Polish Winter Racing

The Timex 360 Degrees Raid in Olsztynek (Northern-East of Poland) consisted of 2 courses, a 181 km race (for mixed teams of four) and a 121 km race(for teams of two) and began at 2200 on Friday Feb. 5th. 23 teams (6 for long and 17 for short course) participated and the start the temperature was minus 9 degrees Celsius, but with wind chill it was minus 22C!

It was even worse on Saturday morning, when it slipped to minus 30. Winter in Poland this year is the best for 40 years. There is really a lot of snow and its been freezing for over a month. On the race course there was more than enough snow. There was much more pushing, pulling and carrying of bikes then pure riding. Towing was really exhausting. We couldn't use ice skates on the lake, because the powder snow on the ice was 30-40 cm deep.

The race started with short bicycle stage – 11 km, then teams left their bikes and ran a 6 km orienteering course. It wasn't easy and a few really good navigators choose pretty bad option to get to some points. After the orienteering competitors took bikes and rode the next stage – another 11 km. Then there was a planned ice-skating stage on the lake, but teams could only use snowshoes due to the conditions. As it turned out, only a few of them decided to do it. It was really cold, because of the wind. It was safe however; the ice was 40 cm deep and the day before the race we could see a tractor riding on the ice. We used hovercrafts to make it possible to rescue people in a case of the ice breaking.

After this “lake stage” it was biking again – 20 km – to the Transition Area, located in a 100-year-old-school in Nowa Kaletka village. And there the really beautiful part of the race began – 20,5 km of cross country skiing. After the race, almost everybody said how enjoyable this stage was. It was much warmer then the bike sections and for those skiing after the sunrise, it was even nicer because of beautiful landscapes of Warmia Region.

After cross country skiing teams returned to the TA to get a warm meal and logic task. It was a riddle. Some teams needed only a few minutes to find a solution, but others couldn't find it. After 30 minutes they got a clue, which made it much easier. It was forbidden to leave TA before they found correct answer.