All began after a good dinner and a few drinks at the fundraising dinner for my team for the world championships in Costa Rica in December 2013... Myriam is a runner, a trail runner and a road cyclist. At the end of the dinner Raid pulse and the 4h event they have in Wakefield in August came up in the discussion at the table where she was sitting. As I was passing by I told her we should do it together and without thinking too much she said yes...that was the beginning...it took us a little while to register and by the time we found a mountain bike to Myriam and started talking about it more seriously we only had a week left ahead of us. A couple of days before I made her canoe with kayak paddles for the first time and she was sore up until the race after that :/
Two days before the race we went bushwacking a little bit because I was a little rusty on my navigation since I have been racing a lot lately but not navigating.
And finally the day before the race we went mountain biking for the first time for Myriam. She wasn't super confident but I knew it would be fine as I have been doing a few raid pulse to date and I know they are beginner friendly courses.
So here we were on the start line, ready to roll on our mountain bike under the team name fruit2/camp de base, our awesome sponsors..
As usually in a race we started fairly fast on the bike. It was rolling a little and then climbing big time. my map board broke half way through which was a challenge to ride with but I knew there would be only a few Kms left riding when it happened.
Myriam was doing well but she was leaving a lot of energy behind on those hills.
After 45min or so we were in transition and on foot we went.
The first two CPs were in a cave which was very cool.
We then went for an advanced point that was fairly easy and started climbing to get the advanced CPA3...once on the top we didn't managed to find it. We were lots of team up there scattering the top of the mountain but we didn't managed to find it. After a while spending there we decided to head down otherwise we wouldn't make the cut off at the boat section.
We bushwhacked fast and ran to get to the last CP before getting to the beach and got there with barely a minute spare.
We then jumped in the canoes and started the big loop to get all the CPs.
I'm not used to be in the back and stir and it was super windy pushing the boat on the left all the time. Even paddling only on one side we were barely going straight.
We got to the first CP and got a little stuck in between boats and as we were going backwards to leave the CP another boat started going back as we were turning resulting in them tipping off the boat (my apologies if our boat made you tip in...).
I could tell as we were paddling that Myriam was getting tired but we were still catching up with some teams.
As we finished the paddle we were told the finish would be at 2.30pm instead of 2pm which let us time to go and get an advanced on the bike and one of the two advanced on foot.
As we biked i shuffled some candies in Myriam's mouth and took afp few too as i realized i haven't been eating for the whole race :/.
At the advanced section on foot I couldn't be bothered looking at the map so the strategy at that point was just to run behind a team that looked ok navigators :) it worked yeaaahhhh.
Back on the bike to the finish. This last section was relatively fast and enjoyable.
As we past the line we were not too sure of the ranking but I was happy and proud of Myriam for her first race. She was amazing out there for the 4h and something that we were racing.
We ended up 1st female duo, 9th overall out of 54 teams....very happy :)
Nathalie
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