Blog

Weather curtails final kayak

f.mcbryde@hotmail.com (Fiona McBryde) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:18:59 +0000

High winds and 2m swells out in the Gulf have had a huge impact on the final two days of the race. Instead of a 128km open sea paddle with an overnight camp on a small sandy island, teams faced a day of enforced inactivity in Mirfa, and 3 circuits around a kayak loop on the downtown Abu Dhabi waterfront.

Orion pushing hard on the final paddle with the ornate buildings of Abu Dhabi in the background.

For some teams the high winds which blew up early yesterday morning were greeted with relief, while others lamented the chance to use their kayaking abilities to gain ground.

Winds of up to 42km/h forced race organisers to make a last minute change to the planned kayak course, an teams were sent on a short 30km 'loop' format course in Corniche Bay. The top teams made short work of this, cutting it out in around 2 and a half hours. With such a short course there were no changes in any of the major places - Kiwi team Thule of course added to their sizable lead, Sonya Clark and Trevor Voyce of team adidas Terrex kept their fourth position, and Orion maintained their 6th place overall.

The teams are now celebrating at the race banquet and prizegiving, before boarding flights home tomorrow. Stu has a particularly nasty schedule, taking a bus from prizegiving to the airport, arriving at Heathrow around 6am tomorrow morning, then heading straight to work!

Now to the sea!

f.mcbryde@hotmail.com (Fiona McBryde) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:24:47 +0000

After a grueling desert trekking stage, which saw only 8 teams complete the full course, teams have now set up camp on the beach at Mirfa, to do their best to rehydrate and refuel before the 6am kayak start.

Orion have had some illness in the team, with Fleur particularly suffering during the 30+ hour desert stage. They have raced well however, even managing to 'outsprint' Silva Gerber at the end of the trek section. (reports have it that Silva ran out of water by the final checkpoint, so the last 3 hours in 38 degree temperatures must have been a nightmare for them!). In Stu's words they are "Looking forward to the finish now" - although they have two days and 128km of sea kayaking to go first!

The paddle tomorrow should suit all of the Kiwi teams. With an early morning start, teams have until 6pm to get to one of four island checkpoints, where they must camp out overnight. Orion in particular are a very stong paddling team, and kayaking is the easiest disipline for the whole team to help out a sick team member by using towing and good team work, so look for them to be trying to make up time and break into the top 5.

At present the leaderboard has Orion in 6th place overall, only 30 minutes down on the Swedish Net Competance team in 5th - not such a large margin for a long paddle stage if things go well!

And at least they will be paddling fibreglass sea kayaks, so fingers crossed there will be no repeats of the sinking inflatables from the prologue!

Emerging from the sands

f.mcbryde@hotmail.com (Fiona McBryde) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 09:04:46 +0000

The top teams are nearing the end of an epic desert trek stage, with the bulk of the field having to shortcut the final checkpoint.

Teams pushing on through mile after mile of sand dunes.

Thule (NZ) have extended their already substantial lead, with Thule (France) some 30 mins back in second. Not far behind are the Swiss Wenger team, and the big movers in this stage, the Brit/Kiwi Adidas Terex team in 4th. There is a couple of hours back to the chasing bunch, which includes Orion, the Swedish Net Competance who have been in the overall podium for the first two days, and the Swedish Silva Gerber. The teams look to be travelling as a group, and have reached the final CP now, so it might come down to a 'sprint' finish (as much of a sprint as can be mustered after 24 hours walking up and down soft sand dunes that is!).

(My) Estimated time to the finish from the last CP is about 3 hours, so they should be finishing around 4pm local time. Interestingly, all teams after this chasing bunch have had to shortcut the final CP on the trek and are now making a beeline for the finish. This affects places below 8th downwards (ER Tips are collecting the final CP, but took shortcuts earlier in the trek) and includes experianced teams such as La Fuma (France) and Blackheart (Aus). There will be a fairly stiff penalty applied to teams which miss CPs, which might lead to a bit of a shake-up in the overall standings.

Then it will be a long bus ride (2-3 hours) back to the coast at Mirfa, where teams will make camp and try and prepare themselves for the fnial challenge - two days and 128km of sea kayaking back to Abu Dhabi!

Tactics in the Sands

f.mcbryde@hotmail.com (Fiona McBryde) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:49:04 +0000

The real race is now on - after two days of short, fast legs team are now battling the heat and sands with 200km of desert to cross.

