In January when travelling to UAE for Dubai marathon, my
flight got cancelled because of fog! I managed to get the start with some other
flight fortunately, but I apart from the full refund of the cancelled flight I
got also one more free ticket for Dubai as apology for the trouble. I call that
customer care ;) They should learn this in Qatar as well.
Meeting Jaro, Rune, picking some gear from Mostafa and do
some shopping was a good plan how to spend a weekend, but better to have
something more J And when I saw that there was kind of adventure race in Al
Ain I could try, it was decided to plan the weekend around that. And it fell on
the week just before my holidays in Nepal and as closeout of Middle East racing
season.
Wadi Adventure Race 3 was the third edition of an obstacle
race in Al Ain Wadi Adventure aquapark. 10k course with some desert running,
swimming thought various water features, some climbing and other twists was a
gulf take on popular race series like Spartan race or Tough Mudder. I don’t
know how about the others, more famous brothers, but when I saw the proposition
of W.A.R 3 I thought: “It is basically like a 10k run! With few short
variations being less than ¼ of the distance” I always wanted to try a race
like this, because I thought that with my multisport experience I might be
quite good in it J This race was then a perfect opportunity to prove it! I took it quite seriously and with Jaro we
camped just outside the venue to save the morning drive and also to scout the
terrain, because I had never been in Wadi Adventure park before.
In the morning I felt ready and prepared. Well
prepared for usual Middle East sunny and hot race conditions. But that morning
was all cloudy and when we were walking to the start it was seriously raining!
“Well what to do… conditions are the same for everyone. Let’s stick to the
strategy” I ordered and lined up for the start. Since it was a 10k course with
a lot of running, my strategy was to go as fast as you would run a 10k race and
see what happens during the race!
And my 10k pace as I remembered form the last 10k I did was
3:30 mint per kilometer, so I started like this! I was in UAE so I didn’t know
what kind of people would come for such race, but to my advantage the other
competitors seemed more like surfers, bodybuilders and fitness types rather
that runners or triathletes! So after the initial straight and flat 3k run,
which I finished in slightly more than 10 minutes, I had a nice lead.
Next came the water park! Started with walking on balance
bars and then straight to a 250m long flooded tunnel. I tried freestyle first,
but I felt it was too exhausting, so I switched to breaststroke, to recover and
save some energy if someone closed behind. Swimming freestyle with shoes
doesn’t speed you up either. 3m ladder to climb out next and then jump straight
3m down to another pool. Swim across 50m, climb up and quickly down to a white
water channel to wade against the current. The first one was easy, but when I
got to the second one, it got quite hard.
Then through the channel feeding waterfall, climb out of the
pool and to the next one which had to be crossed jumping on up-side-down turned
rafts. My advantage was that I was still the first and no one was slowing me
down. Especially during the jumping the gaps between the rafts could get too
wide to cross when someone before moved them with his jump J
After that a short run to a “Bag Toss” challenge
which was throwing a fist size sand bag to six meter far 40cm big bucket and
you had to score two. All the way the race organizer and designer was riding in
from of me on the bike showing me the way. On the race briefing he said that
the Bag Toss was his favorite. Grab a bag, aim, throw, score…grab a bag, aim,
throw, score…and I was done in less than 20 seconds. “Man…you make everything
look so easy!” complained the organizer once we got moving again ;) And it was not
that easy at all! Jaro took more than 20 attempts to pass!
After a short run and 5 meters of hand over hand
on monkey bars, I was out of the park again for more desert running. But this
time I was not fresh at all! Quick and changing pace brought quite tough belly
(diaphragm) pain and breath shortage and I had to slow down to 5 min/km to
recover and catch some air! After some
1.5k of pain came climbing some 1 meter high fences and crawling under a low
rope web. Last time it was a barbed wire!! I got a drink there and that along
with slow pace during 1km of carrying 10kg sand bag helped me to speed up again
and be ready for the final sprint!
It was not a sprint at the end, because nobody caught up on
me, but it was a fight against a rugby squad with blocking mats! And because I
was the first to come, they were really tough on me and I had to use all my
aggression to get through! Then “The Wall”, 2.5m high wooden box, was a piece
of cake to climb and get to the finish!
Woohoo!! Much better than I expected! Well…I knew there was
a possibility of doing good, but because I didn’t the UAE people I kept any
expectations at bay!
But this was really a final and nicely sweet (and
heavy too J) dot after the spring race season in Middle
East. Now comes two hot months of trying to train for my IRONMAN!
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