7th annual Siku Extreme Arctic Challenge

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Siku Exteme Adventure Challenge 2007 - Day 1

Jesper Kunuk Egede & Jesper Sand Mortensen / 21.07.2007

Welcome to the online Sleepmonsters update from the Siku Extreme Arctic Challenge 2007! This is the morning briefing of Race Day 1.

TO READ THE LATEST UPDATE GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

The Siku Extreme Adventure Challenge 2007 is the biggest race we’ve ever had here in Tasiilaq. If you’re a returning reader, you may ask yourself about the name of the race. This year we are blessed with a strong main sponsor, Siku Vodka and thus Arctic Team Challenge has become Siku Extreme Arctic Challenge! It’s that simple.

The teams have been arriving since Wednesday, checking into the school rooms that will function as their surrogate home for the next 10 days. The weather since Wednesday has been changing constantly; sun, rain, fog. Not particularly nice but we’re praying that it will stay dry (and even sunny) for the race.

Later in the day we will follow up with briefings from the race. It starts at 10 AM Greenland time (-3 GMT).

What else is new? Well, as we said, this 7th race is our biggest ever! We have 15 competing teams and two corporate teams running this year. We have racers from Poland, Estonia, Holland and Germany, all countries that haven’t been represented before. We will have help from the mighty ship Hvidbjørnen (The White Bear) of the Royal Danish Navy.

Team Presentations
It’s always nice to know who we’re talking about so here you will get a presentation on all the teams participating. We’re missing one team, the British Team Kobold. They never showed up. But here are short presentations of the 16 participating teams. Remember, you can always read more about the teams on www.atc.gl

Global Warming Up Close
Every year, the TV production company Ace & Ace has filmed the Arctic Team Challenge and this year is no exception. The theme of this year’s coverage will be the global warming, a threat to our entire earth and a phenomenon which is already very visible in Arctic regions. The crew will follow Jacqueline McGlade of the European Environment Agency and our local representative Qivioq Kern Kreutzmann. Don’t miss the TV program that will air worldwide later this year.

Most of the 17 teams have arrived, and we have had a chance to have a chat with most of them. Among them are actually two teams from the European Environment Agency, a competitive team and a corporate team. The latter is here for the team building aspects of the race and to build up their competence and knowledge. ‘We have studied aspects of global warming. Here, we can go out there and see it with our own eyes,’ says team captain Andrus Meiner who originates from Estonia. ‘We may be able to compare picture from the first race with the situation now to see if there are differences,’ adds team mate Agnieszka Romanowicz.

Peter Christian Kjeld is part of the EEA Competitive Team. They have not been able to do a lot of training together, although they have done some biking and trekking together. As opposed to so many other teams before them, EEA is not worried about the canoeing: ‘It’s just part of the race,’ as Peter says. They might be a bit more worried about the mountain biking: ‘Technically it does not seem to be very difficult. But it may be demanding.’ The teams actually did some switching today, so that Agnieszka and Peder Gabrielsen are now on the other EEA team.
The EEA Teams have set up a set of rules or guidelines for their participation in the race this year:

1. No serious injuries
2. We must be able to talk to each other after the race
3. We have to complete the race
4. Not to be the last team

Noble!


The Team of emails
What do you do when you see a picture of a beautiful white iceberg in a beautiful blue sea and find that you have the chance to go see this while you do your team building? Henrik Bjerg Pedersen of the corporate Team Pihl A/S decided right away to sign up for that. And here he is, sitting in Tasiilaq and has already experienced the sight he dreamed of: ‘I’m happy already and we’re not even starting until Saturday. It’s not like we trained a lot together before we got here as it’s difficult to get everybody’s schedule to match. But I’ll tell you this: Did we email each other before we got going! I think there have been 400 emails about what soup to bring and what shirts to wear! So, all in all, we’re really well prepared!’ he laughs, underlining that they do take the race seriously but also want to enjoy themselves.


Explorers’ Dreams
Neil Radford was on the Feed the Machine team last year, and now he is back with his own team. ‘I expect to be challenged more this year and to enjoy the race through the eyes of my friends,’ Neil says and continues: ‘Last year, the goal was to complete the race and to be safe. This year, the goals are the same but also to move as fast as we can when we can, and push it a bit more.’
Jodi Zwicky’s expectations are mostly about the nice scenery and the journey itself. She feels that sometimes you just need to let go and enjoy the ride, as opposed to the way some teams just put down their heads, don’t look around, and go really fast. ‘There’s a time and place for that, but this race is neither the time nor the place for it. It’s too beautiful!’ she says and continues: ‘This terrain is a mix of everything, its like Patagonia, the South of New Zeeland with a little bit of Nepal mixed in there, but I’ve never been in there among iceberg paddling! I’m not scared; I think it’s going to be cool! But I’m not going to sing the song from Titanic!’

