Bear Trophy (Limburg, march 2015) – report Patrick

Adventure race season 2015 has started with the Bear Trophy. With six team members, Dutch Adventure was well presented. Wouter-Dirk & Henk with team INOV8/Bike2Build/Cube, Inga with guest racer and new comer Quirein racing under team name IQ, will they honour their name? Jeroen filling up a spot in a beginners team and Ward & Patrick racing under the name Dutch Adventure. This would be my first race together with Ward and not with Inga. Inga, we will race again together the hARz and looking forward to it! Ward was clear about our goals, we should end top three. This is definitely new to me, I would never mention that out loud. But he is right, we trained hard, so why wouldn’t it be possible? It for sure made me being more nervous than normal.

Saturday morning again checking the weather forecast, no rain, no clouds, sun and seventeen degrees. This is too good to be true, there must be something that makes an adventure race tough. Then I remember, the race is organised by Raymond in his “garden”: no paved roads, lots of height differences, mud, a tight racing schedule, etc. One short call with Ward to check if we have everything packed and then head south to Remersdaal, race location of the Bear Trophy. Quickly setting up the tent, saying hi to everybody, eating some sandwiches and trying to be on time for the briefing.

The Prologue

On Saturday evening the race starts with a prologue, a Run-Bike stage of 10km. This prologue will determine the starting sequence for the next day. First five teams will start one minute behind each other, from the sixth team onwards it will be 30 seconds. Not dramatic if you end up last, with 23 teams it is only 15 minutes, but you want to start at least top 5 to prevent you lose connection with the best teams. Before the race we already decided on the roles, Ward would do the orienteering during the MTB stages, I would do the orienteering during the running and the run bike stage. After receiving the maps, we had to draw the CP’s on the map with the given coordinates. After drawing we decided to take the route counter clockwise. How to get into the map, get control of your breath, and get to the CP’s as fast as possible while the adrenaline is running through your vanes, I still don’t have the recipe. Nevertheless we found the first CP with some help, thanks for that Inga. The next CP looked pretty straight forward, however the path on the map was not a path anymore. Over to plan B, and find another route, with a short crossing through the forest we were on the plan B route. Maybe not the shortest route but at least we didn’t lose time in making decisions. The next two CP’s where quickly found, but I still didn’t feel my breath was under control, so far I did the running part and Ward was on the bike. Ward took over the map and did the last three CP’s while we started to rotate the running and biking. We ended up third, resulting in a 2 minute delay for the next day compared to the winners Wouter-Dirk & Henk.

Preparations, Decisions and some Sleep

At the end of the prologue we received the road book and the maps for the next day. Ward drafted a time schedule, theoretically we would finish at 15:50, 40mins before the deadline…..  Ok it looks like it is doable. We started studying the maps and marked the routes. Trying to avoid unnecessary height meters, unpaved routes, and difficult orienteering parts often at the cost of additional flat kilometres. But hopefully in the end the fastest choice. SPD or not…… although we didn’t discuss upfront we both took SPD with us. Looking at road book, a major part was on the MTB, we decided to use SPD and deal with the extra weight of the shoes in our backpack. This turned out a very good decision, most of MTB part we could stay on the bike and have the benefit of the SPD.

Sleep, always difficult before a race especially with a sleeping mat that looses air.

The Race

Starting at 8:02, 2 minutes after the first team, we headed for our first CP on the MTB. Not long after the start we passed Wouter-Dirk and Henk, exchanging a flat tire. This was probably the first one of many during this race. We collected CP after CP due to good orienteering of Ward. I am still amazed how he bikes and reads the map, without falling. I however am able to find the biggest mud pool on the route and fall right into that one. Nothing hurt, only my ego.

