Completed AAC Hong Kong 2007 yesterday with Tempo Sparks teamate Andy. Photos & write up will come soon, first take a look at the race route to put things in persepective.
Showing posts with label Adventure Race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adventure Race. Show all posts
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Action Asia Challenge Hong Kong 2007
Sunday, December 09, 2007
The Road to Action Asia Challenge Week 3
On the penultimate weekend to Action Asia Challange, I paired up with Alain, my running pal in the SCB team to do the Action Asia Eco Adventure. It was such an interesting course, covering ground in a familiar area but trails that I never knew they existed. We started in Ocean Park, where the Shark and Flower mascots should lead the way with gentle stroll through the Panda habitat. But it seems all patience was lost after going through 5 speeches before the whistle was reluctantly blown, the Shark and the Flower sprinted faster than any of the runners and the race got underway.
We had to coastalteer the boulders toward DeepWater Bay, before walking up a tunnel which is the mouth of a river. Then up some brush wracking trails, through some pitch black tunnels, before going up a stairways from hell to the top of Nicolas Hills. Then down a even steeper trail so slippery as if filled with ball bearings. On the way down we caught Alan and Arthur form Sonics, the former was nursing a bad wrist and elbow from the MTB on the previous day and the latter a bad knee after Macau Half Marathon the previous week, hence taking their downhill carefully. "Bad for them, Good for us." said Alain crudely, who was eager to beat anyone in our age group.
Back to Deep Water Bay via the mouth of the river again, came the 2km kayak. We cruised down and caught 1-2 boat, on the return leg, we again caugh sight of Alan and Arthur and Alain did another trademark assault, "Come On, my grandma can go faster than that!" I started legging my kayak as I know they were not going to take the abuse lightly, an could just imagine Arthur snapping the paddle in two and start outrigging the kayak. The kayak route above was based on Alan's GPS watch marking, look how furiously straight they have paddled after Alain's abuse.
Finally, an easy jog around the coastal walk to Repulse Bay. We finished 2hr23mins with Alan & Arthur finished just 4-5 mins behind.
Coming Next Week, the Action Asia Challange Hong Kong 2007!!! The mother of all races.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Road to Action Asia Challenge
The Action Asia Challenge Hong Kong will be held on Dec 15. I suddenly realised I will have a race every sunday from now on to warm up for the big day:
25Nov - King of the Hill - Sai Kung: 15km of Trail Running
2Dec - Unicef Half Marathon - 21km around the Disney Resort
9Dec - Action Asia Eco Adventure - 10km run and 2k kayak
Friday, May 25, 2007
Action Asia Photos
Monday, October 09, 2006
The Race On A Battle Field
Now comes the proper write up of my Action Asia Challenge, Kinmen…
“Gun, Tanks and Steel” Michael Madness the organizer of the Action Asia Challenges told us that was what we have signed up for. So team “Tempo Sparks” descend onto Kinmen Island of Taiwan for our second adventure race in 2006. It was 8:30am on 1st Oct, I have been up since 5am to condition myself for the days ahead; we have scouted the first session of the race route as soon as we disembarked the Ferry onto Little Kinmen; and we have forced ourselves all the way up to the starting line ribbon. Gripping the ribbon tightly and breathing in the dense air, every muscle was so prepared. ... his secret weapon, a banana hidden under his forearm gaiter, which has been accidentally squashed anyhow Then out of no where came the Hawaiian beach music played to us by the Kinmen County Government!! Relax, aren't we getting too serious with these races, the Taiwan Action Asia was destined to be a bit of a chill out affairs. Franz the strange South African from team “Ancient Mariner” was revealing to me his secret weapon, a banana hidden under his forearm gaiter, which has been accidentally squashed anyhow (another of his home brew gadget is the duck tape gaiters at his ankles to seal off the mud and sand). A group of Singaporeans behind us were dancing to the tasty music. We know we were up for some sweat may be but lots of laughs.