Chip Whitworth is also on the Explorers team and has done a lot of races in the States. Chip has brought his wife Michella and his five-year-old son Alex. It’s unusual to bring the family, because you have to be so focused and don’t want family to see if you get injured, but Michella has always been cool about it. ‘Michella has been to all of my races last year, where she took care of Alex. We feel that its good for Alex to experience other cultures, to see that things works different in different places,’ Chip says. So cool!

Let’s round off and hear how much they really are going to push it? Neil: ‘The difference from last year is that when you join a team, you always go with the flow, and they are all good people. This year I feel that even though my team says they are not competitive, instinctively deep down inside they are very competitive!’ Looks like the race is on!


Lucy is from Wales. Wales. Not Scotland, not England. Wales!
Lucy Greenhill is from Wales and the team captain of Team Aurora. Lucy is doing her masters so this trip is related to the oil pollution in the Arctic that she studies. But, obviously, this is combined with the fact that she and her teammates are racers.
‘It was amazing to see Greenland and see the town and the work that has been put into creating this event,’ says Lucy, who worries about some of the aspects of racing like canoeing or being stuck to your bike if you crash. Team Aurora says that they just want to finish but still they can feel the pressure of competition from the American team Feed the Machine. As long as they finish they will be happy but it would also be nice not to come in last…


In High French Spirits
Spirits were high when we met up with the French team. However, why is it that French teams always have endless names? Last year we had Team WCup Issy les Moulineaux, this year we have Les Couleurs de l’Aventure. Oh well, it’s a little easier to pronounce the name this year. Not that it will keep us from shortening the name to l‘Aventure! L’Aventure is here to experience nature and the scenery. They are all friends and have been racing together for 10 years, e.g. in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, in Bolivia, Morocco and Austria so they like this terrain. They say they are not going to win, that they know, but they also know that this is an adventure nobody can take away from them. Enjoy it all you can, messieurs!


Sunny Delights Once Again
It’s almost become tradition to have what we call a “sunshine team from Iceland�. This year kind of breaks that rule, as we have 1½ sunshine teams from Iceland. And, boy, are they popular. Not only here in Tasiilaq but also among their fans at home. Last year, not one day went by without mails from Iceland, telling us to write more about the Icelandic team! Ah, to be able to muster such an active fan base. It must be great. But then again, it’s not surprising, ‘cause what a bunch of friendly and merry people. ‘We were at my birthday party last year when someone mentioned that ATC was almost about to close for enrolment,’ says Erlandur Birgisson of the Northern Lights Team. ‘I was standing around with Trausti and Pétur and within ten seconds we decided to go for a third time. Then, not long after that, Karin and Pia sent out an email to former participants, looking for two team members for their team. And we thought, hey, this is a chance for six Icelanders to go! So for the first time ever, I’m on a mixed team at a race,’ Erlandur smiles.

This year, Erlandur and Pétur teams up with Karin Moe Bojsen who was on the Pihl A/S corporate team last year, and with Pia Anning Nielsen, a native of Tasiilaq who now studies in Denmark. Pia is actually the grand veteran of ATC! This is the fifth time she is running the race and, in 2001, she was an official. Good going!

On the all-male Team Intersport Iceland we have the ATC veterans Trausti Valdimarsson and Gunnlaugur Júlíusson. They are teaming up with Àsgeir Elíasson and Stefan Viðar Sigtrygsson who may be newcomers to Siku Extreme Arctic Challenge but who are so not newcomers to racing! Among the four team members we count not just 93 marathons but also an endless list of ultramarathons, an Ironman and tons of other races! WOW!


