Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge 2009
Each year once it cools down, the local tourism authority runs the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge, the world’s richest multisport race which over six days runs, bikes, swims, kayaks and climbs through the emirate’s cityscape, coastline, sand dunes and mountains. (OK, mountain, since there’s only one)
The route is an only slightly convoluted join-the-dots of the emirate’s tourism sites.
This lavish budget extended to the media coverage, with a helicopter, two film crews creating a documentary and a separate six-part reality show being filmed about the progress of the four-person mixed gender teams.
Of course we had to get aboard this train. To their credit, the news bosses at The National asked me to coordinate the coverage and we covered it comprehensively for all six days.
The event began on the Corniche in the Dhabs with a bike-run-swim-kayak quadrathalon. Of course it had to circumnavigate the $3bn Emirates Palace.
This year involved a 900m swimming segment, which is rarely part of adventure racing.
I thought there’d be carnage on this section because whether by design or by chance, most adventure racers I know are terrible swimmers. It was actually OK.
Among the competitors were members of a specialist triathlon team sponsored by Abu Dhabi and who were, of course, excellent swimmers.
As the race favourite and defending champion, Kiwi adventure race legend Richard Ussher put it: “Those guys went past us like they were dolphins and we were jellyfish.”
(Full disclosure: on the 2008 Speights Coast to Coast, I beat Richard Ussher to the finish line by about 30 minutes, a feat possibly related to me doing the two day race and him doing the one-day one. With my 23-hour head start, it meant he was going twice as fast as me!)
Richard and his wife Elina (this isn’t them) had a team with two strong swimmers and two weaker ones, so the former used tow-lines to lessen the difference to the latter.
Richard said sometimes the rope wouldn’t drag as much as it usually did and later Elina admitted that those were the times she had been actually paddling rather than just being towed by her uber-strong husband.
After the swim, they kayaked to a small island for a short orienteering leg then paddled back again.
After a two-hour break, the competitors then paddled 62km out into the Gulf to an overnight bivouac on a desolate island.
This was a staged race so no matter how long everyone took on the first leg, they started together on the next.
One Swedish team failed to complete the quadrathalon. One of the men, Magnus, accidentally ran into a road sign and then the woman with them, Kristin, went out too hard and too fast and collapsed.
She later admitted she has no memory of the last 15 minutes of the run before waking up in a car as her team mates rushed her to the race doctor.
I was so certain her race was over when she was lying semi-conscious on a gurney sobbing in the arms of her boyfriend that the first version of my story, which I sent from the laptop, said the race had already claimed its first victims.
But I hadn’t anticipated what a determined badass Kristin would prove to be!
This was them paddling out into the Gulf past Lulu Island, with the bruised Swede Magnus, still bleeding on the face and shin from hitting the sign on the run.
It was only later I found out Kristin was still feeling ill and was incapable of eating or drinking at any point on the 62km kayaking leg and any time she tried to, she would throw it back up again.
A further hint of her badassery (and the strength of the rest of the team) was that they put in one of the better kayak times of the 40 teams.
Training was a challenge for many of the teams. One woman came from Whitehorse in the Yukon in Canada.
I asked her how she trained for the paddle and she explained that the only water nearby, the Yukon River, had frozen over two months before so she had to make do with an indoor kayak machine.
The “island” on which we were to bivouac overnight was really just a glorified sandbar and it looked like a decent wave would have washed right over it.
The Usshers arrived first, having created an even bigger lead on the one they’d established that morning. (Like the pink paddle? You can be one of the world’s top adventure racers and still keep a hint of girlishness)
The day wore on, teams came in, the sun set…
And half of the 40 teams still hadn’t arrived.
The way the tides worked, the Usshers had come in on fairly high water with just one short burst of tidal flow to cross.
With every minute after that, sandbars would emerge and the flow became trickier to judge. It got darker, there were more sandbars and the visibility became progressively worse…
Teams had GPS settings to follow but they said it would invariably point straight at a sandbar, which they’d find a way to get around only for the GPS to point them at another.
It must have been frustrating!
Sometime around 4.30am the sandbank campsite came alive as everyone got ready for the second day of competition.
The sun was just beginning to suggest it’s arrival on the eastern horizon.
Doing all the checkpoints involved 80km of paddling back to Abu Dhabi, including a lot of tidal channels around a couple of islands in the archipelago.
If you weren’t being competitive, you could do a short course of 50km and take the time penalities for failing to visit the more distant checkpoints.
The Swedes lined up for more abuse, after Kristin’s collapse and inability to eat the previous day.
