickly and I spent most of my journey in the delightful company of Mark Woods. We kept up with each other the whole way and made it to the top in a good time. Then, when all but one was at the top, there was a concerning wait of around ten minutes. One rider still hadn't surfaced. Paul jumped into his van to see if Ali Probert was okay. A few minutes later, we see Paul's van cresting the hill with Ali in tow. Now that's the way to do a time trial.

Day four. Wednesday. More cycling ahead of us today. It's our longest journey yet. 35k's each way, but a lot of it was on road so that meant easier on our legs, bums and less energy sapping. Our destination was a smaller mountain called Lucero ( 1779m ), but unfortunately we couldn't get the support vehicles there so Phil and Paul hatched another devious plan. It just so happened that there was a monstrous cycle route up to the top of a neighbouring mountain. Phew, wasn't that lucky. The fortunate thing was that there was a single track section of downhill madness originating at the top. The trip up wasn't anything new. Slow, enduring and never-ending ( but still somehow fun ) we made our way up and at the top we had an amazing view of the national park in all it's glory. We waited until everyone was together again and made our way to the single track. As I said before I've not done any down hilling, so Tuesday was a surprise, but this was something different. It wasn't a fast down hill. It was a technical " Don't for the love of God touch your front brake !?!? " section. Of course, in true style I only figured this out after I'd kissed my front wheel on my way to the floor. I jumped back up and on as quickly as possible. did anyone see ? Damn they did. But this time no jeering ? Curious, I thought, until I realised that most people had decided to take an untimely break from cycling.

It just got tougher. There were a few sharp drop offs on the way down, one in particular was actually two in a row ! It would have been much easier if there weren't continental sized boulders in the way just waiting to get under your tyre and flick your front wheel in directions you really didn't want it to go.

But once again, we all made it down unscathed and back to the vans.

Well, now we had a bit of time to kill. What were we going to do ? I'll tell you what I did. I opened my lunch, sat back, laid on the bank in the sun and did what I do best. I relaxed. What did every one else do ? Well they either went for a run along the same route in the opposite direction or did the cycle route again. Good luck to them I said and, thankfully, was joined by a couple of other people who were also quite happy to relax for an hour or so.

Off went the others. " Take your time " we shouted as we sat back in the glorious sunshine. Now this may sound lazy to some people, but it was in fact tactical. You see, we knew we had a race on the next couple of days so we were conserving energy for that. Honestly. don't look at me like that ?!

In the end we decided to head home a little early. One of our ranks wasn't feeling very good. Chris Butler was beginning to feel cold, despite wearing 5 layers ! Now I was in a T shirt and shorts and I was comfortable. This man should have been melting into a prune shape. Fearful that he may have caught what Pam had, we set off. Fair play to him, he did the entire 35k, which this way was 95% up hill, without any assistance and more impressively, not a single complaint. If that had been me I'd have made sure every one suffered with me Mwahahhahhahhaha.

We got back to the hotel before everyone else, but while I was cleaning my bike, I turned around and was greeted by the bloody grinning face of Ben. It seems Phil's plan had worked after all. Ben had quite literally kissed a rock on his way down the single track the second time. It was a fantastic souvenir to take home to all those in the office who would rather sit by a beach. If they didn't think he was mad before, they sure do now.

Day five. Thursday. Race day one. It's all a bit of a blur really. We were put into four teams of four the night before and suddenly breakfast was filled with an intense rivalry. Trying to make sure other teams didn't get too much food and not talking to the person you'd spent most of the week with all because you're in different teams. Amazing. A sociologists' dream experiment. Putting sixteen competitive people into such close proximity after they'd made new friendships. You'd have to see it to believe it.

We began in a mass start and headed off along familiar routes which we'd done earlier in the week down towards the canoes. I won't go into the canoe transition. Oh my goodness, that's a mine field. If you want to know more, ask me, or any of the others at an Ace Race. Needless to say, those who were in front were no longer in front after that transition where the lead teams got there so quickly that they weren't ready for us. Anyway, onto the water and towards the other end of the lake. Again the water was calm and the sun was shining. I was in the back so there was no one to crack me around the head with a paddle. We jumped out of the boats and onto the shore to begin the running stage. By this point the trailing teams were beginning to regain their rightful positions up front. The run was easy. I don't like running, but that was a nice break from canoeing. That was the way I was looking at it anyway. Everything was pleasant, apart from the bushes that like you to leave a deposit of skin before you head on. That wasn't so pleasant, but all in all it was nice to be off the water.

However, before you could say " Here's the last check point everyone !?" we were heading back to the boats.

The transition onto the water was a fairly smooth one. Wet, but smooth. Now the battle began, into the wind and towards the previous transition zone. That was fairly uneventful and straight forward. So onto the bikes.