Macpac & Icebreaker
Macpac & Icebreaker! Not since Mouth and MacNeal stood up for Holland at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest has the Netherlands come up with such a wonderful name. This is the first time for the two women and two men of Mouth Macpac & Icebreaker to go to Greenland. ‘We’ve tried to prepare for the different heights but the problem is that Holland is so flat. We drove for 3 hours and then we climbed the 10 meters of the highest Dutch mountain,’ laughs team captain Mirjam van Burgel. Macpac & Icebreaker feel that the atmosphere at the race is very relaxed and they don’t expect to win; they are (also…) mostly here to enjoy the scenery. However, the bike ride worries them a bit as they are not sure that they have the endurance to stay within the time limits. This particular team has never raced together before, but a funny thing is that the two couples are married to each other, just like Abba. So let’s hope they pull an Abba rather than a Mouth and MacNeal; Abba won the Eurovision the year that Mouth and MacNeal finished in 7th place…


The A Team Resurfacing!
The A Team is kind of lacking a Mr. T but that has not kept them from adopting the famous name. What we have instead, however, are a pack of army boys. Even though they are very experienced in tough ordeals, they are not sure whether they will win. But when the guns go, the game is on.
The A Team also enrolled in this contest for other reasons; to raise money for wounded soldiers in Iraq and to create awareness about this race. The things they’ve learned from the army are comradeship and that they will be there for each other, no matter what.


Team Easy On
Not a year without a reference to a Danish fictional bicycling team. Last year, the French Team WCup Issy les Moulineaux were dubbed Team Easy On and, this year, the honor goes to the Danish Team ISI – Salomon. Both teams kind of asked for it when you say their names out loud.
Two of the Danish racers, Captain Henrik Møller and Søren Bredvig have raced here before (both of them coming in 1st and 2nd) but they raced with different teams. Henrik is headmaster at a folk high school in Ikast, Denmark and wanted to try and bring the Siku Extreme Arctic Challenge into their branding and started to look for students who wanted to participate in the race.
The preparations done for this race are massive training and experience. ‘In our opinion, this race is more than just a race. There is more than mere competition – there’s great staff and great racers on the other teams,’ says Henrik and Søren. Team ISI - Salomon hope to place themselves in the top five.


Local Heroes!
Team Maniitsoq 225 – named after their home town and it’s 225th anniversary this year – are the local heroes in Greenland. They are greeted on the streets every where they go and everybody wishes them good luck. Usually, we’ve had a lot of teams from Greenland attending but, for the first time, we only have one Greenlandic team this year. Aqqalu Skifte is team captain and at the same time a very well-known sportsperson in Greenland, mainly because he’s been the Greenlandic Champion of cross country skiing 8 times. On his team, he has the youngest group of people this year: Uju Josefsen, Henrik Kreutzmann and Knud L. Poulsen who are all 19 years old. They want to place themselves high in the race, but they know from experience and the Greenland Adventure Race in South Greenland that even if you’re leading the race, one bad navigational decision can make you lose the lead.


In the Footsteps of Nansen
Or maybe not, if you ask Team Captain Ralph Rayner. Here’s one of those teams where you’re pretty sure there will be a mixture of seriousness and fun when they are around. The team consists of two British and two Norwegian men who know each other through work and leisure. According to Ralph, Geir has tried to kill him several times, although Geir doesn’t completely disagree: ‘I only did it once…’ Apparently we are talking about skiing off a cliff sometime. ‘Yeah,’ Ralph continues, ‘I swore it was the last time ever that I ever did anything with you again. And now here we are.’
Last night marked the first time that the team members were all together in the same place. Ralph called the two Norwegians the ‘fit pair’ and the two British the ‘unfit pair’. Stephen, however, objected: ‘I like ‘less fit’. We can move into the ‘unfit’ category later on.’


The Rainbow Coalition
Team Neriusaaq (Greenlandic for ‘Rainbow’) are sort of a local Tasiilaq team. Well, it did start out as a local team but there have been several changes in the line up since. As Team Captain, Headmaster of Tasiilaq School Jørn Holbech, puts it: ‘I moved here last year and, at first, I was a substitute on the team. After a while I advanced to member of the team and when our team captain fell and broke his arm recently, suddenly I was promoted to team captain!’ ‘I think it will be really hard,’ says team member Simon Bernth-Andersen and continues: ‘I’m looking forward to seeing if our levels of fitness in the team will match each other. As we live in separate places, we’ve not been able to train together.’ Jørn elaborates: ‘We have to keep our morale high and try to keep criticism at a minimum. The one who makes a mistake will probably blame himself more than enough.’ Let’s hope it won’t be necessary for any of them.