We went back to meet the competitors on the far side of the island they were circumnavigating.
The channels were remarkably rich in wildlife, with dolphins and my first ever sighting — albeit briefly — of an Arabian dugong.
For the day’s story, despite Kristin’s fragile state, the Swedes had opted to do the long course and managed to put in the fifth fastest kayaking time.
From being written off (literally — but I corrected it before it was printed) by me and, I suspect, many others, I was given a lesson that this was a seriously badass woman!
After they arrived in Abu Dhabi, the competitors boarded a bus to the Empty Quarter in Liwa, about 2-3 hours drive away.
Sometime before dawn, the competitors once again roused themselves to tackle the next leg: a 120km orienteering course through the dunes of the Empty Quarter, the world’s biggest sand desert.
For those who did not feel up to that course, there was a short course of a mere 80km.
Just as it got fully light, the race set off.
Once again, everyone began together.
Our videographer and photographer were supposed to take the chopper while I’d wait for them.
Then Lionel, the Saffa pilot said there was a spare seat in the chopper.
“Do you want to come with?”
Hmmmm, let me think about that…
It was only later that I realised this was the first time I’d been on a chopper on a non-snowy environment, all my other flights having been in Antarctica or on mountaineering and skiing trips in New Zealand.
The Empty Quarter, the rub al khali in Arabic, extended through the UAE, Saudi and Oman. We were about 2km from the Saudi border here.
The dunes are the obvious features of the area but between them (and far less photogenic) were the sabkhas, the salt flats, which were far easier to run on and which the runners tried to link together and minimise the enervating sand travel.
We then joined the AD4×4 club to head into one of the middle checkpoints. They proved to be a fun bunch and one of their Jeep had this specially-created sticker attached to it.
We drove along a closed road from the top of the Liwa crescent south and had permission to go through an oil drilling area to the checkpoint on the far side.
Or so we thought, until we got to a military checkpoint where three guards with M16s took a different view.
After a lot of negotiating and attempting to resolve the conflict, we had to turn around and head back.
Stuck!
The engine died at the wrong moment on a gentle uphill and the disco dug in.
The irony was that the car with the “attach your stranded Landrover here” sticker was one of the rescuers.
But before they could act, this enormous truck turned up and pulled us out like a gnat out of honey.
Meanwhile the armed guard was a little way behind, making sure we left. But he also offered a hand when we were stuck.
In every experience I’ve had like this in the Arabian peninsula, the inherent trait of friendliness and hospitality was always just below the surface.
After camping the scorpions the previous night, we were due to spend the next night at Qasr al Sarab (the Mirage Fortress), an uber luxurious hotel set amid the dunes and was in the midst of its soft opening.
The whole resort was about 1.4km long, with another little enclave made up of royal villas.
Only about 100 rooms were available and they were still working through the teething issues.
While we stayed in our luxury hotel, the competitors were slogging through the night.
This was going to be a crucial stage since the Usshers’ team had a 25 minute lead but were concerned that this was their French challengers’ strongest discipline.
Who would emerge first from the desert?
In the end, seven teams — including all the contenders for overall victory — emerged from the dunes at the same time.
These people had just ran and walked 120km and at the end they’re sprinting to the finish line. Madness!
Forty minutes after the first pack finished, the badass Swedes arrived.
The pic on the right pretty munted summed up the racers’ condition when they arrived. Then we tracked Kristin down and she showed us her feet.
They were munted!
I asked generally about the race and she explained that she’d still been feeling ill and hadn’t been able to eat anything since the start of the race.
But she was determined to do the full course. This woman had barely eaten in the previous days and had just now run 120km, in a time only 40 minutes slower than the world’s best adventure racers.
Did I mention she was badass?
We were supposed to camp again tonight but the powers that be granted us a second night in the hotel – let me think about that… – and an hour later we’d gathered for a sundowner on the rooftop majlis.
Camping with scorpions or supping a Kiwi sauv blanc… Hmmm, tough call…
Then it was on to a shisha session.
The fifth day of the race dawned with some serious winds.
Or, as I put it in my dispatch that afternoon: “If the remaining competitors in the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge thought their 120km crossing of the dunes of the Empty Quarter was the end of being tormented by sand, they had a rude reality check in the race’s penultimate cycling section.”
The race began at the campsite where the desert run had finished for a 33km cycle along partly sealed roads to Qasr al Sarab, where they had a break and then continued on for another 55km on a closed military road paralleling the Saudi border.
