The "Paletada"

On Sunday I finally got to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Well, actually, on that day I understood that it is that kind of an activity what I’ve been looking for…

One of my work mates is part of an organizing team of “Paletada – Circuito Baiano de Enduro á Pé” (wildly translated “Bahian Strength Circuit by foot”). Soon after talking a bit about the set I was sure I’d love to give it a try. So, on Sunday I had my first go, and I loved it!

The “Paletada” took place this time in the Zoo of Salvador, up on the hill of suburb called Ondina, where on one side you have an amazing view down to the big, greenish-blue and fascinating sea. On the other side then there is the zoo free of charge with an up- and downhill forest around it.

The idea of the game is to walk/run the track as the “planilha” (a little booklet) it specifies. It is the map & source of information of the track with little figures to show the right way to go to, hints where to go in a written form, the velocity of the approach written as x-meters/min., distances in meters, the degrees for the compass to find the right way and so on. There are always some special spots on the way i.e. where the team gets a tag from the personnel to show they found the right place and the time they found it. The exciting part is that not all these information are always given. This is where you have to use your brain and imagination…

Teams start the “Paletada” one after another within some 6 minutes between teams. Each team has to make their time calculations to be able to (try to) make it to the next spot in right time. If a team arrives late to one spot, it's very possible it will reach also the next one late (slowing down or running helps in these situations;). To do the track in the most efficient way, the team members have divided before hand tasks between them; somebody/few counts the meters, other one(s) takes care of going to the right way (with a compass) and one keeps an eye on the time and keeps the team informed if it should go faster/slower.

So, the winner is not the team that gets to the end first, but the one that gets the best points of the whole race: the team that got to the end and actually to each spot closest to the time frames (the calculations); that found the most the spots of the track; that estimated best the distances between different spots… The team loses points if it arrives to the finnish late or too early, missed spots or distances written down on a form and so on.

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A bit tricky…!? Yeah, and no. And so much fun! My team did the race well even though we got lost for a while and because of this we missed one stop and its points, arrived to the next stop late and missed some more points.. Some running in the woods helped us to catch the right time.. After all we ended up being the 5ths (of 12 teams?), so not that bad, not. Look forward to participating the next one in July.