Team Orion in tight formation on the bike ride (L); The amazing salt flats and dunes (R).

Starting at 4am local time (with a 2:30am wake up call!) teams began with a tough mountain bike through the so-called 'Empy Quarter' of Abu Dhabi - full of towering sand dunes, salt flats and very little else!
Race leaders Thule quickly cleared out, with the French Thule team chasing close behind. Most of the other teams making up the top 10, including Adidas and Orion seemed to settle into a peloton. the GPS tracker told of the unpredictable road surface - in places obviously hard packed with teams roaring along at 35km/hr, at other times where drifts of soft sand had blown accross the road and average speed dropping to walking pace.

At the transition teams had 30 minutes 'timed out' to change and prepare for the 115km of pure desert ahead of them. Teams must take a total of 8 hours complulsary stops at no more than two CPs along the way on this leg - time which will be used for much needed refueling and rest, if they can!

Out on the desert leg, the Kiwi Thule team elected to push on through the heat of the day, a tactic also emplyed by Adidas and a Chinese team. The bulk of the field including second-placed French Thule and our own Orion, have chosen to stop at CP H3, to take around 4 hours rest time during the heat of the day. The leading teams will of course have to take their rest time later in the course, so it remains to be seen which tactic has paid off.

Orion left CP H3 after their rest stop in the company of their friends from Blackwater (Australia), and both look to be moving well through the desert. There is still a long way to go!

Update Day 2

f.mcbryde@hotmail.com (Fiona McBryde) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 12:01:04 +0000

Message from Stu at the end of Day 2:

"On the bus to the next camp. Today was a tough day for Fleur. We all helped her as much as we could, but it was really tricky on the rough and rocky terrain. The ropes sections were fantastic, with amazing views. It felt like we lost quite a bit of time - it is looking like we will be fighting to get into the top 5 rather than being in a position to challenge the leaders. We will just focus on the job at hand, do the very best that we can do and see how we go!"

Teams on the mountain bike section.

The leader board has not yet been updated for Stage F, the final stage of Day 2 (a run/ropes section which is where it sounded like Fleur ran into some problems). After the morning bike ride, Kiwi team Thule maintained their dominance again posting the fastest time and hold a 25 minutes lead over second place. The big movers of the day have been Adidas Terrex - a combination of British and Kiwi adventure racers including former Orion member Sonya Clark, and Wellingtonian Trevor Voyce - who have moved up to 6th place. Just a few minutes behind them are Orion in 7th. As Stu points out it is a tough ask to catch the leaders who are well over an hour ahead, but a number of teams are within 10-15 minutes, so there will be plenty of excitement to come!

Orion claw their way back up the field

f.mcbryde@hotmail.com (Fiona McBryde) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:05:37 +0000

In the second two stages of Day One, Team Orion have made big inroads into the field, making up their unlucky deficit after the first kayak prologue stage.

The 30km sprint bike stage around Al Ain predictly turned into a bit of a peloton ride, with a number of top teams including Orion hanging on to Kiwi team Thule, reaching speeds of up to 40km/hour on the flat course (which on knobbly mountain bikes is pretty impressive!). Despite the stage only taking 45 minutes, Thule managed to add a few more minutes to their lead and win the stage, with Orion coming in close behind and moving up to 8th place in the overall rankings.

The next stage included a short mountain run and ropes section, the times haven't been posted yet, but Stu has indicated that they have made up more time to shift up to 4th place overall - not bad after their disastrous start this morning!

Stu Lynch said "All done for Day One - much better this afternoon. We still lost a few minutes to Thule, but are now sitting just behind two other teams in fourth place. Lots of work to do yet, and we are not looking forward to the climb up Jabeel Hafeet on the heavy bikes." (note - because it is very difficult/expensive to take luggage to Abu Dhabi the Race Organisation provides bikes for teams to use during the race - obviously not quite up to the standard of their usual state of the art bikes!) Stu continutes, "The team is in good shape so we will hopefully continue to go well tomorrow."

The teams will camp at the base of Jabeel Hafeet tonight, with a full day of running, biking and ropes tomorrow before they head to the sands of the desert's "Empty quarter".

Problems in the Prologue!

f.mcbryde@hotmail.com (Fiona McBryde) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:49:36 +0000

Nathan and Stuart in the ill-fated inflatable canoes!