Again we took familiar routes and the teams were all in close proximity. That is until the time trial hill.

Now Phil, in all his navigational wisdom, spotted a small, almost illegible line cutting out the entire first half of the time trial. This gave him second place and us third. All due to navigation but as I said before, he wasn't allowed to forget Monday nights disastrous walk into town.

First place went the long way too, but seemed to work very well as a team and deserved to come in first. Lastly, came the last team. Funny that.

But the day wasn't over. Before we could settle down to dinner we had the pleasure of night navigation. It wasn't really that big a course, but the scope to go wrong, as in all night navigation, is big. We didn't know the shame of our effort until Saturday when most of us decided to go back out and redo the night navigation in the daylight to see where we went wrong, and in some very few, very minor cases, went right.

Dinner was fun, reminiscent of breakfast, but not quite so energetic. After the night navigation team positions had changed and there were only 15 minutes separating the first and last team!

Day 6. Friday, race day two. The cycling today was tough. The map was tough. There were a few places that you could go horribly wrong, and by horribly I mean a long way uphill. I'm sure we must have had more down hill to go because we seemed to climb for ever. The routes were new today, so there was no feeling of relief when you spied something you'd noticed a couple of days earlier. I'm not sure if there are degrees of lost or not, but there was no way anyone was going to recover from a misplaced right or left by sheer luck today. There was nothing familiar to refer to and I'm not sure how well acquainted anyone is with Spanish maps, but luck was something you wanted on your side when using one. Our climbing on the bikes was rewarded with a mountain to climb. Have you ever noticed how they always put the check points on the absolute summit ?

They say the beauty of adventure racing is that you never stop learning. Well something we learnt on this particular section is that if you ask for the map, make sure you get the descriptions as well, or the person who gave you the map is going to remember that and
" assume ", ( which you should never do ), that you have the clues too. Well we didn't, so once again our lead was compromised while the fittest member of our team, not me I hasten to add, but Andy Mitchell was sent back to the base of the mountain to his bike to collect the missing piece of kit.

Ascending the mountain was fairly uneventful, but descending was a wondrous thing. We sat on the side of the mountain looking at the lie of the land, planning our route choice between checkpoints when back on terra firma. We could see the team ahead and the team behind. It was like being a general in a battle. A truly fantastic feeling. It felt as if we had all the time in the world. Well, that feeling was quickly dismissed with the team in front getting smaller and smaller.

We made our way along our prescribed route, spent half an hour looking for the first stupid checkpoint and made our way quickly round the last part and back towards the bikes. Our route choice took us up an old dried out river which was steeper than it looked from the mountain. I was in a daze as we came up the last hill on the dirt road back to the bikes. I was running with my eyes closed and being towed by Andy. A total mess, but as soon as I was back on the bike I was alive again and ready to go.

And we're off, on the final journey back to the hotel via a couple of checkpoints. A clear ride home. " What was that ?!? I didn't see any lightning ! It isn't raining. oh, no wait a minute. yes it is. " That ride home I heard some of the loudest and longest thunder I've ever heard. It kept rolling and rolling, I only wish my tyres had done the same. The rain had muddied the track home and the wheels were getting clogged. It was going to be interesting. We decided to make our way to the nearest town where we could get onto tarmac. We ended up pushing our bikes up this rather steep and muddy hill to get to this saviour town. We were now faced with new problem. Which town were we in ? There's only one on the map, but let's ask this local anyway. This was when we all remembered that not every one speaks English. We spent the next fifteen minutes trying to thank this overly helpful Spanish girl and make our way on. It turns out we were where we were supposed to be. Perhaps a bit of luck did play a part. The last bit home was familiar and we were home within the hour. The week was over.

On our last day, we stuck to our guns and went out to retrace our night navigation steps as we had said we would. Everything went swimmingly until checkpoint three where ten meters of bushwhacking should have led us to a path, which it did, but it was only in daylight that you notice the path that you're on; the one you took in the night wasn't on the map. The one you wanted to be on was three meters to your left! Only one team got this right and well done to them. Stuart Hill led his team through the night navigation and back to base in 70 minutes due to superb navigation. I'm really happy for them, aren't they great. There's no bitterness there at all. None. Not a scrap.

Anyway. The lesson here was not to be afraid to turn around and go back to where you last knew you were because on the night we had a " feeling " we weren't on the right track, but forged on anyway, bumping into another team on our way. This led to an unsuccessful evening all in all as far as the race was concerned, but as long as the lesson is learnt, I'm happy.

In case you were wondering, we came in third and the hot favourites came in last. I blame the canoe transition, but as I said, if you'd like to know more, I'll see you at the next ACE Race.

Matt Sleaford


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