The World Championships in Costa Rica are approaching rapidly now, focusing our minds on both equipment and training. Finally, we seem to be getting there with the equipment, partly thanks to some good sponsorship deals! We now have fancy team clothes, supplied by Trimtex, Petzl Meteor III+ helmets from the Norwegian company Varri, and the world’s lightest racing harnesses and belaying devices from Wendy’s brother (early Christmas presents!).

We picked up our latest acquisition from West System in Oslo on Friday: two WindPaddle kayak sails! They have already been tested… in the safety of the lounge!

Here’s Jo Inge in our nice kit testing a sail on our Paddlelite. Of course, there wasn’t much wind in the lounge, so he didn’t get up much speed on that particular training session.

The PaddleLite is a result of sponsorship from Sportsmaster. Their logo is “Train indoors to be good outdoors”, which is certainly what we are aiming for! It’s pretty cold in Norway now, and dark by 5pm, so paddling indoors is a luxury that is really helpful for improving our strength for Costa Rica. Three weeks left…

On Saturday Jo Inge and Wendy competed in Challenge40 – a newcomer on the multisport scene, designed to show that there is exciting terrain also in South-eastern Norway. And no, it’s not just for over-40s…

Although we had a few minutes in a canoe, and Jo Inge experienced both swimming and roller-skiing, the main focus was cycling – including some excellent offroad stretches. There were 40 controls, with different points per control depending on remoteness or difficulty. The idea was to collect as many points as possible in 4 hours. Needless to say (for British readers) skiing over asphalt on wheels, in borrowed shoes, gave lots of points… whilst a control by the road might be worth only 1 point. So tactics was a big part of the game. Fortunately, only one member of the two-man team was required to complete the most “creative” controls (swimming, roller skiing and micro-orienteering). Pretty clear choice who that would be on our team 🙂

With so many controls to choose from, competitors were quickly dispersed in different directions, and it was difficult to gain any idea of how you were doing in relation to others. So we were both very pleasantly surprised at the prize ceremony: first place in the mix class and a whole host of fine prizes – thermos flasks, drinking bottles, squeezy gels, drinks powder and a camelback each! Wow – thanks to organisers and sponsors!

And to add to the happy mood, the overall winners of Challenge40 were non other than Bjørn-Håvard Evjen with partner Thomas Husum. So a good day for Ås adventure racers!

17th place on today’s kayak stage – not bad considering that Christian only took up kayaking when he found out that he would be coming to Abu Dhabi! Overall Jotun Paints finished in 31^st place. The team has had many good stages, but were punished in more ways than one for their trouble in the desert.

“Of course, you can always wonder afterwards whether we pushed too hard on some stages” says team captain Bjørn Håvard. “To fulfil our ambition to be amongst the top  10- 12 we had to race that hard. So there’s the question whether that was the right goal for us. I don’t think we gambled any more than we had to. The fact that we had trouble with the desert stage could also be put down to coping with the heat. I think we had a bit of a heat shock. So even though you manage to eat and drink enough for normal conditions, there’s a heat factor that means that you react differently than normal”.

Now, after a week, the team are finally starting to adjust to the heat. So it’s going to be a shock in a couple of days when they return to Norway’s winter cold!

Yesterday evening Jotun Paints decided to continue with the competition. Bags were packed and the kayaks made ready. Today, however, the participants awoke to strong wind and large waves… and then the message from the organisers: today’s kayaking is cancelled! The plan now is to transport the kayaks to Abu Dhabi City and finish the race tomorrow with a shorter kayaking circuit in the more protected waters near the capital.

At the last checkpoint, 12 km from the finish, Jotun Paints ground to a halt. Jo Inge hadn’t been able to eat and drink enough and was completely finished. The hard cycling at the start of the stage followed by hours of soft sand and extreme heat were just too much. The Norwegian team became one of 19 teams that have not completed the entire course. They will get a time penalty, but can continue on the next stage (two days of kayaking)… if they want to.

The mountain bike leg started in the dark at 4 am, but already by 7-ish it was starting to get warm. Jotun Paints kept up a good speed and finished in 13th place after the day’s cycling , 94 km on sandy tracks. Then a quick exchange to running. By midday the temperature was 38 degrees C. The sand sucks energy out of anything and everything that tries to move across it. At the time of writing, they are still out there somewhere, probably relieved that the sun has gone down. The challenge now will be to find the six mandatory and – perhaps – four optional controls in the dark.

See www.kondis.no for more pictures!