The Usshers arrived first, just avoiding one of the periodic collapses of the inflatable arch. (There was an irony that with all the wind, we ended up short of air) This was about the only aspect of the race so far that had not gone like clockwork for the uber-competetent Usshers’s team.
The winds eased off. Not.
They lined up again at the entrance to Qasr al Sarab.
The Usshers were sponsored by Qasr al Sarab but that amounted to entry fees and airfares and not a night there.
I’d made a few hints to the TDIC and ADTA people about how it’d be a nice story if they could get a few nights there after the race.
They emerged from wandering through the foyer with a deal that if they won, they’d get some time at the hotel.
Did I mention it was windy?
We had to adapt.
This is our videographer, Edy of Arabia.
The winds meant there was a lot more soft sand on the course.
Richard Ussher had biked this route in the first year’s race and encountered about 400m of sand. This year with the drifting winds, he estimated it was about 2km.
Of course that wasn’t a contiguous length.
It came in the form of patches at times only 2-3m long which threatened to pitch the off their bikes and prompted them to dismount.
Kristin of course was the bloodied but unbowed badass Swede.
It must be galling to see a downhill and realise the sand makes it unridable…
This man on the right did not look like he was having fun.
Really *really* not having fun.
Richard Ussher’s face said it all.
Two years ago, he’d taken 2h15m to complete this section.
This year it had taken 3h30m and they’d run out of water well back from the end.
Every other time I’d seen him finish, he looked as fresh as if he’d arrived there by car. This was the first time he looked like he’d really had to dig deep.
Maybe it was the prospect of some nights at Qasr al Sarab?
This was Nathan Fa’avae, who’d retired from international racing but was called into the Usshers’ team just 10 days before the race when the intended team member broke his collar bone.
The pic on the right kind of summed this day up.
It seemed that almost everyone had run out of water on the route. This was a truly brutal leg of the race.
And the next morning before dawn it all started again…
Fleur Pawsey and her fellow Kiwis being grilled by the TV cameras before the pre-dawn start up Jebel Hafeet.
There was a 20km section of night orienteering then, after dawn, a ropework section up the mountain and a scramble to the summit.
After a break, everyone would bike down the road in an untimed ride (too dangerous to fang it) bike into Al Ain and then complete the final 3.2km run from the oasis to Jahili Fort at one-minute intervals in the same order as the leaderboard.
They ran past in a stream of light from their head torches.
My attempt to capture this involved a bit of trial and error (mostly error) before I finally remembered how to set a rear time-exposure flash so that it’d flash at the end of the six-second exposure.
We made our way straight to the start of the ropework section, navigating by GPS through the confusion of 4×4 tracks, as the competitors’ headlights could be seen below.
Then Wouter, who was producing a book on the race, headed up through the ropes to get into position to take pix of the competitors for the race book.
Meanwhile the time exposure captured the competitors’ light trails in the pre-dawn light.
The teams left for the rope section at one-minute intervals in the order in which they’d arrived, so some in the middle of the bottleneck opted to score some more sleep.
The badass Swedes were still going.
Kristin, I found out at the finish line, had the skin from her blistered toe fall off and for the raw wound to get infected during the bike leg.
She must have been in agony!
And the nausea returned so she couldn’t eat. And, just in case life was not already unpleasant enough, her nose began to bleed as they began to run in the pre-dawn. Sheesh!
By the start of the day they’d gone from being dead last on day one to 10th place but her foot hurt so much and she was slow so they dropped to 11th.
I told her she should be proud to have given the race her all and to have shown superhuman dedication but she was just really disappointed about dropping out of the top 10.
We headed to the top of the mountain to get the teams arriving.
The limestone rock was mostly trustworthy. Mostly. A competitor in the 2007 race fell and broke his leg on this section.
He came back the following year and competed though.
At the cafe on top, Richard Ussher produced a Dh500 note and bought up big on junk food during their two-hour wait.
Then it was an untimed group ride down the mountain.
(The road was too nasty for mountain bikes for it to be a race)
Then only a slightly convoluted run to the finish line and success for Team Kiwi.
The second team was an all-Kiwi effort too, led by Fleur.
Even the third placed team had a Kiwi in it, drafted in at the last minute to replace an injured team member. Nine of the first 12 competitors to cross the finish line were Kiwis.
They’d earned a beer.
So I provided four of them — cold Heinekens.
Richard shared them with Fleur’s team, which pretty much sums up their ethos.
Later that night, everyone scrubbed up and went to the prizegiving.
I barely recognised anyone.
And how else do you celebrate the end of the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge than with cocktails apparently made with Draino?