The fact that we were racing on a former battlefield wasn’t intimidating at all, rather the labyrinth of underground tunnels and waterside caves added lots of fun the thrill to the race. Once the whistle was blown, we ran up to small hilly cliff top and descend onto a pier on the other side, and then we leaped into the air and dropped 7 or 8m to the sea and swam into a military tunnel. Crawling through knee high water in the dark, we hit a steel leader at the end of the cave and found ourselves back to where we started, like in a James Bond movie! Back on our Bond mobil, our bikes, we had to circum-navigate the island. The cycling path was a nice and wide paved road around the island, but we were sandwiched between live mine fields on either side. We were told not to corner in extreme speed, in case we launched ourselves through the bared wire and onto one of the Communist – Nationalist Civil War era explosives.
Next we had to kayak across the strait to Big Kinmen, Michael said it had taken him anytime from 45mins to 2 hours in the last few trial, but with the current working against us, we shoudl expect the upper end. In the end it has taken us 1hr15mins to paddle across but we have overtaken 10 teams, helped one cap-sided team to get back onto their kayak, allowed 3 teams to re-overtake us again and witnessed those pathetic dumpsters that we helped out to go capped sided again.
Running through towns and villages in extreme heat, Andy chose to distract himself by practicing his broken Mandarin on the University Students who volunteered as human road signs. The running was occasionally interrupted by more tunnels, longer swimming, and horizontal abseils across the university, abseiling into more military caves and so forth. At one point we lost the road marks while walking through the bush and were shitting ourselves for stepping on some landmines, we found the way out safely and dashed across a wasted field in the university campus then every officials around shouted on top of their voice, ‘Wrong Way, Get Out.’ I wonder if I was close to losing a limp or two.
We were constantly exchanging our positions with two teams which we decided to call them our arch-rivals. “SART Pinnacle” a Singaporean ladies team who re-overtook us while we were rescuing the capped sided team on the kayak, and “FAH-Q” two massive American body builders whose evil deed being jumping the queue in front of me for the horizontal abseil. We out-swam both teams at one instant and had them hot on our heals, but “SART Pinnacle” finally out-biked us again. one of the G. I. Joes sandwiching between me and Andy at times on the final bike sprint, only to have Andy pushing through his limit to fight him off. When closing in on finishing line, one of the tasks in the shooting range was to throw some heavy steel grenades into the window of a brick house 20-30m away. Embarrassingly we had a dozen throws each, Andy was so dehydrated that his throws was barely hitting the wall and mines were chipping everywhere but the target, then to our despair the G.I. Joes (team FAH-Q) was closing in, they breezed through air rifle part like a piece of cake. Fortunately at this point I pulled off the sweetest throw and hit the goal, save me from watching the bigger G. I. Joe doing a hole in one.
It was a tense finish for us, with one of the G. I. Joes sandwiching between me and Andy at times on the final bike sprint, only to have Andy pushing through his limit to fight him off. Finally we arrived at the Kinmen Liquor Factory for the glory laps of abseil and flying fox finish. Result :31 out of 56 teams, 7hr44mins. We have definitely became more exprienced and more able to enjoy ourselves in these torturing events.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Action Asia Taiwan, Kinmen
Just got back from Kinmen Island of Taiwan for my third adventure race this year, so far so good for my year of adventure race. The race was 60km long, with half of it being biking, 1/3 running around, a bit of swimming and an hour of ocean crossing kayaking. The island is actually quite flat but the race course still has got some unique charaters in the form of military tunnels. We had to labour our way through underground maze, swimming into a waterfilled tunnels for army ships, jumping off 10m high piers. And finally a flying fox finish (below) from the top of liquor factory. A little bit tired right now, so hope to find some time this week.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Action Asia Challenge Macau
A bit of an late update since I lost my internet connnection at home last week. Finally completed the last leg of my three races in 6 weeks schedule in Macau with the Action Asia Challenge. This time I am partnering Andy in team Tempo Sparks again. We have raced together under this name since 2003 for 3 times already. Kin my partner in Moganshan is also racing with Larry, another mountian biker, under the team name of Windcatcherz. So without saying a personal battle quickly developed between the two teams, to make myself clear, I want to kick their ass real bad.
