Adventure Racing
Can you go the distance?

Part 1 / Part 2

By Jono Senk

If you are reading this article, we must have enticed you last month with our introduction to the sport of adventure racing. Think you've got what it takes to compete? Read on to find out how much it costs, how to get started, what professional instruction is available, what type of training is required and some memorable quotes from those who have experienced the ultimate challenge of adventure racing.

Professional Instruction

Many of the professional racers that I have interviewed echo the same mantra: Get professional instruction. David Kelly, captain of Team S.C.A.R., told me he would not even entertain the idea of looking at a potential team member unless they had finished at least ten 300-mile races or had gone through training at the Adventure Race Academy.

Locally, you can find professional instruction for white water rafting at outfitters such as High Country Outfitters and Go With the Flow in Roswell. High Country also provides professional instruction for ropes work. If you would like to go through an entire training course at a professional adventure racing academy, you might try: the Odyssey Adventure Racing Academy in New River Valley, West Virginia (304-574-0394), the Presidio Racing Academy in California (415-252-7226) or the Eco Adventure Academy run by Trident Adventures, Frogs Gym in southern California (619-792-4008). Odyssey Adventure Racing Academy is the only Academy that provides a real life two-day adventure race immediately after the formal course as a peripheral course of instruction.

Age Limits

In a word, age does not matter. Some of the most accomplished adventure racers are in their forties and fifties, like Louiese Cooper Lovelace, John Howard, Robert Nagle, Don Mann and Jane Hall, and are still very strong after several days of racing. How? They approach the sport properly. Instead of trying to conquer, ignore or endure the pain, they are in tune with their bodies. For example, experience will tell them, "I have a headache. What does that mean to me physically? It means that I have to drink more fluids." It seems that experience has a stronger force in these types of races than youth.

"I never think that I don't want to go on. I would like to go out of this life moving," says Team Sun Precautions Helen Klien, 73, who has completed 93 marathons and 101 ultra-distance marathons.

Klien's age didn't prevent her from becoming one of the 42 percent of competitors who made it to the finish of the Utah Eco-Challenge. "People who don't know me obviously think that I shouldn't be doing these things but anyone who knows me accepts it and supports me the whole way," says Klien.

After watching Klien compete in the B.C. Eco-Challenge for the third time, she erased any excuse I had for why anyone can't do this type of racing. I can't tell you how many times I have heard, "I'm too old to do any of that." Just get outside, exercise and experience the one life you have! Hey babe, this ain't no dress rehearsal. Doing an adventure race has less to do with competition and infinitely more to do with finishing a personal exploration of one's self.

Local Adventure Racing Training Areas

The Chattahoochee National Wilderness Parks along the river are ideal for beginner racing enthusiasts. I especially recommend the Cochran Shoals unit for mountain biking trails and the Palisades unit for technical trekking, climbing and whitewater work. For technical climbing skills, like ascending and rappelling, check out Vickery Creek in Roswell. Straight up 19, past the river at Azalea and half a mile up from the river on the right, there is an old historic house. Behind the house is a trail and down the trail is a 70- to 100-foot cliff that is frequently used by many local climbers.

Among local Hairy Scary Adventure Racers, there is a little known course called, Quad SIX. It is extremely rugged, highly technical terrain that is utilized by rookies and veterans alike. The start is in the business park next to Rays on the River restaurant on Powers Ferry. The course works its way along the river, through the forest, up small pitch-free climbs and bouldering, under Highway 75 (affectionately named "Lava Pit"), across the river to the raft loading dock, right before 41, back up the other side through dense underbrush of mountain laurel and rhododendron, up under I-285 into the Cochran Shoals park unit to the dog dip. Cross the river at the dog dip to the eastern side, go back down on the other side back under I-285 past Rays on the River to your starting point in the business park. For a strong, fast team, it should take two to three hours by day or four to six hours at night. I strongly advise against doing this course alone. It is extremely dangerous and technical. So, always, always go with a buddy or, better yet, a team so that if someone falls or breaks a leg, someone can haul your carcass out. Seriously!

For technical kayaking and canoeing, the Chattahoochee River offers both two- and three-class rapids at the Island Ford unit and at the Palisades and Cochran Shoals unit. The rapids look pretty benign, but don't let that fool you. People have died from skull fractures and drowning in these areas. So, don't venture in these areas without a buddy or an experienced guide or instructor. For world-class rapid courses and instruction, visit the Ocoee River Center.

