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01 Jan, 1970

Tough Day - humidity torchers OtterBox runners - Champion Sytem Adventure

Tough Day as humidity torchers OtterBox participants

OtterBox Action Asia Challenge

- 45km Full Adventure

- 16km Trail run

- 8km Kayak n 5km Trail Run

Hong Kong – May 18, 2014 – Perseverance, team spirit and hard sweating work played a crucial role Sunday at the OtterBox Action Asia Challenge adventure race at Tai Lam Chung, punishing teams on the 45 km course and the other 2 supporting races with a total of over 420 participants representing over 31 nationalities.

“It’s always nice to see a new course for the Challenge as this added great variety as always difficult with trails here in Hong Kong as not a lot of choices, but with this race going now 16 years (laughs) there are only going to be so many choices to design a course like this with the biking, kayaking, running, but Action Asia and team did a great job trying to create something new and exciting with a good course, really nice technical running. Conditions were interesting with the rain and mud the last few weeks and the gorge which was hidden away was so steep and narrow in some places making it surprising, a lot of water in there, the water was nice as it cooled us down, I had to jump in many times, but the biggest challenge for me was just managing this humidity as you just felt like your head was going to pop and explode. It’s a team race and my teammate Jay helped me a lot as was just so strong” said overall team winner Ryan Blair of Champion System Adventure.

Teammate Jay added “The kayak was hard as in Chang Mai I’m usually only doing running and biking so this wasn’t easy even if hot” said Champion System Adventure Jantarabon Kiangchaipaiphana with his team winning overall in 4 hours 14 minutes 52 minutes.

Blair added “We didn’t know how far in front we were until the end as just kept pushing and pushing right till the end making it that much harder”.

Team X-BIONIC grabbed 2nd overall having to fight hard with Team Chiru for the higher position on the podium. “The pain wasn’t going thru the head, it was going thru the ankle as it was like an easter egg with swelling”, said Pierre Le Magnan. “I tried to take it easy on the final technical ridgeline heading down to Tai Lam Chung as didn’t want Marcel waiting for me, but wanted to catch up or maintain our distance on the bike which we did basically” he continued.
X-Bionic teammate German and Kiwi Resident Marcel Hagener added, “I knew Pierre would like the bike, but after doing over 700km in Tibet with over 10,000 meters of bike climbing last week we were still feeling it” said Hagneur one of the top adventure racers in the world as previous world champion.

”Had a little issue on the abseil as had to share a figure 8, which made it a bit more exciting as Chiru was next to us on the abseil as neck in neck near the end of the race. We just cruised on the kayak as knew the leaders were in front and the others were behind so just wanted to make it home to the finish. But amazing course for the run and the gully was really technical and beautiful” finished Le Magnan happy with 2nd overall in 4 hours 47 minutes 23 seconds.

“No issues at all on the marking as didn’t go wrong once and never doubted once so great marking. We we’re in 3rd coming down the final ridge before the bikes, talking to each other, knew it was hot and tried to pace ourselves as Jeremy loves to go out hard and knew pacing in the heat was important” said Cosmo Richards of Team Chiru who grabbed 3rd overall. We caught Pierre and Marcel in the gorge and overtook them” continued Richards. “Not on the bike as they were so much better..or better than me at least” said Ritcey. Richards continued “ I ran out of water in the gorge, a bit of a mistake as didn’t realize it would take so long as was quite slippery and couldn’t go to fast and hit a bit of a low. Jeremy had a bit of a low on the bike before that and we were just trying to recover from that. They (Pierre/Marcel) got us just before the abseil. Think I went 30-45 minutes without water before that in the gorge so was totally dunking myself in the river as must have done that 5 times. Think I even drunk a little. We were feeling a bit better going back to the bikes running a section of the Yuen Tuen trail that we knew the leaders were good in the heat and we would struggle and yah I think we did well.

Ritcey continued, “Yeh we tried to go steady on the bike all day as I haven’t been biking much lately. We got out of the gorge in front of them and said lets just stay steady, even keal, but if we can stay in front at the abseil we might have this”

Richards added, ”we were together on the abseil with Pierre & Marcel, but they just did so well on the kayak as Marcel is world champion, he’s a machine as we knew we had to have a lead on them going into the paddle and too be honest both teams on the paddle thought let’s just enjoy it and we knew we had 3rd and weren’t going to catch them so just enjoyed it”. Plus my arms were going limp as nothing in them at that point, but the ankle didn’t bug me today” said Jeremy Ritcey together with Cosmo Richards of the Chiru team who grabbed 3rd overall in 4 hours 57 minutes 6 minutes.

The Full adventure category participants had approximately 13 km of trail-running , 23 km of mountain biking, 5 km of Ocean kayaking, 2 km river rock scrambling over the 45 km course. Pushing your body to an absolute limit to see what participants are really made of is very common for many adventure racers in the rugged outdoors of Hong Kong. Course maps of the exact route were given out the morning of the Challenge.

The OtterBox Action Asia Challenge reminded participants and the public how important it is to HELP CLEAN THE AIR & SEA and to all to do their bit turning off electricity and getting outside to enjoy the ocean, trails, coastlines.

This event could not have happened without the kind support of OtterBox, Action X, Watsons, Inov8, Skins, OL&N, Ocean Potion, Digital Butter, Salonpas, Sky BBQ and the Action Asia Foundation HK Charity.

End

Overall Full Adventure - Top 3 Teams
Rank Race # Team/ Charity/ Sponsor First Name Last Name Age Category Nationality Time

1st 46 CHAMPION SYSTEM ADVENTURE Ryan Blair Open Men United States 4:14:52
CHAMPION SYSTEM ADVENTURE Jantaraboon Kiangchaipaiphana Open Men Thailand 4:14:52

2nd 31 X-BIONIC PIERRE arnaud michel Le magnan Warrior Men France 4:47:23
X-BIONIC Marcel Hagener Warrior Men Germany 4:47:23

3rd 6 Chiru Bikes Cosmo Richards Open Men Australia 4:57:06
Chiru Bikes Jeremy Ritcey Open Men Canada 4:57:06

See results page for full results of all categories above and also see if you hit separate links:

TOP 3 category TRAIL RUN

https://www.racematix.com/site/#results:rac/15:0:0:A:3

TOP 3 category KAYAK n RUN

https://www.racematix.com/site/#results:rac/14:0:0:A:3

TOP 3 category FULL ADV

https://www.racematix.com/site/#results:rac/13:0:0:A:3

Full results with splits online here (still provisional as of now)

Definitive results will be released tonight or tmr latest

TRAIL RUN