I’m excited to announce that we have secured funding to return to Abu Dhabi in 6 weeks time to race in the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge and to defend our title from last years inaurgural race.
The team will be known as Team Desert Islands which is a project being developed by the Tourisim, Development and Investment arm of the Abu Dhabi Tourisim Authority.
A whole day after flying back in to Nelson from Trinidad it was bags packed and off to the airport once again. This time minus Elina who had decided she had suffered through enough travelling in the past 3 weeks and would relax at home while I headed for the West Coast of Australia and the third round of the Anaconda series held 3 hours south of Perth in Dunnsborough. Read the rest of this entry »
After a whole 2 days at home in Nelson after Motu it was back on the road, this time via aeroplane and off for to Trinidad for our third trip to the Tropical Power Coast to Coast. The flight to the Caribbean is not a short one and we broke up the trip with an overnight in LA. After having the best flight ever in economy class due to there being almost no people on the flight and having the luxury of a whole row of seats each to lie down it was back to the usual chaos as we checked in at LA only for the American Airlines computer system to crash and be out of operation for nearly an hour and a half.
Motu is at an awkward time of year for us, amongst a hectic schedule and too early in the season to invest too much time in being at the top of your game and subsequently being flat for other races as far away as February or March. Elina and I headed to Opotiki feeling a little under done preparation wise but hopeful that being reasonably rested physically if not mentally would enable us to get through the day with a reasonable result. 
With barely a week to recover from the first round of the Anaconda series in Australia Elina and I were back on a plane, this time heading for the Wulong county in China for the Wulong Mountain Quest, a 4 person mixed teams race, set over 4 days of racing. The flights and lay over’s were tedious as usual but we managed to waste away our time in Hong Kong at a shop which sold massaging chairs, foot massages, head massages etc, a very relaxing way to spend 6 hours. If I could have got one of the chairs back on the plane I’d probably have done so! Read the rest of this entry »
Elina and I are super happy to be joining with up with Kia Motors. We have upgraded the van to a new Kia Sorento, their top of the line 4×4. The new car has halfed our fuel consumption and made all the NZ travel so much more comfortable. Attached are a couple of photos, some from our first road trip where we encounted 40cm of snow of top of the Hope saddle only 70km from Nelson. The local Kia dealer Ken Page is also a keen multisporter.
Olympians, World Champions and National Surf Ironman champions lined up with nearly 500 other athletes at the first leg of the Anaconda Adventure Race National Series on the Gold Coast. Richard Ussher tops impressive line-up. Click on this link to read more ….
There are now a couple of pictures in the Gallery from the race in Are. A big thanks to Anders Burman, Fredrik Ivansson and Thomas Hjärtström for supplying the photos. There is also a 18 minute video of the race at the following link
(I think you have to sign up to face book to view)
I’m currently bidding my time in Stockholm airport on the way back to Finland after a great weekend in Äre in Sweden where I was competing in the Nordic Multisport Champs. Will post a full race report this week but the race was over a fantastic course with a really good level of competition. I was happy to have recovered resonably well from the Irish race and had a good win and took 5 minutes off the race record in the process.
To cut a long story short our race ended prematurely when Elina was withdrawn from the race with just one leg remaining. Her illness that she had been battling for the 2 months prior to the race resurfaced and the medical staff deemed it too risky for her to continue. Full race report to follow shortly.
Read the rest of this entry »
