Abu Dhabi – the afermath

The team are now back in the UK, enjoying the cold and letting their bodies and lungs replenish themselves from a heavy and unaccustomed blasting of sun, sea and sand.

The result, 18th was slightly disappointing for the four of us (Ben, Angela, Tom and Andy), but the long kayak section and the unknown quantities of the “desert hike” were always going to represent a challenge for what is a relatively inexperienced adventure racing team.

Unfortunately the strong winds, virtually promised by the organizers and so longed for by the weaker kayaking teams (i.e. pretty much anyone not from New Zealand), were never to rustle up (at least not whilst we were at sea), the sails had to be kept stowed away, while the eight scrawny runners’ arms that we put to work were made to look to be just that, as the kiwis (and pretty much everyone else) pulled away into the distant horizon and setting sun. Eleven and a half hours later we were out of the boats and repeating phrases similar to those previously uttered by Redgrave as we mustered up the few remaining ounces of force to heave the boats ashore…just…

Battered from a day and a half at sea and with a resulting much-reduced recovery period the “desert hike”, wasn’t to become our forte either. The heat, terrain and tactical nature of sand running make for a very different event to our favoured sport of “hill running”. We soon learnt that it was all about looking after ourselves in terms of food, water and the heat, running with the optimum water quantities so as not to carry too much whilst keeping fully hydrated, avoiding the heat of the day and optimising the 6 hours of compulsory rest. Teams were playing tactics, waiting for each other, as no one wanted to beat the way through the sand, essentially setting the trail for the 35 following teams. As a result, the first four teams were to finish within a minute of each other (after 110km!). In 24 hours we must have climbed and descended thousands of sand dunes which apparently accumulated to about 3000m of climbing – multiply that by 1.5 for the backwards nature of sand climbing makes for a quite a considerable amount of assent… having said that, I think we’d all have rather climbed the Ben a few of times instead! During the desert section, as elsewhere, no litter was left and nothing was taken from what I have to say was a pretty amazing set of sand dunes. However, I would like to apologise for the sand dune (approximate equivalent) that I inhaled during the course of the run and have since been releasing onto European soil/toilets.

The mixed stages of the sixth and final day of the race were the first time that pure fitness came into play. A steep 12km climb on the bikes, followed by a couple of hours of rocky running, broken up by some abseils and rope work. We enjoyed the chance to finally put our running shoes to use and went well on both runs. It was good to finally win a section, but unfortunately it was a bit late to make up for the hours lost at sea and in the desert!

All in all a lot learnt and a great experience… next time we’ll really have to work on that kayaking technique though…!

Andy