The first stage of Day One of the Abu Dhabi Adventure challenge has been completed - a short, sharp run, swim and canoe stage on the main waterfront area in downtown Abu Dhabi.

Race favourites Thule have put their stamp on the race already, leading the pack by over six minutes already after only one and a half hours of racing. Orion had some very bad luck in their inflatable kayak - the base of one of their kayaks deflated early in the kayak stage, leaving them desperately trying to complete the course and lose as little time as possible. Unfortunately 2km is still a long way to paddle, and they have finished the prologue in 12th place 15 minutes down on Thule, where they had hoped to be snapping at thier heels. I asked Stu about the possibility of a time credit from the race, as the problem was with gear provided by the race organisation, but he seemed to think it unlikely - "It's just the luck of the draw, but its a shame it had to be us!". Ironically, Orion had helped out another team earlier in the kayak stage who had broken one of their paddles by lending them a spare...then with Orion's boat trouble, that team then went on to beat them!

Team Orion before the Start

Don't lose heart just yet though - at last years ADAC the team accumulated 15 minutes worth of penalties during the race, and still took second place comfortabley. There is a long way left to race! It will make Thule's lead more secure however, knowing one of their main rivals have been effectively handicapped so early in the race. Other than the kayak troubles Stu felt like the team was racing strongly - look for the team to be motivated and fighting hard to make up for lost time - my money says they will start working their way back up through the field with every stage.

Gower Coastal Marathon

stuartlynch_nz@hotmail.com (Stuart Lynch) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:20:29 +0000

Fi and I headed into Wales on Saturday to do the marathon at the Gower stage of the Endurancelife Coastal Trail series. A great venue for a run with some stunning coastal scenery and moorland terrain. Not conducive to a fast marathon time however as there were plenty of hills and mud and an extra 4k thrown in to make the total distance around 46km.

After a week of wet weather Saturday turned out to be a nice sunny day so we had warm air and great views for the run even if it was still pretty soggy underfoot.

I wasn't really expecting to be right at the front however thats where I found myself after the first few minutes so decided to keep the pressure on and see if I could run away from the rest of the pack. That seemed to work out and after a while I had left the chasing group behind and was picking off the Ultra runners and early marathon starters who had set off 45 minutes before the main marathon start.

At around 40km I was really starting to suffer especially as it was now apparent that there was much more that 2km to go! Fortunately I had just enough left to keep up a steady pace to the end and finished in 3hrs 44mins, 15mins clear of 2nd and setting a new course record by a scant 17 seconds.

Fi had a bit of trouble with her ankle but still got around in just over 5 hours, both of us really having enjoyed the Gower penninsular running.

Exmoor

stuartlynch_nz@hotmail.com (Stuart Lynch) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:03:18 +0000

A bit of training in Exmoor. A nice bit of kayaking and a decent run along the coastal path in preparation of the OMM next weekend.

World champs report

stuartlynch_nz@hotmail.com (Stuart Lynch) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:26:56 +0000

The World Championships

For 2010 Spain hosted the Adventure Racing world championships in the Castilla y Leon region, starting and finishing in the historic cities of Avila and Salamanca respectively.

Team OrionHealth.com

Our team for this years world championships consisted of myself, Brent Edwards who has raced with Orion for the past 4 years, and new Orion team members for this year, Fleur Pawsey and Nathan Peterson. We had all raced together at the Wulong mountain quest in September but this was the first time that this combination was racing together in an Expedition style race. Team OrionHealth's races this year had been plagued by injury and illness and we were especially keen at this the world championships to have a good race and get a good result. In addition to the team we had Brent's father Roy and my partner Fiona along to help with logistics and cheer the team on.

Baggage problems

Unfortunately our arrival in Spain coincided with a general transport workers strike and in the ensuing rescheduling of flights and baggage chaos we arrived in Spain missing half of our luggage. Most of the missing items were found the next day however by the time of our transfer from Madrid to Avila we were still missing Nathan's bike box, which as well as containing his bike had several other crucial items of race equipment including life jacket, paddle and inline skates. Hopeful that the airlines would find the gear we carried on with our pre-race preparation over the next few days in Avila. With race day fast approaching and still no sign of the gear the backup plan swung into action and Fi and Roy were dispatched off to a nearby city where we had arranged to borrow a bike and some other race equipment off a friend of one of the Team Buff competitors. New inline skates were purchased from the local sports shop and we were back on track to start the race with a full complement of equipment.

