Salomon Suunto’s Maddess & Ritcey at the 150km Sabah Adventure Challenge

After racing and training in Hong Kong’s river gorges with lots of rock scrambling, Jeremy and I were quite confident to do well in the next section. That all completely changed when we arrived at a 20m wide river around 3:30am when it was still pitch black with our headlamps not seeing much at all. As we started walking through the water, slipping on rocks, trying to find our balance, around 10 local Malaysian teams showed up behind us, immediately jumped on the right bank of the river, climbed up over a grassy ledge and voila, there was a small single track farmers trail next to the bank. They took off so fast we really had to push hard to catch them. It was very technical watching for sudden holes in the ground and drop offs, with sharp bamboo pointing at your face from fallen trees, jagged razor sharp rocks stuck along the sides that you had to slow down for and the odd razor wire fence that we had to leap over with a long train of white lights in tow.

The mixed Swedish duo were amazing in the river section for the next hour or so as they seemed to know every river crossing. Every time I looked down to see the map I would almost fall off something. I didn’t want to make any navigation mistakes and didn’t trust the teams following so tried to slow down and make sure we were going the correct way. Of course that’s easier said then done when you have a HK King of the Hill champion runner as your team mate, wondering why you are slowing down.

We hit the first CP, all top 3 teams together, then next CP, all 3 teams still together, then came a big mountain climb. Finally our Trailwalker training began to pay off as we took the lead for the first time gaining confidence and pushing hard on the uphill. Looking at the map we had to head in a SSW direction at the very top and find a single-track trail down. It was still dark after 5am now and just as I looked at my compass to see which direction we were going, the Swedes smoked past us as if they had recced the course or something. So much for leading on the downhill.

The next downhill section was spectacular. It was pitch black, steep downhill single track through a bamboo jungle in slight rain on slippery, muddy, technical trail.. This is what Jeremy and I were good at and we pushed the Swedes with the Malay team hot on our heels. We came out of the bush into the bike transition. The organizers had stated before the race they thought no one could do the first section before the sun came up, but they were wrong.