Early morning, teams piled into the traditional colorful Colombian Chivo (translates to Goat) Busses and climbed up the steep mountains surrounding the city of Medellin where they would kick the race off with boxcarts.

As the teams prepared for the screaming descent of over 8 kilometers of cliffed lined roads, a little extra dose of nervous energy was surging through the teams. In an effort to minimize some of the chaos, teams were lined with their carts based on their standing. Different approaches were considered; some planned to carry their cart through the crowds before getting on them, while others tried to push from the very beginning, but all the groups found themselves caught up in the initial pandemonium– crashing into each other and the carts. Two dozen teams were then zipping down the contours of the mountain, trying to keep control along the switchbacks, and passing by quiet country homes with their inhabitants enthusiastically cheering them on.

Colombian flags were waved proudly in the tiny village they got off the carts and began a lengthy trek across the Colombian Andes to their next checkpoint. A dominant feature of the race would turn out to be navigating across such extreme topography. Many teams would find themselves having to take alternative routes and backtracking in order to find the checkpoints.

Teams looked strong as they made it to the first transition point and switched to bikes and began grinding their way up the heavy climbs. Early in this stage the clouds cleared up and brought out the full force of the tropical sun – another prominent challenge teams had to overcome, as every pedal stroke became that much more exhaustive as the temperatures climbed.

After crossing the finish line, Outti from Team Multisport from Finland shared, “For us, the most difficult thing about the race was the heat. And, well, the hills. They are so big here. And then you have the heat and the hills. Very difficult combination.”

Early in the day, half a dozen teams established a distinct lead from the other groups. Safety, the returning champions from the previous year kept a remarkably strong pace, opening a tremendous lead that they kept to the very end of the race. Los Marinillos (Colombia), Multisport (Finland), Saferbo (Chile/Colombia), Team Cristagua Tierra Viva (Argentina), Tattoo 360 (Bogota) all raced hard but failed to match the pace of Safety.

As darkness set in, leadings teams were arriving in Checkpoint 10 Cerro Nutibara for an orienteering task that involved finding a couple dozen mini-checkpoints scattered across the park. The Argentine team suffered a defeating blow to their morale when they arrived and discovered that they had lost their passport and were going to incur another heavy penalization atop the 5 hours they received the day before – and they decided to retire from the race.

“They said we could continue, but after yesterday´s penalty and now we lost our passport, we have lost the motivation to continue,” said Adolfo Contreras looking pretty disappointed.

For the trailing teams, they found themselves arriving in Checkpoint 6, pretty beat up after an exhausting trek where many teams got lost as they crossed over from Alto, a sharp ridgeline, down to a tiny village with a small scattering of houses. From here, morale took a big hit for many teams and there were few teams that dropped out.

The rest continued from the village on bicycles down a lengthy descent where they were able to recuperate before beginning a treacherous climb back over the mountains and into the city of Medellin to Cerro Nutibara (CP10). Most of the teams arriving in the trailing group had been pedaling for hours into the night by then and were too exhausted to continue.

After Cerro Nutibara, team Safety steadily increased their lead as they made some steep treks, climbing over 1,200 meters to Santa Elena where the tropical temperatures plummeted and racers had to keep moving to stay warm. Castilla y Leon from Spain began to lose their pace and dropped far behind the leading group. Los Marinillos and Team Multisport were running together for a good part of the night, and no matter how hard they pushed, they couldn’t close anymore than 15 minutes of their gap behind Team Safety.
From Santa Elena began a lengthy bike stage to a lake where teams would switch over to double kayaks and paddle across the still and misty water in the middle of the night.

“I was glad when the sun came up. It was cold after the lake kayak, and I did not have a change of clothes.” Said Jakko of Team Multisport.

By now, the lead group had been clearly reduced to just three teams and had broken way ahead from the others. During the ensuing trek, Multisport lost a lot of their momentum during a steep climb when they had to assist a teammate with a rope tether. Los Marinillos were able to break away from Team Multisport when they had trouble finding a discreet checkpoint that cost them a lot of time.

Teams ran a quick skating stage and then began the final trek to the finish line. At 8:20 A.M. Team Safety were the first to arrive after 29 hours 51 minutes 53 seconds of adrenaline packed adventure racing in Colombia. 15 minutes later, Los Marinillos arrived followed by the arrival of Team Multisport 30 minutes after that. Team Saferbo (Colombia/Chile) arrived 10 minutes later, securing their position in fourth place. Almost an hour later, Team Tattoo 360 arrived, followed by a gap of four hours before Saferbo Team Bogota came in. Team Red Thundra arrived with a time of 39 hours, 8 minutes, a full 10 hours after the leading team. Finally came Tronex, Castilla y Leon (Spain), and finally Ropa Deportiva Suarez as the final team to complete this year´s challenging urban course in Medellin.