Volta á Ilha!

So where have I been for the past week?

Well, since I whine so much I know how everyone feels sorry for me seeing as I don’t have a beach close by. So you will be happy to know that I have been busy getting in my much overdue beach time. I mean, Brazil has a lot of things to offer besides the beach, but one gets a bit lonely here in the middle of the country while reading about the beach adventures of other ex-pats. Now I don’t feel so left out.

Well, the real reason we went to the beach was so that my husband could participate in the Volta á Ilha on Florianopolis. This even is a 150km relay around the island. The course is split into 23 legs of varying length and terrain around the exterior of the island.

It is quite an impressive event both to plan and to complete. My husband participated last year, but I was unable to go. This year he has been training his heart out for the past several months and we decided to make the drive so he could compete and we could have a mini-vacation afterward.

The company he works for had two teams – one team of seven (which he was on) and one team of eight. The event takes quite a bit of planning as each the team required two busses for transport. Check points are set up at the beginning and end of each leg so that runners can pass through and hand off their band to the next participant.

The event begins and ends along the walking and bike bath in centro which winds around the coast line. Teams start as early as 4:00 am with groups taking off every 15 minutes. My husband’s team started at 6:45 am.

The race involves all of the different terrains that can be found on the island – road, sand dunes, beaches, wooded trails and even a trek over the mountain. The individual legs of race range anywhere from about 3K to 14K. It is quite the adventure and turned out to be even more so this year.

Pouring rain near Sambaqui

Check point at Santinho

The team was doing excellent the first half of the day even though the first few races were in the pouring rain. My husband had some amazing times on all his runs. So proud of him!

In early afternoon things began to shift. As runners came through the check points stories could be overheard about wading through water. As the afternoon wore on, we learned that entire check points were being washed out by the tide. My husband had about a 9K run which included road, trail and dunes. The dunes had collected water and he, along with other runners, had to wade through waist deep water to finish.

Check point at Joaquina

I spent the day driving around from point to point with a couple others there to watch the event. Expecting the group to finish around 6:30 or 7:00 pm, we decided to head back to the finish line around 5:00 pm to get a good parking spot since we were also on champagne duty.

As the evening progressed we kept getting text after text that the conditions were slowing the team down. In fact, the second company team was forced to drop out because they got too far behind. The remaining team had to finish the race by 8:00 pm for it to be considered completed. It was going to be really tight and the last three runners including my husband were going to have to be moving, and this after already running 13 to 15 K that day.

Those of us at the finish line eased our nerves with a few Bohemias. That is kind of an added perk of just being part of the cheering section and not actually running the race.

We made our way to the finish lane at about 7:40 pm and were relieved when some team members showed up a little while later. This meant that the bus had arrived with other runners and that the final runner was on the course. For the end the other team members typically meet the final runner at the finish line and everyone crosses it together.

We watched and watched down the lane and it was getting so close. Five minutes left, three minutes left…then they came into view. There were three of us cheering wildly which it appears is not the norm at these kind of events. Apparently cheering is only widely performed at futebol games and Carnival. You’d be hard pressed to get so much as a quiet clap out of the other spectators, but we made up for it.

We watched the clock as they neared the finish line. They made it across with 7 seconds to spare! Amazing!

It was such a great night. Unfortunately the dark combined with action shots led to no good pictures of the finish line, but I assure you it was a grand time. Champagne was popped and many teams crossed the finish line with a beer in hand!

It was one of those experiences that I know my husband feels incredibly privileged to have been a part of and it will go in the Brazil memory books for sure. I felt honored just to have been able to witness it and I’m so proud of him and the whole team!