Team OrionHealth Adventure

Looks like all is going well for the Kiwi teams midway through the prologue - Richard Usher's team were first through the 'adventure triathlon' section in downtown Abu Dhabi, with the strong French La Fuma team in hot pursuit 3 mins back. Stu and his team are 8 minutes down in a big bunch of teams, all within touch of the leaders.

Teams have now just begun the 80km sea kayak stage, which will see them bivvy on an island tonight before resuming the paddle in the morning. Expect to see things bounce around a bit on the tracking, as each tracker updates at a slightly different time, so when teams are this close together its hard to tell who is where exactly. 

I am looking forward to an exciting day at 'work' with the tracker on in the background!

Just heard from Stu, he and the rest of the team have spent the day enduring the gear and medical checks, and checking out the maps for the first two days (prologue and kayak). Stu commented that there was less kayaking than there has been in previous years, which will no doubt please many teams for whom kayaking is something to be endured! For our guys though, kayaking is one of their real strengths, so they will be out to make the most of it.

The teams all enjoyed a wonderful dinner - one of the highlights of the race has always been the amazing food that gets put on by the organizers. They should enjoy it while they can though - tomorrow night they will be camped out on a bare sandy island in the Arabian Gulf eating a cold freeze dried meal out of a packet!

When I asked about the navigation in the race, Stu commented that there is a little bit of tricky nav in the dark on the morning of the last day (this must be the "night orienteering" stage), otherwise should be fairly straightforward as in previous years. Both naviagtion and route choice can still be tricky in the desert and ocean though, with a network of narrow tidal channels between the myriad of artificial islands in the Gulf, and row upon row of sandy dune where you must choose wisely where you cross and walk for the fastest route.

The team will be off to get their last nights full sleep (in a plush 5 star hotel bed no less!) for some time, then it will be up early in the morning getting ready for the 8am start (5pm Friday NZ time). The prologue starts with an urban triathlon with running, biking and swimming near the central city, then teams will be off in their kayaks for the rest of the day.

 Stu arrived in Abu Dhabi this morning with a mountain of gear ready to race the 2009 Abu Dhabu Adventure Challenge. Waiting at the airport to meet him were his team mates for the next week - a talented and experienced bunch of Kiwi multisporters.

 With the rest of Team Orion enjoying a well-earned rest from racing after recently contesting the World Champs, Stu was approached to join an all-Kiwi team to take on the Abu Dhabi Challenge. Team Captain Fleur Pawsey (Coast to Coast winner 2007, placed well in the Wulong Mountain Quest and 2008 Abu Dhabi Challenge) has been doing all the organising for the boys for the last few weeks - a challenge made greater by the face that Stuart and original team member George Christenson were both "otherwise occupied" racing at the World Championships in Portugal only 3 short weeks ago! George unfortunately had a nasty-looking pair of 'macerated' feet after Portugal (where he placed 2nd with Team Nike) - when I last saw him on the finish line at Portugal he was still intending to race not only Abu Dhabi, but also the Lake to Lighthouse back in NZ the very next weekend which involves running the 46km Lake Waikaremoana Track (they make them tough in NZ obviously!). Given the state of his feet I wasn't suprised to hear he had later to decide to give both races a miss, and hopefully will be recovering well back home now.

 Multisport racing legend Gordon Blythen from Wanaka has raced with Stu and Team Orion earlier this year in China at the Wulong Mountain Quest, and adds to the huge kayaking strength of the team - expect to see them make some serious ground in the first two days on the Arabian Gulf!

 Fleur and Gordon were left to come up with a very last minute team mate and were lucky to recruit Nathan Peterson from Christchurch. Nathan has been around the multisport and adventure racing scene for some time, placing several times in the Top 10 of the Coast to Coast, and has also raced in China at the Wulong Mountain Quest and at the Adventure Racing World Championships in Brazil last year.

 Stu and the team are fortunate to have received support from ADCO (Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore oil operations), who have sponsored travel and race entry costs. So keep an eye out for Team ADCO New Zealand (#42) on the results board!

 Other Kiwi's racing include defending champions Qasr Al Sareb (#16)  consisting of Richard and Elina Usher, Marcel Hagnar and Nathan Fa'avae called out of retirement.

 After the usual food shopping and gear sorting today, tomorrow (Thursday 3rd Dec) will be spent doing gear check and race administration. The race gets underway on Friday with what promises to be a spectacular start with an urban triathlon in the very centre of Abu Dhabi, before teams begin an epic 2 day kayak stage exploring the Arabian Gulf. Teams must be off the water by dark and camp at one of the remote island checkpoints before resuming the paddle stage at dawn. A transfer to the mountainous sand dune terrain of central Abu Dhabi heralds the beginning of a tough two days with 120km of sandy desert trekking to cover. Day five is occupied with a 90km mountain bike leg, while the finale on Day 6 includes rope work, technical mountain running and cycling around Jabel Hafeet, Abu Dhabi's 'mountain in the desert'.

I hope to be able to be in contact with Stu at the end of each stage, and post updates on how the team is going here on the Team Orion Blog. Other websites likely to have good coverage are Sportzhub www.sportzhub.com , Sleepmonsters www.sleepmonsters.com  and the official race website with live GPS tracking www.abudhabi-adventure.com.

Happy following! Fi

Well the car was getting fixed which scuppered my plans for heading to the lake district for a few days so I looked into the train schedules to see what I could achieve closer to home.

 Found that I could get a pretty cheap return ticket to Merthyr Tydvil which is on the edge of the beacons so I loaded up the pack and headed for the hills.

 Got a great sunny first day of hiking as I made my way south crossing ridges and valleys before I eventually made it to the steep ridge overlooking Llyn Y Fan Fach (lake) where I camped for the night.

 I didin't find time to get gas for the cooker so that meant cold dinner and no hot drinks but being in a populous country has it's advantages.  I was making my way back to Merthyr following the peaks and saddles this time. The weather was taking a turn for the worse and I was starting to dream of hot food when out of the mist appeared a takeaway caravan selling just that.  One bacon sandwich and hot coffee later I was on my way again and up Pen Y Fan, the highest point in the Brecons.  For the 2nd time in a week I found myself at a misty summit in Wales with no view.  Still, it had been a great couple of days out in the hills and I just had time to high tail it back down in to Merthyr to catch the late train back to Bristol.

Last weekend Fi and I took a trip to Betws-y-coed in North Wales.  Neil and Karen drove down from Whitehaven to meet us and we had a great couple of days hiking and biking in Snowdonia.  We made it up Snowden (highest peak in Wales) via Crib Goch - a very steep and narrow ridge line with what would have been very impressive drops to either side if we could see more than 50 metres or so. At the summit and along with several hundred others there (some of which had caught the train up) we were still stuck in the mist and had no view.

After the crowds of Snowden it was a relief to get off the beaten path as we found another impressive ridge with much fewer people on it that took us back to our hostel.

On Sunday we checked out some of the nearby MTB trails.  Wales had fantastic biking although the rocks are sharp as Neil found when he managed to crash and put a good cut in his knee.  Not enough to slow him down however and we managed to cram in some more singletrack before it was time to pack up the cars and head for home.  And right on cue, the sun came out.