Kennesaw Mountain is good for local inclination training. For training further out, try the Nantahala Outdoor Center in North Carolina.

One of the best inclination, endurance, altitude training runs that I know of is the Brass Balls run just above Blairsville, GA. Beginning at Track Rock Gap (elevation 2,500 feet), you travel along the Algonquin trail up to Brasstown Bald (3900 feet) and then back down the mountain. It is 11 miles out and back and the first quarter of a mile will burn the bronchi in your lungs. It floored "Boss Lightning," A.K.A. Frank C., a fellow Hairy Scary and Navy SEAL Ultra athlete. You may see spots more than once on the way up, but the view at the top of the highest summit in Georgia is worth it! My advice don't do it with a forty-pound pack.

Different Types of Training

"The biggest thing in an adventure race is the monumental amount of split-second decisions that you have to make throughout the race. Every few minutes you have to decide on the course, how much to drink, how much to eat, what equipment you need, etc. It's different from any other race - from any other sport, really. It's just making the right decisions at the right time, not being crazy, not pushing yourself to that limit so you are completely injured. It's being able to make that decision to stop and forget about the race for a little while, survive and look after your teammates," says captain John Howard of Team Salomon-Presidio.

Training for a race like the two-day Endorphin Fix, the 10-day RAID or the 350-mile Eco-Challenge is totally different from any other training. When you train, you have to train as hard as you ever thought you could and still train smart. There is a very fine line between being fearless and being fool hardy. Always come back alive and in one piece.

Jeff Westerfield trains the smart/hard way.

"I train about 20 hours a week with a pulsometer," says Westerfield. "I use a computer program which is Mike Piggs' triathlon training program, PC Coach. It tracks my weight, hours of sleep and morning pulse rate. It charts out a three-week training regimen; I plug in different types of races and it tapers me off at the appropriate time before the race. I believe in any endurance/cardiovascular training - not just 20 minutes on the stair master at your local gym. I'm talking about three to four hours at one time, keeping your heart rate at or around 75 percent of your heart rate performance. It's a smarter, different type of training. The old training regimen consisted of running up and down Kennesaw Mountain until I literally fell over and then picked myself up and did it all over again. With experience or with someone who can essentially take you by the hand and show you how to train for these races, you will get smarter with your training."

Team Odyssey's Don Mann, A.K.A. "The Extreme Mileage SEAL" who has competed in over 100 triathlons, including the Ironman and Double Ironman, has completed over 30 marathons and has competed in the Assault on Mount Mitchell (a 105-mile straight uphill century race), explains training like this: "When I'm training for a triathlon, my training is very precise and very regimented all the way up to the race. I'm constantly calculating my peddle strokes on my bike or my swim strokes in the water or my pace when running to maximize my effort to energy to exertion to my distance. One day I'll run, the next day I'll swim to give my legs a break and the next I'll be on the bike. Some days I will work on my transitioning. But when I am training for an adventure race like the RAID, I'm more in tune with what my body feels like doing instead of going by a set-in-stone training schedule. For example, I will go out and paddle 50-70 miles and then I will take off a day or two. Then, I'll go trekking and navigating through the mountains with a 60-pound pack for three straight days, working on my pace, my orienteering and my sleep deprivation. Then, I may hit the gym for some upper body weight training or rope work on a climbing wall. It's a real contradiction in that I am training as hard as I've ever trained for anything I've ever done before, but I listen more to what my body wants to do instead of maintaining a tight training schedule. It's more of a mental exercise than a physical one because it's your mind that wants to quit and has the ability to quit - not your body."

Then, there is the Hairy Scary Adventure Training that I coach. I pretty much echo what both Mann and Westerfield say about training in that you have to train smart, as well as listen to what your body feels like training. My favorite time to train is when mother nature is having a very bad hair day and the weather is absolutely miserable.

"That which does not kill me only makes me stronger" - Fredrick Nietchze

Westerfield's favorite adventure training quote is, "You have to love to suck!" What he means is that when it is raining, you have to wish it were sleeting to make your competitors even more miserable. I haven't quite figured out the entire mental twist on that quote but I understand what he means -kinda. When I train, I train as hard and as intense as I can, mentally pushing myself. Each training evolution is not necessarily a physical one but more of an emotional and mental one. I am living proof that your body is able to do 10 times more than your mind will allow it to believe.

