Well where to start? Let’s start with a suggestion from Lisa that the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge is a must do event for SA teams and that if we were to do it we should stand a good chance of winning some prize money. Not only prize money but that the race itself is well organised and that Cyanosis should fare well against the other teams that race ADAC.
So that was it, Cyanosis Adventure Racing made the decision that to end off the 2010 Adventure Racing year, we would head to Abu Dhabi for the challenge and from what we were told is traditionally a relaxed end to the racing year. Ryno was not available for this race so we drafted Brian Gardner in to the team. The team that would tackle this challenge would be Nicholas Mulder, Landie Visser, Brian Gardner & myself, Clinton Mackintosh, Aka Mac.
Preparation would be very simple as this race catered for everything including bikes. We did debate whether we should take our own bikes but we were advised that most teams including the podium teams use the organisations bikes. So that was that, all we needed to do was purchase shares in a pharmacy as the medical kit list requirements were incredible.
We did get a lot of advice from Lisa who had raced in Abu Dhabi three times, so her input was critical to our campaign. We discussed the desert sand conditions as we believed this would be a critical part of the race. We spoke to Salomon SA, who organised the team the very impressive XA Pro 3D Ultra GTX. Yip, the team was heading to the desert in Gore-tex® shoes but we wanted to make sure that we were not hampered by the sand. Lisa made us ankle gaiters that were modified to fit on our shoes.
Ok so we were now prepared technically and we had done the training. Off to Abu Dhabi now. We flew via Dubai, as Brian had family there and his cousin offered to collect us and drive us the 100km odd to Abu Dhabi. We arrived in Abu Dhabi and checked in to our 5 star hotel, this was all part of our entry fee and all 50 teams racing in the ADAC were put up in this hotel. I was told that there are no B&B’s in Abu Dhabi and it is very unlikely that you will find a hotel that is under 4 stars – “WOW”.
The organisation was incredible, all teams were well taken care of and briefing and kit checks were done with relative ease and on time. The one thing that I found very amusing was the fact that they weighed your compulsory gear. Yes, you read right, they had a scale there and the weighed all our compulsory gear. The fleece was weighed; the wind jacket was checked and marked; the tent was checked if it complied and was marked. My perception was now changing and that they were very serious about the gear teams would be using in the desert so it was going to be harsh.
Race day was now upon us, we would be doing an “adventure prologue” and then we would be loaded in to a bus and taken 2 hours inland where we would cycle and do a mountain run and abseil. That would be day 1. The prologue was blistering fast, we ran at 4 min/km and we were running in around 20th place, the teams were FAST. We jumped in to what was described as floating jumping castles and paddled 4-5km to an island for a run up and down the dunes and back in the floating jumping castles to the finish on the beach. We finished the day in 21st and were happy with this as we expected a lot of teams to be fast on the first few stages.
The afternoon cycle would take us from the city of Al Ain to the base of the Jebel Hafeet mountain where we would be doing a mountain run. The cycle was again FAST. It seemed like we had signed up for an endurance iron man as everyone bolted off at such a high pace. We time trialed this bike leg, we managed to get in to a good group of teams that was sitting 3rd bunch on the road. It seemed like the first two groups were just pulling away and we were hammering it ourselves. The group quickly filtered down to a handful of teams that at first shared the work but eventually we did all the work in order to maintain a fast pace and not lose too much time. We arrived at the bike to run TA in the top 3rd of the field and quickly scrambled in to running shoes and attacked the mountain in front of us.
First time we actually had seen this mountain. Helmets and gloves were compulsory and we soon found out why. The rock was incredibly jagged & sharp and to top that off when we got on to the ridge we had loose shale to deal with. We ran were we could and got to the abseil in a fairly good position, the abseil was neutralized and only two team members would do this abseil. Brian and I would do this abseil and Nic and Landi would walk down to the bottom and wait for us at the next CP where time would be back on. When Brian and I got to the CP, Nic and Landie said “just get your breath back guys as we are about to sprint the next 1.5km to the finish” I then said “we are going to do what” as Nic had been there for a while waiting for us they had again realized that every second counts and teams would take a few moments to regroup then bullet off to the finish. Day one complete…
We collected our boxes, pitched our tents and had a shower. This would be our accommodation for the night, a spot at the base of the mountain that looked like it was in the middle of nowhere.
