Every year, in Madagui, Vietadventure organise a race in the jungle. It is billed ‘as a fun race that brings more awareness to nature protection.’ There are 3 categories of race, Adventure, Extreme and Ultra. Teams of two have to navigate through the jungle, plantations and a river, on foot or on a mountain bike. This year, several teams from BIS entered including teams of pupils, parents and teachers. It was great to see quite of few of them standing on the podium on Sunday. Well done to all those that took part!
Emma Goodwin
MFL Teacher & Secondary Community Service Leader
On Saturday the 9th March 2013, my partner (Victor Piquemal) and I packed our bags and left Ho Chi Minh City on our long journey to the ‘2013 MADAGUI JUNGLE RACE COMPETITION’. We were highly motivated to participate for the first time in this marvelous competition. As we arrived in Madagui, we saw the grandeur of the event and were excited to see so many athletes participating. There are 3 races in Madagui: Adventure race, Extreme race and Ultra race. We signed up to participate in the extreme race which consists of 4-8 hours of intense racing.
The next morning, we left our room at 2AM and prepared our racing bags and bikes. The race started at 4AM and our race targets before the race were: To finish in the first 10 teams and to win the youngest team award.
As the race started, we were surprised to see ourselves leading the group. We decided to increase our speed in order to maintain our 1st place. After 10 minutes on hard cycling, we dropped our bikes and started our 4km run in the deep dark jungle. We had to work as a team in order to climb the steep hills. We came out of the jungle 30 minutes later and we were now on our way to a very long bike ride. We maintained our 1st position and were now faced with the hardest challenge of the race, which is to climb a very long hill while carrying our bikes on our shoulders. We arrived at the top of the hill 1 hour 30 minutes later and we were joined by a 2nd team. We were physically falling apart after 3 hours of intense racing, but we kept our heads up and kept going. We lost our 1st position but we were still very pleased to be placed 2nd. After 3 hours of exhausting cycling, we once again dropped our bikes and started a 3km run. We then had to come back and pick our bikes up to cycle the last 15km of the race. Unfortunately, we made a wrong turn which placed us in 3rd position. We kept our heads up once again and motivated ourselves to push harder in order to maintain this 3rd position. We then arrived at a long river, where we had to swim the last 2km of the race. It was surely the best moment of the race as we knew that we had secured our 3rd place. We crossed the finish line with great joy and excitement. Our final race time was: 5 hours and 15 minutes.
During the award ceremony that followed, we received our 3rd place trophy and our ‘youngest team’ award. We were really proud of ourselves and we are now looking forward to train harder in order to achieve our next year’s objective: to win 1st place. We would like to thank VietAdventure for organising this event and we look forward to see more BIS students, teachers and staff next year. See you all in 2014!
Evan Planchon 11V
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