Race underway!

9am on Sunday 3^rd October the start gun for the 2010 Adventure race world championships was fired and we were off and racing. A quick foot orienteering section on the streets of Avila got us warmed up as we navigated to landmarks in the city. Running under the ancient city walls that we had walked around the top of during the opening ceremony the evening before, we zigzagged our way through the streets before taking to bikes and settling in for a long ride through the countryside.

Early struggles

After getting a good start in a bunch of 6 or so leading teams we had to ease off the pace and let the front runners pull away as Brent and Nathan struggled with the pace and I got out the tow line to help them out as much as I could. This first ride was split by a few hours of foot orienteering and I was hopeful that the change of discipline would be enough to help the guys recover. Nathan seemed to come right but unfortunately Brent seemed to be getting worse and worse and we were looking at a long ride of damage control as darkness descended and the rain started to fall. At least we had good gear keeping us warm and we made slow but steady progress though the stage until about 10km from the next transition, when Brent could not physically continue and we were forced to stop and rest. After a pretty uncomfortable hour and a half lying in a farmers field we carried on to transition.

Splitting up

Added a bit of a twist to the racing the following stage involved splitting the team into pairs; two would kayak while the other two ran, then at the far end of the lake kayakers and runners switched and returned. There were different routes to take for each pair so we gave Brent and Nathan the easier option with the hope that they could get a bit of rest as we expected the hard route to take significantly longer. Fleur and I kayaked first, had half an hour rest waiting for the guys at the far end before setting off on our run leg. Given how much quicker we were on the kayaking we expected guys to beat us by about an hour on the way back to transition so we set a good pace and ran as much as we could to try and make up some time. Surprisingly we were first back to transition. Brent and Nathan arrived about 15 minutes later having had a lot of difficulty locating a partially hidden checkpoint on the lake, which several other teams had struggled with also. So the guys had not had the rest that we had hoped for, but on the positive side Brent seemed to be on better form as we took to the bikes again for another tough bike ride.

A serious accident!

A few hours into the ride we were making our way up a never-ending vehicle track though forest and farmland. Having been riding along for a while just focussed on the front wheel I looked around at the team to see Brent and Fleur, but no sign of Nathan. Figuring that he had just fallen back a little we stopped and waited for him to catch up. After a minute or two with no sign we realised that something must be wrong – probably a puncture or other mechanical - so I started riding back down the hill to see what the story was. A few corners down I came across team Merrell stopped on the track. Down the side of the steep bank was Nathan lying prone with two of team Merrell in attendance. Having obviously had a serious fall and hit his head quite hard (his helmet was fractured and had been torn from his head) it was quickly decided that we had to get medical help, and so the emergency beacons were activated and we did what we could to keep him comfortable until the helicopter arrived. With no-one having seen the accident and there being risk of head or spinal injury the medics took no chances and got Nathan on a stretcher and into the helicopter to be flown to Avila to be checked out.

Team Merrell and Cynosis who had stopped to help carried on racing, while we kept on with Nathan's gear and bike to the nearest road where we met Antonio the race director who would shuttle the gear on to the next transition. With our race officially over we took the shortest route possibly to the next transition, where we were relieved to hear that Nathan had been checked out, and apart from a mild concussion was otherwise fine.

Carrying on

At this point morale was pretty low. Our world championships bid was over and our friend and team-mate has been hospitalised. We had come a long way to race this course however, and we had so far only completed about a third of it. Brent decided that he had had enough and would not continue but Fleur and I were keen to finish what we had started, so once we had gotten the ok from the race organisation we kitted up again and re-joined the race.

Two go the distance

Over the next four days we raced as a team of two. At times it was tough continuing knowing that we were not a ranked team, however the challenge and beauty of the course reminded us that it is the adventure part of adventure racing which is the great attraction of the sport. Five and a half days after we started in Avila we completed another street orienteering stage through the city of Salamanca to finish the 2010 adventure racing world championships with a spray of champagne and cheers from our friends and retired team mates. We were unranked, only half a team, but had overcome adversity and terrain to complete a truly challenging adventure.

Many thanks to our incredibly supportive sponsors. It hasn't been the podium finish we were aiming for, but we hope we've still put in a worthy performance for the OrionHealth.com team, facing challenges, and never giving up!