Day 2
A relevantly short 6km run down the road over a saddle and back to collect the bikes that we dropped off the previous day at the base of Jebel Hafeet. We managed to keep a steady pace and got on to the bikes well in the top half of the field. The next bike leg would be the notorious climb on a tar road to a car park on the top of the mountain. This climb just kept on going it was relentless and a steady pace is what was needed, we managed to catch a few teams on this climb. We slogged it out and arrived at the car park in 21st place, it seemed as if we would stick in this spot for a while. When we arrived at the car park we needed to change into trail running shoes and head out for a 12km odd mountain run.
We were given a lot of water and left some of it there; I mean it was a relatively short mountain run. Gee did that decision bite us in the ass! We did not realize the magnitude of this mountain and the technical terrain the race organizers wanted us to traverse. We reached the ropes section where there was a queue and teams race time would stop from the time you arrived and restarted as you got on to the ropes for a via-ferrata. We had NO CLUE what was in store for us on this ropes section, 2.5 hours later we arrived at the abseil. This was by far one of the most incredible ropes sections that I have ever done. We arrived at the base of the mountain that just 4 hours ago we had cycled up; we had a short run to another CP that would guide teams back to a ropes section that would take you backup this colossus. WOW is what comes to mind about this section, we ran out of water halfway up the climb. In fact Brian was out of water at the base of the abseil. Nine and a half hours after the start we got back to the car park and finished day two. We managed to catch the next transport bus out of there that would take us to our next sections starting point where we would be camping for the night.
Day 3 – 4
These next two days were technically the culmination of all the effort we put in as we were now really in the dunes and this was no doubt going to be the main decider for the teams. How you raced these two days would ultimately decide your final result, barring tragedy on the paddle. We started early morning around 04h00 and after Day Two’s effort we knew we were in for a major effort. The 90km bike leg was going to be tough and I don’t think anyone had any other pretence to it.
90km of MTB on soft, relatively challenging terrain before a 110km plus desert trek was always going to be a matter of how teams approached the bike stage. We did what only we know when the race director said go. We were flat out once again in very poor visibility. Still dark and with no moon we relied only our Petzl lights and as it was a mass start all the teams were jostling for a good spot. We tried to stay out of trouble. The road; well the sand / tar & potholed road was an accident waiting to happen. We were moving fast again, working with Blackheart at speeds exceeding 30km/hr at some stage and fellow South African team Mzansi Inov8 were also with us in this bunch. I am not sure what exactly took place but I heard a lot of commotion behind me and turned to look for Landie, Nic and Brian. I spotted Landie so I assumed that all was ok and that Nic & Brian would be ok. I later found out that as the bunch hit a huge amount of soft sand across the road, someone lost control of their bike and quite a few people went down, including Alan from the Mzansi team. The rest of the ride was not too eventful but there was no hiding the fact that we were going in to the dunes. We did stop to let a little air out of our tyres and I think that we may have got a little carried away with mine as I managed to get a puncture. It was not the best place to get a puncture but I suppose punctures are never in convenient places are they J. We finished the bike leg as we had started it, fast!!! We sprinted to the finish line making sure we pipped a place or two in the last few kilometers.
The Desert trek was directly after the bike leg. There was a lot of talk about why they would put a 90km time trial bike in before such a demanding trek. As I said earlier I had to make a major mind set adjustment and this race was no end of year party. This race was as tough as any other adventure race that we have done and putting this leg in after a demanding MTB just was part of the race. This was also where the teams would be separated, the main contenders racing for prize money vs. the teams there just there to participate in ADAC. This was the BUSINESS end of the race…
We hit the dunes with great excitement, something that we had never done before and we were overwhelmed by the fact that we were now going to trek across “The Empty Quarter”, a real proper desert. This excitement lasted all of 2 hours though, as the desert scenery did not change. There was no new nothing over the next dune, it was a couple of dunes a salt pan a couple of dunes and more salt pans. Oh yes one thing did change though the size of the dunes got bigger and bigger. We managed to hit the first CP at midday and it was cooking, 35 degrees plus at that stage and it was winter in Abu Dhabi.
At CP1 we saw a whole heap of teams just lying about under their tents trying to get out of the burning sun. We found out that all the teams ahead of us, apart from the first three teams were sitting around in CP1. Teams had to log 8 hours of downtime in the desert so we assumed that these teams wanted to clock a few hours here to try and conserve energy apart from moving in the heat. We decided that we would push on and make sure we use as much of the daylight as possible as we did not know what to expect in the dunes.