Surf Gear in Greenland
‘We’re certainly not going to win this race, so have no fear,’ said team captain Tom Wakeford at the introduction of all the teams last night. Still, the team did look cool in their eco friendly Finisterre outfits this morning when they tried out their canoe. And it’s not like they haven’t tried to prepare: ‘We’ve all done a lot of hill walking and climbing to prepare for the race,’ says team member Will Carnwath. ‘We’ve done several races in the UK and then every year we want to do something different. This year, we decided on this race as we’ve never been to the Arctic.’ Well, good luck!


Further info
Read more race briefings and route descriptions on www.atv.gl
Check out our weather on Hendrik’s webcam updated every 30 minutes:
http://www.andreassen.gl/andreassen/webcam.htm
To hear more about the runners’ own experiences here in Tasiilaq, also check out some of their own blogs or websites:
www.finisterreuk.com
www.team-ami.nl
http://pepemalik.skyblog.com
www.pihl-as.dk
http://eea.europa.eu

They may not all be in English but that has never kept adventurers from giving it a go.

UPDATE AFTER FIRST RACE DAY

Race start!

So, after some agonizing hours yesterday when Air Iceland didn’t deliver the gear we needed for the race, we finally got to the race start this morning. Last night, officials worked overtime to find things to substitute the missing gear. But they did find it for the teams to be ready for start. And what a start! We got the drama that the audience was craving when the EEA Corporate Team capsized and fell into the water in the Lars Bom Bay (named after a famous actor who did the same thing some years ago). But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

After a race briefing this morning at breakfast, the teams started arriving at the starting line a little past 9 AM, inflating their canoes and getting ready. Today’s stage is canoeing to the foot of the Polhelm Mountain, climbing up and down its 1000 meters and returning to Tasiilaq by canoe. Simple, perhaps, but pretty darned hard, too!

The Race Is On!
According to tradition, at 10 AM the firing of a canon started the race (and, also according to tradition, gave several newcomers a mild heart attack); The teams ran off to the harbor, carrying their canoes and their gear.

First in the water were Neriusaaq and Maniitsoq 225 but ISI Salomon and Feed the Machine ran a little further out onto the harbor. Running is faster than paddling so soon they were paddling close together. And this was when EEA Corporate had their little accident. The audience has learned that if you want the drama (and the fun), you run along with the racers down to the harbor after race start. This is where things are happening.

But let’s give you, dear readers, what you want:

These are the unofficial times for today’s race:
Maniitsoq 225 03.38.15
Neriusaaq 03.47.24
Explorer 04.02.13
Intersport Iceland 04.05.25
Feed the Machine 04.16.45
Les Couleurs de l’Aventure 04.24.59
Finisterreuk 04.33.56
AMI: MacPac & Icebreaker 04.34.11
A Team 04.48.32
ISI – Salomon 04.55.32
EEA 05.02.10
The Northern Lights 05.16.33
Aurora 05.49.51
Nansen B Team 06.02.39

Out of contest:
Pihl A/s Corporate 05.23.19
EEA Corporate 08.57.32


First place today: Team Maniitsoq
Team Maniitsoq 225, our very young team, finished first today. They have done a lot of preparations for this year’s race. The only discipline they weren’t too strong at was the canoeing. ‘We came in 4th in the canoeing race, but that didn’t stop us from outrunning the New Zeeland/US team (Explorer) up on the Polheim Mountain,’ says team captain Aqqalu Skifte.
The four guys are all from West Greenland and have been training at home in Maniitsoq. They also flew to Kangerlussuaq and stayed in cottages where they trained every day. It was just like boot camp in a terrain that was very much like this in East Greenland. With that said they actually didn’t expect to come in first, but they wanted to make an effort to be placed high. Nice effort!


Wrong turn at Albuquerque – or somewhere like that…
Surprisingly, ISI Salomon is ranked pretty low considering the background of the team members. Taking a wrong turn on the ridge of the Polheim Mountain in the fog, they suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of a couloir and, even worse, when the fog suddenly cleared the top of the mountain were behind them and not in front. They had gone too far.
‘We took a wrong turn somewhere. Suddenly the other teams were on our right hand instead of our left hand. Then we wanted to ascend from our position but we were told by the race management that we couldn’t go the way we wanted. So we had to run down the mountain and then up again. This way we lost 1½ hours,’ says team captain Henrik Møller. From then on it went fine. ‘We were the fastest team going down and also the fastest in the canoe going home. But that wrong turn was a tough camel to swallow’, he adds.
Henrik Møller has completed the race twice and won once and that he is competing these days is close to a miracle. Henrik was in a serious accident two years ago. Running in Sweden in the qualification rounds to the World Cup, he slipped and fell 30 meters down a hill. He broke 12 ribs, his shoulder blade, his foot and one lung collapsed. The Siku Extreme Arctic Adventure is his first race after this major accident. Obviously, for the first six months after the accident, Henrik was on sick leave. Looking at the bright side, at the same time he had twins so he got to spend the time at home with the little babies.
ISI Salomon still has three more stages to get back to the top where they want to be.


