Fifty teams are currently halfway through the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge adventure race in the UAE and there’s a great map website where we can keep tabs on who’s where.
It’s a multi-sport adventure race with four people per team and yesterday they completed a gruelling Desert orienteering section over 121 kms.
The teams will start a sea kayak stage tomorrow which lasts for two days and takes them to the finish in Abu Dhabi itself on Wednesday evening.
Three British teams are taking part; Adidas Terrex, Tri-Adventure and Team Accelerate. According to the organisers’ GPS tracking page here, Adidas Terrex is currently in second place.
On the tracking page we can also see that the race began in the South Eastern corner of the country and the teams have made their way north over sand seas to the coastline where they will then paddle and navigate to the city of Abu Dhabi later in the week.
It’s hard to get our head around where some of these foreign races take place so the map tracking page is a great way to see an overview of exactly what the teams are going through. This kind of tracking is becoming more popular with events which take place over large distances and over a number of days. Earlier this year, Pilot Steve Noujaim raced from London to Capetown in an RV7 aircraft for the Cape Challenge. His tracking website held a large audience completely captivated with his location and progress from one day to another.
We may well start seeing more adventure events covered in this manner as GPS tracking systems become lighter to carry and the data easier to manage and display.
See more at www.abudhabi-adventure.com
© Dan Tye
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