4th FuDenas Marathon, Fuerteventura - 2010

What an amazing event once again! This was the 4th edition of FuDeNaS.  A 151km mtb marathon from the North to the South of Fuerteventura . The marathon tracks the length of the island on mainly dirt tracks but with a small amount of single track, asphalt road, sand dunes, hard pack beach.
 


There is a lot of support from the race organisers military regiment Soria 9 (www.soria9.es).  I think there was 7 or 8 water (with food) stops on the course.  I stopped at two I think and so I lost count!
Soria 9: from Extremadura, have been based in Fuerteventura for around 15 years and they are one of the oldest regiments in the world. They were formed in the year 1509. 


 
This year there were 144 riders in the one day race covering the full 151km distance.  In the "ride" category there were 750 riders riding the 151km distance over two days: 65km on the Saturday and 85km on the Sunday. By far the more popular choice.  There were no placings or times for the two day ride event.  This makes sense and nobody doing the two day ride seemed to want to know more than what they had on their own computer.  Next year I would hope to see 300 in the one-day race and 700 or more in the two-day ride. The race should be staged around the same weekend next year: end of October 2011.

This race makes most bike race organisations look a little inadequate.  The reason for this is that no other race can afford to have 800 personnel on the ground (and some in the air) organising a marathon that runs like clockwork.  The whole regiment run the event like a 3-4 day exercise.  Hummers, LandRovers, helicopters and lots of radio/comms etc...  It has a great atmosphere and well worth flying over from abroad to take part in.  I just need to get the organisers to include cash prizes for the elite race field to attract more high level riders from abroad.  The prizes you can win in this race are amazing but they are not in cash. 


 
I put three chainrings on for the race: 30, 42, and a 53T chainring. The 53T ring, why?  I had it anyway for road training on my mtb and it gave me a smoother drive train with less tooth pressure.  I used and it with an 8speed 13T to 34T block.  This gave me slightly more at the top end and much smoother feel than the standard 44 or 42T to 11T.  I never really used the 30T chainring but I did need it for 500 metres of the race.  A hard tail is sufficient for this race in my view but I would like to move towards a 29er.  Currently, I have a Hott Bisbide (carbon framed with integral seat post, 1100 grams).  It is a very good ride and is as light as frame needs to be although it is more fragile than my Pipedream Sirius training frame!  I used the Continental Tubeless Race King 2.2" tryes for the first time: very fast and tough.  Tough is what I like.  Riding in the Canary Islands requires a tyre that can handle very abrasive volcanic rock.   I would never use a non tubeless tyre over here but people do.  Weight weenies!
 


As it turned out I was 5 mins and 30 seconds fatser than in the 3rd edition, which was in 2008.   I trained for 5 weeks for this event and for the first time in 3 years I used a heartrate and cadence monitor during this period. The Garmin 705. Great for motivation, rest day rides and for reminding you your not working hard enough.  The cadence monitor (for me) is the most useful part of it.  I have to thank my old sponsor Garmin for this.  I was not very impressed with the 305 model years ago because of bad sealing and the ingress of water during rain storms.  I have only praise for the 705 and lucky people you will hopefully be if you buy the new 800 touch screen model that is coming out soon.

 

And for a great insight into this race check out this video (made by canarian channel VKS)

 

Thanks to Erwin Haiden for the great pictures.

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