I cannot have a more enjoyable race than this one, after doing these races regularly enough, I am now getting to know so many of them when we rubbed shoulders on the narrow race track. Ah Keung from my group of climbing friends is another person I know personally. But there is nothing more fun than racing back to back with friends you know.
The first part of the race is mostly on foot, shortly after the starting run, we have to swim across a lake and landed ashore like in the Battle of Normandy. Andy's swimming goggle he bought at the hotel disintegrated at first touch of water and that dragged us down a bit. But we quickly recovered our pace and were taking over people on the coasteering section, that is mix of running and swimming along the rocky boulders along the coast, and occasionally climing up cargo nets from the sea. We got passed Windcatcherz quietly and tried to stretch our lead. We know any advantage is shortlived as the second half of the section was on bikes, interluded with some hill climbing with fixed ropes, kayaking, abseiling and getting wet again and again for no reasons. I realised I have developed this fear on off road biking since the injury, but I tried my best to stay on the mount while charging downhill. We could see Kin and Larry right on our tail at every checkpoints.Finally Windcatcherz pressed home their advantage and overtook us at a stretch of downhill biking trail, but 5 mins later when we got to the abseiling check point, we executed it in commando freefall style and overtook them again. Though at the penultimate part was 15mins cycling on road toward the Macau Tower and we cannot pushed our bikes any harder to fight them off. Finally we came to the last 2km run across a bridge toward the finishing line. Though Andy's injury is kicking in, his had been closed to breaking his knee at the coasteering and now the swelling has taken its toll. I can see Kin and Larry just at the top of the bridge and at our top running speed, we probably stood a chance of catching up with them. But injuries is just part of the race and it is all these uncertainties that turns a race into an adventure.
Thus I have time for a mini break, but the calendar is still busy in the rest of the year. I am gonna team up with Alain and Alice from work as a relay team in the Korea Ironman at end of August, the new challenge is to swim 3.8km at open sea.
More from Freeyasoul on: Adventure Race
Thursday, May 25, 2006
The Year of Race Continue
Well, it has been almost two weeks since the nasty accident. The wound has semi-recovered, the hole has closed up but not all the flesh has grown back. I've been visiting a GP doctor the first day I got back and it was only a week later I found out he was completely useless in treating me. On Monday about 9 days after putting in the stiching, I went to see him to take out the stiching and he had no idea whether I should take them out, he even let me decide for myself! Luckily I went to see my friend Geroge who is a top surgeon who took them out for me. The stiching was serving no purpose at that point.
This weekend comes another race I have signed up for, which is the triathlon in Bintan. I am flying over there today. George said I shouldn't swim, so I have bought all the plaster of the latest technology from Watson's, hopefulling combining with the help of some climbing tape, I can seal the cut water tight. It is only 750m of swimming in any case. Anyway I won't take this race too serious this time.
To finish off, here are some photos of the Moganshan Race posted by the organisers.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Moganshan Misadventure (Part 2)
.....let me continue with my misadventure, jumping on the ambulance, I began a 15 minutes ride to the town clinic. We had to stopped couple of time for the nurse, who had cleaned my wound 20 times earlier while waiting for the ambulance, to throw up on the side of the road. But maybe she is just doing that to make me feel better. Anyway, the ambulance stopped in this dimly lit village house otherwise known as the town clinic. In the next 2 hours I enjoyed a variety of hospital treatments which adds up to and outrageous 57 RMB!! Here is what I get for that bargain price
1) An X-Ray on my knee
2) An X-Ray analysis that tells me no bones has been broken (yeah but I did cycle for another 30 minutes before getting my rescued)
3) A merciless shower on my knee with Hydrogen Peroxide water which makes all wound go fizzy ( and burnt)
4) More cleaning and rubbing on that hole above my bone (painful)
5) Dirt picking with a tweezer on that hole above my bone (damn painful)
6) Couple of stiching performed without anesthetic (and when he yanked up the hole it was bloody damn painful)
7) Another X-Ray
8) Another X-Ray analysis to ensure me no bones were broken
9) 4 jabs of Tetanus injection each 15 minute apart on my bump
I must say despite the rawness of the treatments, both the doctor and the nurse did a good and hygenic jobs. But paying all that for just 57RMB makes me impossible to settle my mind.
