A Fly on the wall…. the Support Crew View!

About a month ago a short fella with a big grin winged me an email on the off chance that I may support his team in the world champs in Portugal. It all sounded a nice idea, but with a busy schedule of events to manage and two little 7 month old thurlows these opportunities often get short shrift. However I put the idea to my wife Lisa who promptly replied with “If I’d been asked, I’d go” which was the seal of approval I needed to go.

The plan for Lisa and the kids to drop me off at Heathrow en route to parents – so it was an early start from Cumbria but we made it in good time, where I met the lads (Tom, Warren and Nick) lolloping around the departure lounge. The ladies (Nicola Wiseman & Nicola MacLeod) had set off earlier in the week on a ferry across to Spain with 5 bikes and a whole lot of kit in a very small car.

We arrived in Lisbon along with a few other teams. Warren announced that the weather forecast for the next few days was good but that it will deteriorate later in the week. After he said that it proceeded to chuck down with rain.. The team liked the thought of bad weather as it would play on their strength in navigation.

Bus to Cascais where we found our two apartments and later that evening the ladies arrived with the car.. a quick unload of the kit – boy its amazing that these ladies all the kit in to a little saloon car. Unfortunately Warrens bike took a battering and now had a bent gear hanger (the bit that holds the sticky out bit on the back of the bike) – so it was bent back with a bit of wincing. The following day was filled with shopping / registration and picking up the hire van – all with there own adventures with the evening culminating in an event briefing at one of the local hotels.

OK this is where the secrets come out.. these guys are chilled. There is still much to organise but they take their time and only interrupt each other when its something worth discussing. The priority was to get to bed early before the prologue. I’ve seen it on a few events with competitors way down the field before they have even crossed the start line because they are faffing the night before the event.

We had to clear out the apartment in the morning as we set off for the prologue in front of the big casino in Estoril. It was a bit like the Saturday night of a rat race with competitors going in all sorts of directions to take on a variety of challenges. Our team elected to take a slightly longer but dryer route to the 100 pts – avoiding the swimming and surfing. With the 100 pts in the bag over to the trikes / inline skates. Lets just say this ain’t pretty – the Scandinavians are clearly born with these things on their feet.

We had to preposition the bikes for the next stage – the area was a little chaotic with 250 bikes in no particular order we looked to make it obvious for our team to pass through efficiently. Here is the next secret, well not a secret to any support teams by the end of the event. Team Helly didn’t hang around in transitions – if the stats were about I’d say they spent on average half the time of any team in transitions and over the whole event saving hours.

A trek, a MTB and to the finish. Nick / Nic / Warren headed off in the coach to the overnight hall in Lousa for a restart in the morning. Nicola Wiseman drove the van whilst I trawled over the maps with Tom, as we tried to workout where the key cut offs were. I was mindful that once the event started I would have little precious time to go over the maps with Tom and as the event went on they increasingly relied on the route I penned across the maps. Very trusting considering I’d never been to Portugal but then what else could they do.

A small blip involving a close encounter with a parked car and we arrived in Lousa – for a couple of competent navigators we then struggled for about an hour to find the overnight stopover in the local town. Again we soon were sorted – but other teams were not so lucky with support teams arriving in the early hours.

The start was at a nearby castle – we passed numerous teams en route walking (why? – 800km to go why waste energy).. Pleasant start as they set off on foot for much of the day.. we set off for the local supermarket. We met up with Team Nike support as they set about like us cleaning the bikes from the previous day in the carpark and getting some fresh food onboard.

Now one of the big surprises of the week was walking out of the supermarket and bumping in to my old neighbour from Cumbria who had moved to Portugal to set up a MTB company – wow whats the chances? We had a chuckle and then I sprung it on him that I was after a spare gear hanger for a Giant bike (’Giant’ is a brand – its not a big bike!) – we both disappeared off down town to rummage through boxes in bike shops finding the closest fit it was then off to a machine shop to do the rest. It was an odd couple of hours as he told me the woes of importing Kona bikes (apparently Kona is a four letter word in Portuguese).

Right we were back on track we rattled off to drop the bikes off on the first transition, only just catching them – our dithering nearly caught us out. Something we resolved not to do again – but then the team didn’t notice.. This like most of the transitions was an unassisted transition so we could drop kit off and pick stuff up – but interaction was not allowed. Needless to say this got a little blurred during the event with some teams pulling out Brevelle Sandwich toasters and food mixers to knock up powered drinks.

Have to admit things got a little blurred from here on – in summary we got to transitions as soon as we could set up their kit and then I’d spend any spare time on the maps. Quite often having to wrap them all up and pop them in my bag when they arrived. I never really got on top of marking the maps up and as I’m sure Nicola with testify it was hacking me off, I still had no real idea of where this event was going and how long it would take to do.

