This race and trip has been a very special experience for each of us. My special thanks go to Lotta, from the organising company Saga Events. We first met in 2005 when I went to France as media for the Raid World Champs. Lotta kindly remembered me and our country way down in the South of Africa and generously facilitated our coming over. Elise handled all our visas and flight bookings, also answering our race questions.
Hand in hand with Lotta is the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority who put up their special Awards for teams, who have not competed internationally, to attend their event. This initiative contributes to the sport of adventure racing as a whole, and not just this event. We cannot begin to express our appreciation for this opportunity suffice to say a huge thank you for your vision and generosity in making this possible for us.
Friends and family at home, thank you for your support and encouragement during the race and through the months of our race preparation. It is great just knowing you are in our corner willing us through each stage.
To all the friendly South Africans from the city, islands, stages, desert and every where else we encountered you, thank you for making the effort to find us, say hello and cheer us on. A special thanks to Wendy, Lizane for taking us sightseeing in Dubai. It really is a tribute to the friendly warmth of South Africans in sharing their time and hearts with a team of strangers. Thank you.
There is adventure racing and there is the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge. It is an exceptional race made distinctive through its staged format, 5-Star cuisine on nights catered by the event, brilliant organisation and logistics and warm hospitality and the social vibe. But, make no mistake, although this race lets you sleep and the catered meals will blow your mind, it is still a tough physical adventure sport event. The competitive race upfront is unbelievably fast and the athletes are incredible.
As for the race setting... The clear waters of the Gulf, the magnificent desert islands and, of course, the Lewa desert will have you gaping. I preferred Abu Dhabi to Dubai, its smaller but more well known brother; and unlike this popular sibling Abu Dhabi is not all malls and hotels (though there are enough of these, with more coming). Abu Dhabi has all of these wonderful outdoor pursuits, especially paddling and desert trips, to offer visitors.
Finally, my teammates. Thank you firstly for applying to join me on this race. It is usually trying enough to race with friends or an established team, yet you took the chance on me, my choice of teammates for us, this unusual opportunity and our mix-match team.
Lobby, Garth and Chris, you are all special racers with open hearts, well rounded abilities and skills, initiative and warm and kind personalities that will complement any team you join or create.
I could not have been more fortunate than to spend this time and racing experience with you.
That's about it from me. Over the next few days I'll post some stuff on what we ate, photos, GPS tracks from the desert trek and other bits.
Till then, enjoy the weekend.
Sent using my Sony Ericsson C902
3 comments:
sounds like a brilliant event. glad you're all back safe.
Looking forward to the additional info. What would it cost for a team that does not have sponsorship?
What happened to the inline skating? I don't think you mentioned anything about it?
I'll add a cost breakdown shortly. No, there was no inline skating this year - thank goodness. We worked on our paddling a lot so making more time to train inline would have been tough.
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