So this very much concluded my Moganshan Adventure. When next morning I heard at the prizing ceremony that one of the female competitor whose team came first in female catogories, had suffered a even worse accident in more or less the same area that I did. The carbon fibre handle bar broke in a clean snap and cut deep into one of her finger that a piece of flesh was just tangling, and also a cut on her forearm that would need a few stiching. Yet she denied immediate medical attention and finsihed the race I guess about 8 hours later. I felt pretty damn useless myself, may be I should have done the wild thing and endured it to the very end.
Though as I am writing up my ordeal, I think if I were to choose again, I will still jump on the ambulance to preserve my leg. There is George Mallory who challenge his wildest dream to the end and there is Joe Simpson who makes it back safely and writes a bestseller. I would rather be the latter.
More from Freeyasoul on: Adventure Race
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Moganshan Misadventure (Part 1.5)
Before I finished off my ordeal, just a lighthearted interlude. When I got back I called Icarus, the man who got me into mountain biking, and told him what happen. His reaction was an invitation to his mountain bike trip to Huangshan in July.
And take a look, we've made it to the local paper! (Me at the front, my partner Kin at the back)
More from Freeyasoul on: Adventure Race
Monday, May 15, 2006
Moganshan Misadventure (Part 1)
Right here I am to tell you about my (mis)adventure in Moganshan Explorating Race. Flying out on Friday afternoon with lots of familiar faces, they were all regular in KOTH races but finally I can put name to their faces. The Japanese girl who sat next to me on the flight said these races were like a school trip, you jumped on a plane and knows everyone. It turned out that she was the woman team champion of last year's race in Ziyuan.
The race started off with orienteering around the tourist region of Moganshan, we ran around the hill looking for checkpoints that contain puzzles to solve. We finished a little bit outside the allowed time but there were probably about another 7 teams behind us. Jumping on our bikes we glided down the single track bike trail, for the next 4 hours, it were just never ending undulating hills of biking, sometimes we were going through bamboo forest and sometimes we were on dirt road with think muds deposited by the down pours in the pass few days. One of the interval was to carry a 5m long bamboo trunk on our bikes and carried it for about 3km. The biking was not easy for me but I was enjoying the challenge and the landscape.
Finally we made it to CP3 and there was a choice to skip the technical biking session and take a short cut to CP4. As much as I would like to skip that, I felt like facing up to my inner fear. Also my partner Kin is a good biker and I don't want to deny him the fun. So we cycled up to a steep hill and entered the off road trail once again. There were so many sessions that was impossible to cycle and we had to push the bike. It was purely a matter of judgement of which slope to take on. Then on one seemingly innocent gentle downhill staircase made up of lose rocks, I followed Kin to cycle down. The first few steps was okay but I began to lose control with every bounce, the bike pushed me toward the hillside and I couldn't pulled it off. Finally I hit the wall and bounced off the bike, my head did a double hit on the rock chin first and then forehead before landing flat on the ground.
When the dust settled, I picked myself up and checked for injury. My word, there is this cut 3cm beneath my knee about 2.5 cm long and a few mm wide. I took a closer look, I see void inside, then looked even closer, it was a white piece of bone. Man! Nothing like this has happend to me ever and blood began to drip out fast. My only piece of first aid was a bandage and I asked Kin to take it out and wrap the bastard up, he did it so well that the bleeding stopped really quickly. Then we walked/cycled to the next CP the best we can. The pain was intensive at first but gradually goes away, I thought maybe I can just keep going and not to give up.
