In Brazil, the temperature was hot and the competition was even hotter. Sixty international teams comprised of some of the fittest athletes in the world gathered for the 2008 Adventure Racing World Championships hosted by Ecomotion. After battling it out for almost 4 days with the worlds best teams, DART-nuun returns home in high spirits placing 6th in notably the toughest competition in an expedition adventure race ever.
There was nothing easy about this race. Even the journey to get to the starting line took three days of travel on 6 different shuttles and a ferry. The transportation had to evolve and change with the terrain as teams kept getting further and further into no mans land. This journey brought them to a peninsula where they lined up facing sand dunes as far as the eye could see. As the gun went off, teams sprinted and battled as if it were a 10k race. Aaron Rinn and Aaron Matzke exchanged comments that this was a stupid pace that everyone was taking off on. Of course, many couldnâ??t resist the drive to be right in the front of the pack. After finishing the sand sprint for over 3 hours, DART-nuun arrived to the kayak transition by dark, still in the lead pack. The water was warm and the night sky was black with no moon to aid in navigation. Cyril nailed the navigation and all our paddle
training paid off, commented Matzke who trained with Cyril for months in Southern California in preparation for the race. The team charged and remained in the lead pack for a 13 hour plus paddle leg. 80 kilometers of paddling in mostly salt water and a stiff headwind destroyed the teams hands. Blisters and severe wrinkled hands were the order of the day.
However, their hands and the rest of their body dried out fast from the heat. Blisters were now the least of their problems. They had a navigationally technical trek through a maze of animal tracks and jungle that just made teams scatter in different directions. Cyril again nailed the navigation but the heat was starting to take its toll. As the race clicked past 24 hours since the start, teams were starting to fatigue a little with the heat and sleep monsters. To mitigate their fatigue, the team opted to skip the bonus check point (CP) on the first paddle section. By skipping the bonus CP, the team had to take a mandatory additional 4 hour rest at predetermined CPs later in the race. We estimated that paddling to the bonus CP would take teams 2 to 2 1/2 hours so that would only put them 1 1/2 â?? 2 hours ahead of us once we stopped for 4 hours. Skipping the bonus made sense to us because we felt we could make up the 1 1/2 to 2 hour gap with our additional rest, explained Jen Segger. Their decision paid off as they moved more swiftly through the technical and hotter parts of the race.
As the team approached the first mountain bike section, Aaron Rinn noted, usually we look forward to transitioning from one sport to another. We werenâ??t so sure this time. This bike leg was called, The Boiler. We had been warned that we wouldn t find water on this section and the temperatures could hit the 120F. And, to add a little pleasure to it all, there was plenty of sand to slow our progress. Biking and sand mix about as well as oil and water. After riding well into the night through remote, quiet, Brazilian shrub land, DART-nuun came out of the solitude of the landscape into a small town crowded with villagers and eager children. It was a sensory overload. The CP was located right in the town square and it was probably the most exciting event that visited this little village in a long time. Between people selling coconuts, kids wanting to check out and play with the team s bikes, and dozens of people crowded around the team speaking Portuguese, it was chaotic. It was if we fell out of our private adventure world onto another planet. As Jen recounted, that was a bit too much to handle. Then as if we were just a moment in time, they rode off again in total darkness and silence except for the night star show, the sound of heavy breathing, and crunching of mountain bikes travelling on the Brazilian soil. It was very surreal at times and made the race all that more memorable. While the night was unfolding, teams were pressing each other hard. The spread between teams were the tightest DART-nuun remembers. At times there were only minutes between teams, 2 days into the race.
With so many images and memories to share its hard for the team not to write a book about this extraordinary race. From pigs swimming in the same water the team had to drink from (thank god for iodine and nuun!) to Aaron Rinn crashing on his bike and escaping serious injury, the team lived through intense, unforgettable and at times surreal experiences. One of those was of a man riding a beach cruiser style bicycle down a road. As the team came upon him on their fancy bikes, wearing specialized shoes, and decked out in spandex they noticed that not only was he giving his lady a ride on the back of his bike, but she was also holding a large dog draped across her lap. To really make us feel over dressed, he was doing all this in jeans and flip flops. We saw some crazy sights that seemed to be straight out of a National Geographic magazine, exclaimed Cyril Jay-Rayon.
From biking through plantations, trekking across mountain ridges, to kayaking down rivers with barely enough water to call it a water source, this race was taking teams through the heart of Brazils most remote northeastern region. Teams were racing hard and not faltering. There was no room for error in this race and only the tough and smart could sustain a pace like this. The heat was an issue but so was strategy. The team had slept early on so they could push hard in the end. The strategy worked. The last night they passed teams that were losing it on a mentally and physically tough section. The river dwindled down to not much more that streams running under bush and trickling through rocks into small pools. It didn t seem right for a large river to dissipate like this but it did. The kayaking evolved into a hike-a-boat. All teams were showing signs of fatigued but the team pushed on as well as they could and came out of the water maze running in 6th place.
The rest of the journey was unique but still challenging. With more biking through villages built on sand dunes to sailing in a local fishing boat in high seas, this race had one of the most unique finishes. Teams sailed out into the beautiful Atlantic waters with headwinds and waves that could potentially shatter their wooden boats. This experience that not only gave the team time to reflect back on the race they just covered, but also see just how the people of the region survive and live off the land and seas. The rough seas brought on nausea and for over six hours Aaron Matzke found himself a little green. As the boat skimmed into a small inlet, the ride was over and there was a final 10k run down the beach, over a massive sand dune and into the town of Jericocoara to the finish line.
DART-nuun held on to their 6th place position. The team couldnâ??t have done it without the help of their amazing brazilian support crew. We simply had the best crew out there, said Cyril cheerfully. Thanks to Fred, Tati, and Ivan for all their work and enthusiasm in helping us run with the best. Also many thanks to our sponsors for their support and top quality gear that enabled us to compete successfully against the best in the world. As the 2008 season comes to an end, our experiences, memories, and desire keeps our momentum going into 2009 as we get stronger, concluded Matzke.
