Raced In the French Alps (Quick Version)

Posted by Grant on 7. September 2009 17:58

I finally got my chance to race in the Haute Savoie region of France (the French Alps near Switzerland)!   I'll post my own report from the weekend, along with the maps and lots of photos, but my teammate from this past weekend (Fiola Foley) churned out a good overview of our race. 

The gist of it is that we ran and navigated very well, but ended up in 2nd for our Coed category due to some inexperience on our part -- the race format had checkpoints that are worth different point values, and if you cross the finish line after the time cut-off there are point penalties . . . but we didn't understand the time penalties were minor compared with some of the higher point values (one of the beauties of a French race is primarliy French instructions, so we can be excused this one time).  In most adventure races, time cut-offs are strictly enforced and we hustled to meet each time requirement instead of rack up points and go over by 15 minutes.  Lesson learned!  Regardless, Fiola (of Irish AR fame and off to race in Abu Dhabi later this Fall) was terrific and kept our tempo high when I started to slow down; she's "savage" to use a colourful Irish adjective!

I'll write more soon, in the meantime Fiola posted two sets of her pictures taken with her IPhone (set 1 and set 2), here is one showing our view for about 2 hours on Sunday . . .

The Haute Savioe region of the French Alps is really fantastic!