The Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge
Back to Abu Dhabi
Richard Ussher / 06.01.2009
The problem we now had was we had a sponsor but Aaron had accepted an offer to race with team Lundhags and Gordon had decided to form his own team. After many phone calls and emails we finally managed to secure the services of Jarad Kholar – the Australian Multisport champion and Jay Henry, USA Mountain biker and member of Nike Beaver Creek. It meant we would have significantly different strengths to last year with kayaking sure to be one area we couldn’t expect to excel at quite as much. What we were expecting was to be setting the pace on the bikes and hanging in there on foot so it was going to be interesting for us to see how we fared in the overall.
The pre race formalities took place the day after we arrived and a large spend up at the pharmacy before we left got us through the obligatory medical kit – we had no idea what most of which what it was! Our only hiccup was a missing climbing helmet, but after some help from the local team we tracked one down in Dubai and luckily a friend was heading down later that day. We got through the check in with a borrowed helmet and that evening the new helmet arrived.
Prologue
This year there was a new start to the race with a short prologue close to the main downtown area. With a short MTB, onto a kayak leg around the adjacent island before landing on the island and a 10km run/orienteer before jumping back in the kayaks for a short sprint to the finish.
With transitions being critical in such a short event and a totally flat MTB to start we made the call to wear our running shoes on the bikes and to also wear our lifejackets. We also secured our spray skirts on the kayaks so we could simply slide into them saving yet more time.
As we sped off from the start line we assumed our position near the front of the pack, luckily the lifejackets didn’t seem to impair us too badly and with some dodgy skills in the pack it was even some peace of mind to have the extra padding in the close proximity to the other riders. We put the hammer down heading for the transition and all made it through the narrow chute at the head of the field. It sounds like the narrow chute made for chaos a moment later as 35 other teams all tried to force their way through at the same time.
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