Without question the turning point of the event for Helly Hansen was the second assisted transition (I think) were the team came in thinking they were about to go out on a 15km trek. The reality it was 60km trek and it was linear so no shortcuts. There was about 20 minutes of oh eck!! not least because we knew from the summary to do the whole trek and the MTB was pretty much impossible if it was possible you would need fresh legs and would only JUST make the cut off – stuffing you up on future stages.

If you can picture this moment of angst and realisation that the team are going to have to cut it short – it was punctuated by Nicola producing 4 double McDonald Cheese burgers. The team nearly bit their own fingers off!! Priceless moment.

Tom and I laid out the maps for the next couple of stages and worked out a couple of options to shortcut the MTB route. As I had not done the rest of the events maps I was struggling to advise where the next real googly would arrive! some rough estimations and a promise to have a summary at the next transition on his map board.

The team elected to miss the jumar and yomp along the road (gaining another hour). We set off for Morevo Castle – an amazing place where I set about finishing the maps off, some 4 hours later and in the small hours I was done and knew what was in store. I put a summary of what was to happen and two optional routes from here. Pushing Warrens bike to the top of the castle ramparts to drop off the maps with Tom’s bike at 4 in the morning was a special time – so peaceful yet such an amazing place..

The team were a little late in to transition deciding to kip en route but were soon off with happy smiles and covered in Sun cream. Nicola and I were then treated a salad prepared by Adventure Sports Magazine support crew – the views and food were amazing even if the dining table was the roof of the local public toilet.

Who knows what happened next but the team taking the shortcut had now catapulted them up near the front and importantly they were not bouncing against the cut offs so they could pick and choose the checkpoints they wanted.

Two events stick in mind before the final furlong to the finish.. the first was Warren’s bike, the gears were getting hard to change to the point he was getting tendinitis in his thumb.. we got to the next transition in what could be considered as FOUL weather. Its soon became clear the gear cable had seized – after an hours fettling and not being able to free the cable a drastic solution was called for.. I stripped the derailleur / shifters and cable off the spare bike (Nicola Wisemans prize and joy) – I could see the team paddling in to transition as was putting the bits on his bike. It was close and not pretty – the cable was off a shorter bike so went straight across the frame but hopefully it would work .. and it did. The guys left soon after..

Another bike ride then on foot and in to the last assisted transition – a Youth hostel that had pretty much been taken over by this caravan of chaos, I’d pity and backpacker who thought this might be a good place to stay the night. Here results were being posted and timing chips downloaded. Our team came ready to roll out soon after – there was jaded face look to all four and confusion on all 6 of our faces as to who was leading. It looked promising but Nike did seem to have an uncanny knack of hanging in there just catching cut offs.

There was a horrible 20 mins when it looked the scores were wrong and Helly were level pegging with Nike – something was wrong and for once I put my Sportident head on, taking a look at this guys excel sheet. He for whatever reason had not credited the team for 3 controls on the last trek. Heart now back in the right place and our team just had to get to the finish ideally getting all controls.

A few people asked me after if I thought this is when they had won – nope they were climbing on a mechanical device called a bike which has an uncanny ability to breakdown – with a 70 km ride over hills this was not a 1 day race where you could just pick up your bike and run if you buckled your wheel. They were smiling and doing their thing looking a tad confused by the attention that they were now getting. Great they were off.

Nicola and I were lets say in a bit of a mess – we had somehow picked up a stray racer Gill Watson, which was welcome as we really needed some help in keeping awake – turning in to a bit of a relay in the drivers seat to make the transition.

It was drop off with kit. With wet suits and dry suits in the van we were in a quandary as we looked outside to see a 1km swim in the dark across an estuary in foul weather. It was a shame but I could see this finishing off a lot of teams who had come so very far – I dearly hoped that had a safety cover. Bit of umming and ahhing I recommended dry suits but left the wet suit kit out..

We sat in the van in the shelter to wait for the team.. and fell asleep. PANIC they are here, well they have gone.. they were on the last leg and still under some illusion a team could catch them. Annoyed with myself that I had not been about to tell them the real story. The sun was rising the tide was going out and the weather was on the up – so the dry suits were possibly a little OTT and on reflection prob a rash vest might have sufficed.

The finish was spectacular – great location between two beaches. As teams rolled in we paced around hoping that they would not miss the 10am cut off. The team sauntered up the beach and RobHoward ran over to tell them the good news. The short jog under the finish line left a little lump in the throat as this was a team, that did not even figure on the minds on AR watchers were now World Champions. As I watched from the side lines I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like for dreams like this to be a reality. No sooner had they crossed and they ran over to give me a hug.. It was real.

You know I just came out to nosey round someone else’s event, and I was leaving with the feeling that I had helped four people fulfil a lifelong dream you can’t buy that.. I’m forever thankful to Tom, Nick, Warren and Nicola for asking me to come along. And to Nicola Wiseman for the pleasant company.

Anyone got anymore dreams?