For example, I will run with a 20-30-pound pack for as far as my body will allow - past breakdown with an unknown out-and-back course. Then, I will turn around and head back to my starting point, get in my canoe and paddle until my shoulders fall off in the boat. Then, I'll turn around and come back home and super glue back on my toenails.

Also, I firmly believe that if the training isn't hairy or scary, it's not worth doing. I need to have a "controlled" near-death experience at least two times a week. When I go up to the mountains to train and I run along a trail and see a cliff that I feel I can free climb, I will climb it for that experience. My favorite drill to practice is orienteering at night up in the mountains and getting caught in a huge, thick cluster of mountain laurel and rhododendron, when it's so thick that you can't stand, so dark that you can't see your hand five inches from your face and the only way out is to follow the azimuth on your glow-in-the-dark lensetic compass up and down the steep sides of Brasstown Bald for about 2000 meters. I am up there for hours, crawling on my belly, hands and knees and the only companion brave enough or crazy enough to hang with me is my little dog. For me, that is goooood training!! My personal mantra is, "Live life like you only have five minutes left to live!"

When I won my first adventure race, I was on a coed team and I felt invincible immortal, like nothing could ever conquer me again. I was dead wrong. I bonked, bailed and quit 100 miles into my second race. I wasn't injured. I was beat mentally and emotionally. I don't know from where it came. We just fell asleep for a short 20-minute "shutdown" on top of this steep mountain in the New River Gorge. When I look back on it now, it is all still a mega mystery. However it happened, the only explanation is that, like death, it's cunning, baffling and powerful - I quit. And even worse, I failed my teammate, which cranked my gut that much more. I never, never, ever want to feel that bad again. So, I train as hard as I can, as smart as I can, as long as I can in the most miserable conditions that mother nature can spit my way.

I have always considered my absolute greatest fears on this earth to be marriage and the dentist. Those fears wake me up in a cold sweat with my teeth locked down full of pillow (this actually has become a weekly occurrence). Now, I have a new phantasm - to wrestle with "Mr. Cunning, Baffling and Powerful.." I think instead of this name, I will refer to him by his true title, Mr. DEAD. Fear, I believe, is the most terrifying of motivators.

Quitting a Race

"I think it happens for everybody at sometime. I know that it will happen. I know that day is coming for me. I just don't know where or when. The only thing I do know is that it will...it's inevitable," says Mitch Utterback, captain of Team Special Forces.

What does it feel like to quit a race like the RAID?

As they carried me to the medivac helicopter that freezing Argentine morning, a wholly unwanted image flooded my mind. I thought of the Madagascar RAID, where I watched a normally stoic German team break down after circumstance forced them from the race. What puzzled me most as I watched the Germans was how a simple contest could force men of infinite masculinity to weep as if they had lost a loved one.

I also remembered it was in Madagascar where I had seen a French squad abandon a teammate atop a towering windswept butte, at the same time abandoning their chances of winning. 'She is a bitch,' they shrugged in explanation, forgetting they had trained together for almost a year, pledging allegiance for the RAID's arduous days and nights. At the time, I empathized with that lone woman. How she must have felt, watching her teammates go on without her after all that mental and physical preparation. In Patagonia, I found out. As the blue and white medivac helicopter lifted me from the course, I looked down from on high and saw my team continuing without me,. The tears began to fall right about then. The Raid Gauloises, I realized, is much more than a simple race. How does it feel to quit the Raid Gauloises? Like Death.

- An excerpt taken from chapter nine of "Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth,"; by Martin Dugard.

Adventure Race Cost

Without equipment and travel accommodations, races can be extremely steep in cost. So, it's best if you can find someone to sponsor you or a team with a sponsor already. To give you some idea of cost, here is the breakdown from several adventure races:

The RAID Gauloises - $16,000 per team
The Discovery Channel Eco-Challenge - $10,000 per team
Southern Traverse in New Zealand - $6,000
Beast of the East in Pulaski, VA - $4,500

In conclusion, there is still so much to be said, written and read about expeditionary/adventure racing. I have only scraped a snowflake off the back end of an iceberg. So, I'll leave it up to Don Mann, god of the BTDT's (been there, done that), who has literally seen it all and done it all

"Out of everything I have ever done, adventure racing is the greatest, most challenging, most rewarding thing I've ever done, with the highest highs and the lowest lows," says Mann. "And the greatest part about it is that I can continue to experience and share this experience with others over and over again. I believe it is the greatest sport and the greatest human experience ever."

"We rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us." ROMANS 5:3-4 - An adventure racers prayer.