We also were not going from CP to CP but would also try and get all the extra OP’s (optional points) that were out there. It was pointed out that if you did do the CP’s only you would be following a sort of straight forward route with no major dunes but if you go for the OP’s you would be faced with tricky navigation. The OP coordinates were not provided by the race organization so teams could not simply put the GPS coordinates in and head for them. Teams would need to use the maps provided and navigate themselves to these points, these points would be tough to get and teams attempting the OP’s needed to calculate their timing to avoid the six pm (on Day 4) cut off at the end of the trekking leg. The first OP was 7km out and 8km back to the main route in order to collect the next CP. It was also noted that there would only be water at the CP’s so with the extra km’s you were doing, you would need to make sure you have enough water to make the next CP. As we learnt from the last mountain section we piled the water in to our packs and headed out of the 1st CP and off to the first OP.
We hit the first OP in good time and still in daylight, but we now needed to climb back out the salt pan and for the first time we were going against the dunes. This meaning that we would have to resort to climbing up the very soft side of some of the dunes and the only way up was to crawl. We would crawl 10 and slide 4, so we would only move 6 steps and this went on irregularly for the rest of the OP legs. It was an awesome experience trekking in the desert, absolutely beautiful in its own right. Just imagine a place that has no sound and no smell and that would be similar to the desert in Abu Dhabi, one can’t explain the terrain more, as frankly it is huge dunes that go on forever and ever and the scenery is the same. We managed to move well in the desert running where we could and making sure that we kept to our game plan. We hit CP 4 and decided that we would use this time to get our mandatory downtime; we would only use 7 of the 8 hours we had to log at this CP. At night the temperature was cold enough for you to get in to a tent and sleeping bag to keep warm.
We managed this sleep fairly well under the circumstances and we were up and ready to go exactly on the 7 hour mark, about 3am in the morning. We stuck to our guns about collecting the OP’s and ran out of the CP heading to collect the second OP. Once again our headlamps (Petzl Ultras) proved their worth, giving us visibility on the up and down sand dune terrain of over 100m. Still in the dark, Nic was spot on with his Navigation finding us a good dirt / sand road that we could run on. There was another team ahead of us but they were heading up to the right on a dune, the sand road in the middle of nowhere gave us an advantage over that team as we managed to move ahead of them. The rest of the hike was more of the same. We hiked up the dunes and then in to a salt pan and back up the dunes. All the CP’s and OP’s would be on the pans, so whatever we did we would be going up and down.
The sun rise was as spectacular as night where one was able to see millions of stars. There were incredible the number of shooting stars. When the sun was up and it again become very clear that you were in one of the hottest places on earth and again I need to point out it was WINTER. We hit CP5 and quickly scampered to the third OP before we really hit the midday sun again. We always made sure that we had enough water when leaving the CP’s. Our bladders would be full and we would take the 1.5 liter bottles with us as reserve water. We drank so much water that eventually we would mix things in to our bladders to change the bland taste. After we clocked in at the third OP we realized that we needed to make haste and that we would not make the 4th, as we still needed to log 1 hour of downtime.
It was really boiling hot and we just got in to a droning phase the desert was now all about survival. We passed a few teams that had absolutely blown one or two of their members and were now really struggling. It was also clear that some team’s dynamics were tested in the desert as you would have some team members about 150m ahead and the poor guy/girl struggling would be hobbling along way behind them. We came in to CP6 at around 12h45 and as we then learnt there was a cut of at this CP to progress to the finish. This was not a problem for us though as we would log our 1 hour downtime here and leave this CP at 13h45, heading to the finish by the 18h00 cut-off. We also learnt that only 7 teams had passed CP6 and headed to the 4th OP, so we were not in a bad spot at all.
