It’s Friday morning on Abu Dhabi corniche. Sun is rising above a long row of 100 orange inflatable canoes carefully prepared on the beach. 200 athletes are frenetically running around them, making last checks of inflation, seats and paddles and then slowly walking towards a giant inflated arch…getting ready for start of what everybody was waiting for.
ECO-RACERS are there also, somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Milan is thoughtful, Jaro looks confused, Yasa is laughing with her sister and I’m serious. I have never been doing any sport competitively in my life and attended very few various competitions, but in every one of them I somehow had a strong feeling to get to the limit and to do whatever it takes to be better than the others!! “We trained hard, we are good, we are going to RACE and be better than the others” I’m thinking and adrenaline is pumping up to my veins.
FIVE…FOUR…THREE…TWO…ONE…GO!!! Everybody sprints across the beach, boards the canoes and with geysers of water spraying from 200 paddles all boats are trying to pass around two boys and get back to the beach. We are getting hit from various sides by other canoes, losing speed and straight line. It’s a real naval battle. We arrive back between the last 10 teams. “It was just 500 meters…they are not far” I comfort myself.
We lose another couple of minutes by putting on the shoes (we rode barefoot to have the shoes dry…in contrast to the most of the other teams) so we are between last five teams starting the 3km run to swimming beach. “We take them over easily, they run like snails” I’m sure when watching few teams ahead and lazily adjusting my backpack jogging and waiting for the others to get the pavement. “OK team…let’s race!!!” I shout and I start running with a speed for 10k Dubai race, around 16km/h.
And……and that’s it!!! The race is over. When I turn around after 30 seconds everybody is 100m behind me and I see the speed Yasa is “jogging” forward. I try something like “Come on…it’s just 3 kilometers…we can make it faster…” but nothing changes and I only hear “We shouldn’t burn ourselves out at the beginning!!”. Inside my head I hear what our guru Ondrej said “You cannot criticize a team member during the race. You will make it even worse”, so I only say for myself through clenched teeth “If not now then when? After we rest 4 hours in the bus? Or tomorrow after we rest the whole night?” We are slowly passing another UAE team which looks like they have not been running in their entire lives.
We are keeping pace with last 5 teams through 700m swimming section and during the 3km run back to the canoes. We gain few spots when I almost burn myself out on the 3km canoe ride to a desert island, but we lose it again while walking!! 3km loop through two small dunes. Berserk ride back doesn’t change much. We are way behind my expectations, especially when seeing that the other teams can be beaten…by me L “And that is the sour, but indisputable truth. Team work is not about the individuals. It’s about the team!! And the individuals are as strong as is the team” I dream in the bus to Al Ain and 30km city bike sprint. On the next seat I hear Yasa having fun.
FIVE…FOUR…THREE…TWO…ONE…GO!!! Within 3 minutes everybody is gone and I can see Yasa battling through a roundabout. We are passing a team repairing punctured tire. After another few kilometers she is staring to get cramps to her legs, so we need to slow down even more. Riding in a draft is useless.
“Try to be pushing her” whispers a guy from “Broken tire” team rocketing around us. Experience speaks, because it works and in changing square formation we are catching up teams we think are long gone. Unfortunately on the last 6km rocky ridge crossing to the Camp 1, we have to walk and with cramps coming every 100m we are more standing than moving. With more steps more cramps. With more cramps tears come. We try to carry Yasa, but once we reach the uphill we had to stop.
At the end we made it to the camp. We lost one hour on the team ahead on this stage and ended up the first day on 49th place!! Out of 50. “What we are going to do tomorrow?” we looked at each other with Milan after seeing the road book full of time deadlines. “Today it should have been a warm up!!” In the distance we hear Yasa coming back from the delicious pasta/salad dinner laughing and making jokes.
FIVE…FOUR…THREE…TWO…ONE…GO!!! In the blink of an eye most of the teams disappear into the beautiful second racing morning. We line up to our position in the field and I’m jogging or walking behind the team of three South African girls. When we reach back our bikes we know already what to do so with Milan we keep pushing Yasa without break all those 800 vertical meters up to Jebel Hafeet on 14km winding road. On the top it surprises that we are still one hour ahead of the cut-off time. We are optimistic. Somebody more.
But we know that progressing on a rocky mountain terrain down the Jebel is not our strong side and a scenic via ferrata with few jams because of even slower teams doesn’t help at all. After our elimination not far from the last cut-off point before another ferrata and hike up the Jebel again, our mood is deadly. We leave with Milan without word towards the rescue bus for losers leaving everybody behind. We talk about what the race organizer Sylvain said when we first saw him in October “It usually happens that couples break up after the challenge J”
With feeling of sadness and envy I watched majestic Jebel Hafeet disappearing in the dusk imagining myself jumping from boulder to boulder, climbing rocks and abseiling cliffs. I thought this would be my strongest discipline, but didn’t have chance to show anybody…not even myself!!
After the second day we jumped to 46th place mainly thanks to the bike section which we completed in 34th fastest time!! “Impossible!!” I thought when looking at standings in the next desert camp, but shortly after that it clicked “Wait a minute…that means…that we are strong enough that even if we keep pushing Yasa all the way we might do some recent result”.