Tough!
‘My bum hurts from the canoe,’ sighs Ralph from Team Nansen B and continues ‘It’s okay, but it’s hard, this race, especially the canoeing.’ So hard, in fact, that Geir had a cramp in his leg while they were in the canoe and started getting up. They came close to tipping over, but thankfully managed to keep themselves inside the canoe!


Allt er Þá Þrennt er
Yeah, we didn’t understand that either. But that’s Icelandic and refers to a saying that three times is enough! Hoping not to use up that quota, Intersport Iceland capsized twice yesterday when training in their canoe. Trausti: ‘Well, yes, we flipped the boat yesterday outside the harbor’. That’s when Stefán whispered: ‘Also inside the harbor…’ But as Trausti puts it in his usual cheerful way: ‘Now we’re not scared anymore; we know the water now.’
But the Intersport Iceland managed to stay inside the canoe today. Let’s keep it that way.

After the race we also met up with Erlandur, Karin and Pia from the Northern Lights Team – or whatever they call themselves today. They keep changing their name every day, this wonderfully Nordic team of two Icelanders, a Dane and a Greenlander. Pia from Tasiilaq was really glad when we caught up with her last night.
‘Today has gone so much better than expected in the sense that there might have been a conflict as to where we wanted to be seated in the canoe and how we worked together. We have been training on opposite sides of the globe but the canoe training went excellent, and we like the company of each another,’ she says. It’s Erlandur’s first time on a mixed team and he digs it. ‘I really like it. It’s very different. You see things from a completely new angle. I’m used to be four individuals running. Now we have more of a team effort and team spirit – you have to nurture that. It’s really cosy,’ he says.

To Karin, this race is quite different from last year, when she was on a corporate team. ‘Everything goes a little faster,’ she admits and continues: ‘It’s a great team. We are making it work together – even if were not equally fast.’ Kudos to Karin and Co!


Go Feed It!
Uh-oh, in our small team profiles the last couple of days, we somehow missed out on Feed the Machine, that fabulous American team. Maybe it’s because they didn’t bring that gorgeous brunette Berniece B-Lo this year. Anyway, it’s great to have the Feeders back again.
Feed The Machine wanted to come back this year with new goals in terms of placement in the competition, and new team members. However, they were about to be racing out of rank, as one of the team members broke his ankle shortly before leaving and couldn’t compete. They tried to find someone else to take his place, but there were none that would fit their goals for this year. So they decided to go to Greenland as a three-man team and just do the race out of competition.
Then along came Egon, a local guy from Tasiilaq, who has raced once before in 2005 when his team came in third. He has been playing soccer to get into shape again but not so much besides that.
Egon and the other guys hit it off right away, and decided to give it a go. Egon is still not that good at English but it doesn’t seem to be hindering their communication. And after the race, he’ll probably sound like a California dude.
Before the race, Egon laughed that he hoped it would be foggy today because, being a local guy, he would still know his way around and the other teams might not!
This is the first time for Christian to come back to a race: ‘I came back to redeem myself and to do better. Now that ‘that Bardsley team’ is not here this year it will give us a chance to move up,’ he admits with a smile. You may be wondering who that Bardsley team is. Ben Bardsley was on the Saab Salomon and eastgreenland.com teams that have dominated the race for the past three years. Racing along with the legendary Davies family and other top athlete friends, Ben & Co showed everyone else how to run an adventure race.


Do you like our photographs?
Most of the pictures we have shown you over the years were taken by Erwin Reinthaler. The Erwinator is back this year, thankfully. If you want to take pictures like Erwin, here’s how to do it:

Erwin’s photography school, lesson 1-4
1. Be out
2. Have your camera with you
3. Be out
4. Have your camera with you
Simple!

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