One team The Fous de Bassin TDR BX barely made it to the start of stage 4. In fact the start was delayed to allow them to quickly change to restart the race.
The pace of the race seemed to pick up today wil a short 6k Kayak across lake Naussac, then on to mountain bikes. The Adventure teams had only a short ride before being transferred to the start of trekking stage, whilst the other teams cycled the full 46K, before setting of intothe mountains for a 35 K hike.
Once again favorites WILSA SPORT HELLY HANSEN were in the vanguard but The Fous de Bassin TDR BX was in close contention even though they had had no sleep. British team HELLY HANSEN UK, had a bad night taking the wrong route twice and Nicola MacLeod cracked her elbow as a result of falling off her bike some many times as the team raced to stay in the Extreme classification.’
Team 16 LATTITUDE 55 in Adventure are enjoying the race without stressing themselves and even found a way to save time on the river section, using a tactic I myself used in in the Elf Authentique Adventure.
At CP 19 the end of 1st leg of Mountain biking a SPORT-OUTDOOR.COM in Adventure class was nck and neck with WILSA SPORT HELLY HANSEN and the leading Raider team SOFERMI - RAID NATURE 46 one minute behind, Little had changed at the end of the second leg zprt from the fact that adventure teams arrived via support vehicle so some were on the course ahead of the other classification, however WILSA SPORT HELLY HANSEN opened up a lead of 5 minutes over Columbia Lozère Sport Nature and ABSOLUE RAID - Décathlon Saint-Orens, further down the field HELLY HANSEN UK had gained a six place but was loosing ground on the leaders.
The trekking is expected to take teams all day as they orienteer across the mountains, thankfully the heat of the last few days has abated and provided the rain holds off the conditions are pretty good.
A full classification will only be available later, but it is not expected to change the overall leaders in any class. Many teams are incomplete or out of classification but racing for fun, which Gerard Fusil encourages all to do , it’s the taking part that matters not the winning.