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>>We have now updated Race day 3 at 1 PM, alot of pictues ...see here.<<

Update Day 4

There have been a few changes to today’s route. As the route for Day 3 this year was extremely hard, the expedition stage has been shortened somewhat. Instead of going from checkpoint D4 to D5, the teams skip D5 and go straight from D4 to D6. The faster teams will win about 3 hours on this – the slower teams will save up to 6-7 hours on this. That must feel so good!

The checkpoint D4 was moved today. Huge icebergs at D4 worried the security people and we decided to move the D4 checkpoint to another safer location. Safety first…

Update at 1:21 PM

At the starting line at basecamp, Team PharmaNord are ready to get started. They are the first team to go today. We are operating with staggered start today. This means PharmaNord starts at 11:00, Neriusaaq/Thomas Kristensen at 11:10, Intersport Iceland at 11:20, Pihl A/S at 11:40, Arctic Ladies at 11:50, Feed the Machine and WCup Issy les Moulineaux at 12:00, and Eastgreenland.com at 12:10. This makes it more difficult for the competing teams to find out how the other teams are doing.

Martin Dybvad of PharmaNord was tired this morning. “Ohhh, it’s a freaking long way home.” However, at the starting line, he’s all energy, yelling ‘Jalla jalla!’ right before start, ready for the last 120 kilometers (well, a little bit less because of the removal of D5). When the team runs off, Saint-Etienne yells ‘see you in 4 days!’

D5 was taken out of today’s race plan, simply because yesterday’s route was a bit too long and a bit too hard. Base camp is supposed to be a place where the teams gather to collect strength for the next day’s expedition race. There’s usually a concert and some really good grilled food. However, most teams missed out on the concert (only Eastgreenland.com made it), but that was not a problem for singer Hera. She gave two concerts. This meant that the Icelandic team and the Ladies actually got to hear her beautiful singing.

The teams are currently scattered all over the Ammassalik Island. The latest times available to us right now are the following:

Checkpoint D6:

Eastgreenland.com          19:37:00

PharmaNord                   19:08:46

Neriusaaq/Th. Kristensen  20:06:30

Update Day 13PM:
 

Eastgreenland.com won again!
It’s not like it was the biggest surprise but obviously that did not make the triumph any smaller. Eastgreenland.com ran across the finish line Wednesday morning at 06:26:05 AM and thereby won the Arctic Team Challenge 2006. They ran the expedition stage in 18:16:05.

About ½ hour later, PharmaNord crossed the finish line also, thereby taking second place in the race. Their time for the expedition stage was 20:07:55.

Strong local heroes
The big surprise of the race was the great success of the local team, Neriusaaq/Thomas Kristensen. They came in third last year, but seeing the strength of the teams they had not expected to get as high a rank this year. Their goal was to get a better time than last year – they not only succeeded in that. They also kept their 3^rd place rank. “To us, it’s also sort of a double victory,” says Klaus Geisler of the team. Last year we came in third because so many stronger teams left the contest for various reasons – we were kind of the last people standing. This year we have come in third because we actually were stronger than the other teams. That feels really good.”

Teambuilding
The Pihl A/S team has also made it across the finish line. They had a shorter route but still it’s magnificent that this group of people who have only been training for 6 weeks have had such great success with the race. One of the team members, Kristian Röhl, quit the race yesterday because he got sick, but the remaining four members made it through the wilderness to arrive in Tasiilaq this morning at 10:21 AM. Their total time for the expedition stage was 22:41:39 (on a shorter route).

A chat with Jim
Yesterday after the 3^rd stage, we had a chat with Jim Davies of eastgreenland.com: “It was a very enjoyable day. The glacier was fabulous and we have never seen anything like it. We also felt good in the sense that we weren’t busting ourselves nor going slow. The day started out good with the bike ride, and then on the run over the glacier went by steadily. We had time to enjoy the scenery and take a couple of photos!”

Jim continues: “Best of all was that we were not scared for the trip over the glacier. It’s summer and we can see the problems before they occur. Winning the race day by day is always nice and the reason for this success probably lies in the fact that we are equally fit and therefore can relate to one another in the sense that we know what we can handle.”

Latest update at 01:00 PM Wednesday:

Eastgreenland.com, PharmaNord, Neriusaaq/Thomas Kristensen and Pihl A/S have made it across the finishing line.

Les Moulineaux are on their way from D9 to D10. They arrived at D9 at 10:18 AM, followed by Intersport Iceland who checked in at D9 at 10:52 AM. The Arctic Ladies arrived at D8 at 09:05 AM and have moved on towards D9. Feed the Machine arrived at D7 at 10:40 AM and decided to get an hour’s sleep before continuing.

We’ll be back later with more updates.