Adventure Travel Al-Sultan (23.01.2011)

An excerpt of Faris’ diary in which he reports of his latest trip to the desert:

Another chapter of adventure travel Al-Sultan has been written. A little less adventurous than our trip to Buraimi, which involved a dump as an apartment, but still worth telling about…

Although the preparation for the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge in the spectacular desert resort Qars Al Sarab with Kristin and Werner turned out to be quite good, the adventure race was more like a torture, especially for Christof. Kristin, Werner and myself as born runners managed the conditions of heat and rough terrain (I did my first via ferrata) quite well. But Christof had a rough time. After the second day he was more than exhausted and there was no hope to continue the race. The disappointment was big but seeing that the next stage would have been a 90km bike stage followed by a 120km desert run it seemed best to quit prematurely.

After another unsuccessful race I felt quite demotivated for a while but then started with my training regime with renewed energy. But instead of a good week of training with Swen I got sick. And instead of cheering for my training mates Iris and Yasmin Rosenberger at the Swim World Championships in Dubai I was lying in the bed with a high fever.  Luckily, the girls showed excellent performances without my being there.

After one week and another trip to Qars-al-Sarab with my parents and with former team member, Ina, later, I was ready to train with Swen who had come for a second camp after New Year’s.  Various training sessions like “happy truck trailing” by bike (which the police do not like to see), running speed works in the Wadi and tough swim workouts contributed to a building shape on my part. At the end of my training camp we travelled to the northernmost of the 7 emirates, Ras Al-Khaimah to explore new roads by bike in the local mountains. But… just when all was going well Swen got a serious bout of diarrhoea. That’s why I got a new mate to train with: Sören, Swen’s brother in law. We found some great roads and we saw goats, camels, interesting rock formations and some renewed farms. After that we went back to Dubai to ride with Wolf’s Friday ride (www.wbs.ae) which I love to do. Not only because it is a good workout but because it’s fun and I can meet old friends there. That was the end of the long trip to the UAE. But after 2 weeks in Germany I will be back in the desert for more training and racing.