FIVE…FOUR…THREE…TWO…ONE…GO!!! This time we are leaving everybody disappear into the night of 90km desert bike stage and continue slowly on before last position. Pushing is too dangerous. Darker it is, slower we go. Slower we go, more tears fall down. Everything changes with the sunrise. “Yasa go…don’t stop” I’m commanding while pushing her up the dune. “Yasa off the bike…on the bike and ride” she hears from the back when we take her bike through the soft sand. I look like a cruel captain in military training camp. I know that, but I don’t stop. I’m finally racing. In a bit different way, but I’m. And I like it J
In this fashion we pass few teams on the way to the second checkpoint and another three resting teams on the checkpoint itself, because of “Refill the water…put isostar…quickly…let’s go…Yasa here is your bike”. After the checkpoint there are no more teams in sight. The field tail is behind us. Only better teams are ahead now. I’m warming up. With more kilometers more commands come. With more pushing more tears are spilled.
After half an hour of obligatory break next to magical Qasr Al Sarab resort we walk in a good mood through castle like huts and villas towards the endless desert and another 90km of pure dune running and hiking. Somebody is in better mood.
I know that the next 22 hours we have to go with average speed of 4 km/h to finish in time so I walk up the first dune in that speed. The seriousness of this fact is not understood therefore I’m taking the rubber leash and clipping Yasa into my train. And I really feel like a locomotive. Desert and heat is my territory. All day long properly hydrated with isotonic drinks and well fed with high caloric energy bars and gels, I’m full of energy and nothing can stop me from keeping up the speed. I’m completely focused and submerged in the race. Even Jaro and Milan need to push a bit harder J “Jiriii…slow down!!” I hear from behind. “Why?” I reply. Silence. “We can gain some time on this salt plain. Let’s run” I suggest. I hear arguments, but no good ones. We run. After a while the tension in the leash loosens a bit and I hear our adventure guru’s voice “The leash is more a mental support and motivation than real pulling device”. When we see our final checkpoint before 8 hour rest I feel the leash pulling me. “Let’s run guys. It’s just there”. I take off the leash and we keep walking. We say nothing.
At the end of the day we are at the checkpoint H4 just nicely with the sunset. After the sleep we will wake up at 2am and will have another 15 hours to finish remaining 55km. We have a good time and the stage looks promising. We are feeling good. Somebody better.
I don’t feel tired when we wake up. Adrenaline still running high in my veins so I take energy bar breakfast and we go again. Same speed. Same style. Quickly following footsteps through the night. At 8am we stand at the Checkpoint H5. “Now 15km straight to H6 and then 15km to finish. 10 hours left” I say, but then we all watch several teams slowly walking to H5+. We were not planning to collect any optional checkpoints and wanted to go the straightest way possible. “But look…it’s only 8km longer and we still have some time. But we need to be fast!!”
With a vision of saving 6 hours of penalty time for optional checkpoint we are running on salt plains and downhill, quickly pacing between the dunes, making correct decisions which footsteps to take and gaining. We are overtaking teams we have never seen before…Americans, Norwegians, even New Zealanders. We make it to H5+. Quick look on the watch and we push forward.
But we are not supermen. 5 kilometers before the last checkpoint is visible that this ruthless trail is taking toll on us. Jaro is slowly falling behind. Yasa silently suffering her blisters under headphones. I’m almost out of fuel and my tireless steam engine is flickering out. Fortunately there is still Milan with some spare strength and he takes Yasa in his train. I’m following and picking up the last bits of energy.
We reach H6 and taking out our ace in the sleeve J From here to finish it is 15km straight across 4 dune crossings and only few plains. But if you know the area from October training session you can chose a way only 5km longer with only one easy dune crossing and the rest on road or plainJ Our progress is light speed. We force ourselves to run almost all the time. Just to be faster in the finish and suffer less. But with more speed comes more pain. And with more pain come more tears.
Just when we could see the typical finish arch on the last plain where we are descending from completely different direction, we saw another bunch of teams we had never seen before. Our “shortcut” worked!! 500m before the arch Yasa suddenly stopped watering the desert, unleashed herself and tried to be first in the finish line. But the fame was ours J We finished this stage two hours before the limit and on amazing 25th place which catapulted us up to 30th spot overall.
In the next camp on the beach before the last two day 120km sea kayak section, we were not thinking about celebrations and were preparing even harder for the next challenge. The race was not over yet!!
That unfortunately changed next morning when very strong wind came and the whole stage got cancelled!! I was confident that rough conditions would be even better for us and we could maybe gains something more, because we were familiar with sails and had some sea kayak experience in the waves, but it was a good call. There were plenty of teams not that experienced that much and it would be a hazard.
So the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge 2010 was over. And not even three 11km kayak loops in Abu Dhabi bay the last sixth day could change that fact or play some role in changing teams overall standings. Such a shame L Was it? Now I’m sitting back in my Qatar apartment and I have already been thinking a lot what happened there and how. Conclusion?
It was the first race of the kind I did and I loved it. I was whole 6 days completely focused and hadn’t thought about anything else. I felt like being somebody else…I felt complete. The race was perfectly organized thanks to oil money of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, the routes were beautifully done, it was tough, challenging and fun, but not a killer. Simply awesome. I also tried how it is to race in a team, which I’ve never done before also, and experienced all the good and bad it brings. And that is the beauty and tragedy of this sport!!
P.S. Apart from personal battles we won 2000USD price money for the team J
