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BERGSON WINTER CHALLENGE 2007…400 kilometers… five days… non-stop… day and night…
…Bergson Winter Challenge is the only winter event on the AR World Series calendar…
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Michał Kiełbasiński, Pattex Deuter Adventura, Poland …you just cannot allow yourself to get broken!… …bikes were hardly moving on the roads covered with ice and snow. Without the snowshoes it wasn't possible to do even one step forward. The snow looked solid but it was just an impression. In fact you could fell down into a cold and unpleasant deep. Slashing frost that glue nostrils every time when you try to take a breath… …there is no rain… it doesn't have a right to rain… on this ridge, with a dozen degrees below zero and a wind blowing about 100 km/hour – there is no space for rain!… raindrops changed into ice needles… …we all try to protect face… but we miss another third hand… first two with all possible power are squeezing the trekking sticks that help us with every toilsome step… otherwise we would be blown away from this ridge… step, another step, another… and another half meter left behind us…
…after this hundreds of kilometers that we have done, after getting through snow covered mountain passes and immeasurable waterlogged valleys, these are not muscles that decide about success… the real fight is in the mind… this is the mind where you are going to win or lose… …we slept for four and a half hours… run 130 kilometers… rode on the bikes 250 kilometers… we've done 70 km on the skis… found 50 check points… done 12 ropes tasks… in the same time we almost got twice to the top of Mount Everest… …for all the time we were hardliners, armoured, indestructible… but it's not really important, this is not what it is all about… just the faint moments, caught by memory like butterflies, misty pictures of past events, subtle fragrances of trees and fields… waves of euphoria mixed with pieces of doubt and despair… sensations that will melt away in time like dripping tears on the rain…
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David Stiles, Team North America, USA/Canada …eating the hunger…
...I couldn’t help a feeling of sadness come over me as I realized that our race was almost over. One of the greatest parts of racing is living in the moment and not thinking about the outside world. Even though we all were tired, bloody, beaten and bruised we all were in a rhythm that could have been sustained for what seemed like eternity. We had shared so many funny, angry, trying, beautiful and interesting emotions and moments over the past five days and I didn’t want it to end. This is the beauty of Adventure Racing. Not the finish but the journey.
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Grzegorz Łuczko, raidteam.pl II, Poland …adventure races are known for being unpredictable… that's why sometimes it's not worth to calculate everything but just go for it…
…when I write this words I still keep in memory the moment of our resignation… if I could turn back the time for sure I would compete till the end… adventure racing is such a beautiful sport, in with the most important is to fight with your own weakness… sometimes to overcome the crisis is more important than to be first on the finish… I'll remember about it next time…
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Janis Blanks, Team Elita, Estonia
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Dariusz Urbanowicz, Adventura, Poland … I look at the scheme of the route… another mountain biking stage… I wouldn't like to make someone’s day worse, but this stage takes 105 km… minimum…
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Milanda Cincerova, Team Quatro, Czech Republic …it is blowing strong wind upwards, something about 80km/hour, at times 100km/hour… and it is misty so no good view… we have to fight with our skies and hill and trees and then the same downhill…
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Andrzej Brandt, ZHP Nonstop Adventure II, Poland Bergson Winter Challenge… -30 degrees, frozen goatskins, snow up to the belt… for more than 2 years it was a dream… exclusive competition… it's one of the most difficult test of resistance that happens in extremely hard conditions…
…we are cycling up the hill.. climb over 1060m… it's cold, snow and ice on the road are not a good sign… hundreds of meters of getting through the forest in the snow… variant is not obvious… many times we are getting lost in the tangle of roads of villages that we pass by… …I get into the trap of sleep, sleep monster is catching me… nightmare… I fell asleep on the bike to find myself next to the ditch… I'm moving in sort of no-time space, beyond the gravitation… I'm getting dully… I'm losing touch with the external world… sleep is so pleasurable… …horrible hallucinations and phantoms… the beautiful mountains are not the scene of the race anymore, these are centimeters of the brain-mass closed in the cranium… nightmarish struggle of psychic and completely overwrought organism.
…in the ambiency of success we congratulate each other… the track was really difficult… even though I could give the numbers and figures, it all seems not to be important in compare to the meaning of the race – competition… multifarious rivalry… with another mountain, bike, with the missing track, snow, organism, psychic, and at the end with another teams… there were moments when it was a real fight to move forward, every meter up the hill, with a bike on the beck… |
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 ACTUAL WEATHER
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