The last trek from CP6 to the finish was certainly done with commitment as we needed to make the 18h00 cut off and we were told that a lot of teams had taken some time to do this last leg. Nic really worked out our timing well, he found us the most direct route that would not take us over all the dunes and we blitzed this last section in one of the fastest times recorded. It was also an amazing finish as we crested the last dune and we could see the finish we saw a team crossing the pan to the finish. As this race was such that “every second counts” we started jogging trying to catch them. Eventually they turned and saw that we were now moving quickly behind them and eventually our jogging turned in to a flat out, give it all you can run. We noticed a second team coming in to the finish from the left running on a tar road so the race was certainly on for the finish line. We managed to finish that stage in a very respectable 13th place and we were 1 of a handful of teams that had only missed one OP. So many teams missed OP’s and CP’s it was a major challenge for sure, I don’t think it was necessarily tough in the sense of traversing up and down mountains gaining 14’000m on a stage but the incredible heat and the massive dunes made it tough enough to sit up and take note for sure.
Day 5-6
Well after such a decisive desert section we really were looking forward to a good paddle. We knew that we would be in for some good competition as Mzansi Inov8, the other SA team lead by Alex Pope was a very strong paddling team that had trained extremely hard for this leg. As we only got on to the 2nd bus out of the desert we got to the overnight stop for the paddle section well after 21h00. We had a lot to do to prepare our gear for the next day’s paddle. We were paddling boats that had sails on them, so this was going to be an extremely testing leg with a lot of fun and games. The wind picked up at around 23h00 and come 04h00 the wind was gusting to such an extent that our tent was caving in. The morning was scheduled to start at 08h00 but the organizers had decided that it would be too dangerous to paddle and that the paddling leg would be called off. We would spend the rest of day 5 on the beach recovering and laying about in the gusting wind catching up with other teams. We were later told that we would all be moved to Abu Dhabi and would do a 30km, 3 lap paddle in the bay.
The final day had now arrived and as promised by the organizers we were all loaded on to a bus on time and driven to Abu Dhabi for the 09h00 start. We arrived with plenty time to spare and all our boats lined up on the beach. We got our water and other energy food in to the boat, planning on racing for three to four hours. All the teams lined up and “GO”, we were off to the boats and a frantic start with 50 other teams, trying to get the same spot in the water. We had a good start. We were holding our own and managed to get to the first CP in the 3rd / 4th batch of boats. We all had to disembark the boats to dib in and off again at the check point, then were off to CP2.
CP2 was next to a small outcrop but to get to CP2 the fastest way was under a small steel jetty. As we went under, Landie sitting in the front as the steering was done from the back, clipped the bridge with her paddle and it got stuck in the bridge. With the boats forward momentum she had no chance when she hung on to the paddle. The paddle literally snapped in two and we were now left with two boats and only three paddles. We fastened the two boats together and Nic and Brian paddled their respective boat with Landie and I on tow. We collected CP3 and CP4 like this, loosing time due to only three of us paddling these rather heavy boats. We managed to get a spare flat paddle as we passed by the start / finish CP and finished the next two laps with 3 ½ paddles as the flat paddle did not give us the pulling power of our winged paddles. At this stage, beggars could not be choosers, so we managed the situation as best as we could and still managed to finish in the top half of the field, only losing a few minutes but not effecting our overall position.
That was now the end of the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge for 2010. Our final position was 18th out of a field of 50 teams. We also took home the prize for the first ‘novice’ team (we have never done ADAC before) from Africa and the Middle East. The race was certainly nothing like I expected it to be, it was one of the best challenges that I have tackled in my 8 years of adventure racing. It was not a traditional expedition style adventure race that we are accustomed to, but an adventure race it was. There was no place to hide in this style of racing, teams needed to perform every time the gun went off and you needed to perform to your limit right up till you crossed the stage finish line.
I would recommend this race to anyone that loves an adventure; Abu Dhabi is an incredible place. In fact it is one of the very few countries that I have raced in that I would love to take my family to. I would love to race ADAC again in 2011 so let’s see what the year brings.
Team Cyanosis is proud to have the following brands supporting them:
– First Ascent outdoor apparel, Salomon and Crocs adventure, trail running and casual footwear, Petzl headlamps, Foodstate vitamins and supplements, Island Tribe sun lotion.
– Specialized bikes and accessories, Summit Cycles in Midrand, Suunto field compasses and wristop computers, O’Neill wetsuits, BSC compression garments, Kreature.co.za outdoor and survival shop.
For information on Team Cyanosis, profiles on team members, team news and photo galleries, please visit our team website at www.teamcyanosis.co.za
For information on the sport of adventure racing, South African and International events, news and race reports, visit South Africa’s adventure racing website, www.AR.co.za.
Author: Clinton Mackintosh | Team Cyanosis | Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge, 10-15 December 2010