Couple of marshalls met us a little bit before the CP as another team who passed us has alert them, we knew the ambulance was on its way. In CP4, I unwraped my bandage under the curious glaze of the locals, 'Never thought you would be an operation theatre!' joked the marshall. Amazingly with the nurse at the CP was only better equiped than me in first aid terms by a bunch of cottom stick and a sterilising solution!! So we occupied our time by cleaning up the hole above my bones again and again until the ambulance arrived. My mind is toying with the option of getting some first aid and carried on as far as I can, or give up at only 1/3 into the race and get proper stiching at the hospital. I fought a bit with the doctor who propose the latter option, until he warned that the bones may be infected by tonight. My fighting spirit finally wavered away, I decided to jump on the ambulance...... (to be continued)
More from Freeyasoul on: Adventure Race
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Count Down to Moganshan
The Moganshan race is approaching fast. I have been training so much for it. Over the long weekend I did a 10am-6pm bike ride on Friday, then a 4.5 hours afterdark bike ride on Sunday. The afterdark ride was real harsh training, I have to do off road biking on Hong Kong Island Trail in the dark with just two bicycle light at the handle bar. It was scary and tough. Unfortunately just when I was getting good and pick up my speed, I went over at probably the last corner of the trail. Landed into the brushes beneath the trail and banged my knee real hard on some rocks despite the protection. Damnit, the knee has swollened bad and I am going to the Chinese Medicine physio everyday to get the bump down on time for the race. This is what I will be up to on saturday:
60km bike ride, about 40km offroad, 18km trail running, 4km kayaking, plus abseil of all kinds.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
2006 Year of Adventure Race (Part II)
Earlier of the year, I put up a posting on all the overseas adventure race that I planned to do, I got a bike, I got a pair of hill running legs all I need are some partners. Though that dream seemed pretty much faded away as time ticks. Then last Friday, I saw an e-mail from the seyonasia yahoo group that I have subscribed, someone is looking a partner to do the 12 hours Mogan Shan Race in 14th May. Didn't take me long to spurnt into action, Martina said I have answered a dating ad. So I got a partner, Kin, for this coming race. Kin is a great Mountian Biker and this will be his race. As the Mogan Shan Race have 60km of biking trails. While hopefully my trail running and rope skill can be a compliment. Though I need to seriously worked on my biking skills in the next 2 weeks.
After Mogan Shan, it will be Bintan Trianthlon in end of May and the Action Asia Macau in June. Full of actions!
Monday, January 23, 2006
2006 The Year of Adventure Race
Keith Noyes just announced the Seyonasia's adventure races in 2006. There will be a 24hrs race in near Hangzhou, China in May. Teams of 2, lots of mountain biking. Then the India Himalaya Exploration will be back on October, teams of 4, 2 days stage race. There will also be a race in Chiang Mai in December, race format undecided as yet. I took part in the AXN Challenge 2004 which Keith designed the urban adventure race which ran from Tai Po to TST. It was thoroughly enjoyable despite having cramps all the way from Shatin to TST. Then I saw pictures of the India race in 2005, the race seem absolutely wonderful, running around the foothill of himalaya, lust green valley and ancient temples. There were some really funny tasks like picking fruits and carrying the local back breaking baskets. I am already down for Action Asia Taiwan but I wish to do as many more races as I can this year, only if I can find the partners for it. So if you happen to be looking for a partner for some challenges this year, please give me a buzz! Hopefull 2006 will be my year of adventure races (pictures shown are the India race of 2005)
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Action Asia Challenge 2005
My first adventure race in 2003 had ended my season of running with some strange knee pain that followed. Then in my second adventure race (AXN Challenge) I suffered cramps from Sha Tin all the way to TST. I ought to say goodbye to this silly sport and this guy called Andy who always drag me into them. But no, I was rather bored and signed up for another race this year - Action Asia Challange.
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