The Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge
Team Cyanosis in Abu Dhabi
Clinton Mackintosh / 19.01.2011
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 organizations 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 organized 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 organization was incredible, all teams were well taken care of and briefing and kit checks were done will relevant 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.
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