TA 1 – fast push to the lead

Arrived at TA1 we quickly changed shoes and headed for the next running stage. We and two other teams where close, team EDO sports and Hardloopwinkel / Decathlon. The orienteering went very well, some good short cuts and steady running resulted in arriving just behind EDO sports at the TA. However they were changing a flat tire. We started the next MTB stage virtually first although I didn’t realise this at that moment. This was a relative short part, only 7km, however again with the unavoidable height meters. At this part of the race we could still enjoy the beautiful surroundings of the Raymond’s backyard. We arrived as fourth team at the Special Task, fourth…  Yes fourth but the first team still with all CP’s. Ok now I start to realise we are at this moment virtual first, but the race only just begun and everything can happen. The special task was a route in a climbing hall. Fastest climb time would get a price at the end. Let’s say it took me more than double the time of the fastest, Quirein of team IQ took this price he only needed 19 seconds.

Water!

Back on the MTB we headed for the next 8 CP’s. We arrived at CP 18, the third CP in this stage, and we couldn’t find it. Another team was also looking, but not at the spot we were looking. Are we at the right spot, double checking, yes we are. Finally we found it at 3m height in a tree…… nice place for a CP especially when you are looking at the bottom part of a tree. There was a hint in the road book, stating “In de Boom op het Talud”, we could have known. Back on the MTB we had our first flat tire. Relatively quick we changed it, later we would find out it can be done much faster, especially under time pressure. The rest of this stage went well and we arrived at our own made schedule at TA4. We were happy to see that there was water. I was almost out of the 3 litres of water I had and that after only 4 hours of racing.

The next 10km was running stage. Part on the map was black and white. It took me a few minutes to get used to it and was a bit disoriented, after a short alignment with Ward I was back on track. This stage took longer than our original plan, 20 minutes behind schedule we started for the next short run/bike. Clock wise or Counter clock wise, I think we took the right decision. There was a pretty steep downhill which you prefer to go down sitting on your bike instead of pushing it up.

Abseil

After changing shoes we were ready for the last MTB part including a special task. Our first mistake/misunderstanding. We arrived at a crossing of 6 paths, Ward already mentioned we should take the path going south west. At the path again checking is the direction still ok. It is a bit more west than south west, but that is probably what he meant. After 800m we should go right and then find the CP at a lookout. No lookout…. Both looking at the map we realised we took the wrong path. Back to the crossing and on the right path we found CP31. The route to CP32 was probably through somebody’s backyard. At least that is what I concluded from the “owners” reaction, according to the map it wasn’t/isn’t. Nevertheless we apologised and said that we were lost, yeah right. The special task was a nice abseil. Up for the last part, there was still a bit more than one and a half hour left for the last part, a 24km MTB, with CP33 up to CP42.

Changing flat tire, fast!

Impossible to do all, but we would at least give it a try. CP33, CP34, CP35, CP36, ….. time to make some decisions, which point are we going to skip. We decided to skip the next points and see if we would have enough time left to take some CP’s close to the finish. Only choosing paved roads the speed went up, it was difficult to keep close to Ward and even had to ask him to go a bit slower. To compensate for the luck we had so far of only having one flat tire, the front tire of Ward decided to get rid of his air. While still driving we discussed who would do what during the tire exchange. Less than 4min’s later we were on the bike again and proceeded with our struggle. Each small uphill resulted a dramatic speed decrease for both of us. On top of that, the chosen route was through an area which wasn’t on both of the maps. At least we knew the direction is still ok and we should end somewhere on the next map. Looking at the second map I found a street that was in the same direction of where we were going, that must be it. Only 10min left and two options, 2 km partly single track uphill or 3km uphill at a nice road. We took the shortest route.  With some motivating words during the uphill we arrived, completely empty and just not puking, before the deadline at the finish. We were the first team to finish and then the waiting starts. Most of the other teams arrived after the deadline but had some additional time due to cues during the special tasks. Be Fit came in just within the deadline, 3min later followed by EDO sports, closely followed by team Team INOV8/Bike2Build/Cube and 5min after them Team IQ.

Together with the prologue we collected 42CP, which was good enough for the first place. Thanks Ward for the fantastic race, great to see us working as a team. Thanks to our sponsors, SafetyPro and ZeroCing!

EDO sports was second, being their first adventure race, we will keep an eye on you in the next race. Team INOV8/Bike2Build/Cube ended up third and that only 6 weeks after a 3 month sabbatical! Last but not least, first mixed and 4th overall: Team IQ. Inga and Quirein well done! Raymond again thanks for organising this perfect race.