Noora Sinisalo

The Iles Guadeloupe Adventure event

The Iles Guadeloupe Adventure (IGWA) event was held in November 2007 on the beautiful Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Aino Salimäki (also from the Haglöfs Adventure team) and I field tested Suunto Lumi during this one week event. We set up the girls' adventure team back in 2003, and have since competed in over 40 adventure races all over the world.

Our team consists entirely of gutsy Finnish girls with a will to persevere and win. Even though it's more common to have adventure racing teams comprising both men and women, we still prefer to face challenges as an all-female team. It's very exciting to test how far sheer "girl power" can take us and so far we still haven't reached our limits!

Racing on an all-female team is a bit different than racing on a mixed-gender team. Although we all are all in good physical condition, we still can't rely on our personal strength and endurance alone when competing against a team of men. For us, it's about strategy - we carefully plan the length and duration of each phase of a given race in order to maximize our team's productivity. I personally feel that an all-female team is a bit more cooperative as well - we aren't looking for a strong leader to stand out and take control, but rather prefer sharing the responsibilities of the race based on our individual skills and experiences. We also find pleasure in simply participating in the race itself, regardless of the outcome.

Of course, being on a winning team is always a great source of pride. However, the feeling a team gets from working together, helping each other find solutions to unexpected challenges, and sharing adventurous moments as true friends is much more rewarding.

We have always had Suunto devices firmly strapped to our wrists during other adventure races, which is why we were so excited to use Suunto Lumi for the Iles Guadeloupe Adventure event. The Iles Guadeloupe Adventure was much more relaxed than many of the other adventure races that we have taken part in. The race consisted of both discovery and physical events, with the discovery events testing our wits and knowledge of Guadeloupe's history and cultural heritage. They also tested our interpersonal skills, as in many instances we had to ask local inhabitants for help and tips on completing challenges. During the physical activities, we competed in snorkelling, wind surfing, canyonning, kayaking, trekking, and climbing events. We were even challenged to do a bit of golfing in order to collect competition points as well!

Some of the physical activities were quite challenging, such as the 10-hour trek along the coastline, during which the Suunto Lumi's features proved to be crucial to our team, as the orienteering points throughout the trek were quite tricky to navigate. We ultimately ended up using Suunto Lumi's compass quite a lot to help us successfully find our way to the finish line.

After this rugged and successful field test, we are all waiting to put Suunto Lumi to further use during our next adventure - and I've already set the day counter to remind myself how many days we have left until we start preparing for it. :)

Text by Noora Sinisalo
Photos: copyright L.Debompuis-IGWA