Rss/XmlARWC: TA 3
Teams came off the ride from Kinloch Hourne looking hagard, it was clearly a brutal section. Tom Zidek of Sole had his rear brake disc literaly come apart. About half an hour prior to arriving at the TA teams encountered a humungous paved down hill, Tom had been using both brakes but his front pads fried, he then had to depend entirely on his rear brakes which eventually hand grenaded the rear disc. So he had NO brakes for the rest of the descent. You think that's bad do you, well Robyn probably beat Tom in the holy-friggin-crap department. First off she's fine, but she did had a significant bike crash. On the same down hill she lost both brakes the same way, totally fried. She thought that she was doing about 50 MPH heading for a hairpin turn and no way to stop, as she headed for a tree on the side of the road she abandoned the bike and pretty much slammed into the tree. Her nose was swollen and bleeding and a she had a bit of a scratch on her cheek, but she is ok. In fact she was shunning help to get on with the transition.
Near death experiences aside the team feels good about their race and their position, well they'd like to be farther ahead but hey what can you do. Well what you can do is let the lead teams move you forward. Apparently one or two of the teams in front (who as of now are unknown)took the liberty of sleeping in a private barn. The race director had made many agreements to allow the race to pass through both public and private property, all those agreements hinge on proper and polite use of land, using private buildings wasn't part of the agreement. So somewhere along the line the landowner had enough, he renigged on his agreement and halted all race progress across his land. The race director immediatly went to reslove the problem but it took a couple of hours to get it fixed, so all teams that arrived during that period got back all their waiting time. While it says time bonus its really just giving back what they should've had to begin with.
The teams participated in the Plodda Falls cliff jump and the Red Bull Aerial Exposure during this leg. The Plodda Falls cliff jump was a 3 meter jump into frigid water, teams were required to strip down butt ass naked and jump. This as you can imagine was extremely unpopular among the racers. Let's just say this wasn't a good naked, nothing sexy about it at all. In fact most everyone that wasn't directly involved with safety just walked away, a kind of mourning.
The Red Bull Aerial exposure was a tyrolean that took them half way across rope draped between two rocks, they had to pull themselves across the rest of the way. Not a lot of WOOO HOOO to be found there.
The canyoneering section has been cancelled after only a few teams made it through, the water rose to dangerous levels and course officials wisely chose to change the race route. According to Karen Lundgren is was pretty horrific.
The weather has turned sour but it's not been pouring, just a steady drizzle, which I think is what life is all about here. TA3 is located on the horse training area for Borlum Farm horse ranch, it's a horse ranch that caters specifically to the physically challenged. Lot's of nice people in the area, everybody passing by is interested and wants to know what it's all about.
ok that's it for now, off to sleep somewhere. What day is it? toodles, Jeff Akens.
