Gordon Wright contacted me last week and asked me to write up some ideas/stories for an article he was writing for Adventure Sports Journal about getting into adventure racing. Here’s a slightly edited version of what I wrote.

Oddly enough, the first adventure race I won was the first adventure race I ever entered back in May of 2000. It was a sprint length race that was part of the sprint adventure race series that Cal Eco put on that year. I was rehabilitating from a back injury that prevented me from continuing my passion of bicycle road and track racing. I was planning on doing the Hi-Tec Adventure Race at Folsom in August when some police officers in Tracy where I work as a firefighter needed a last minute substitution in their team, Nocturnal Swine. The race was only four days away at Del Valle near Livermore. Both of my teammates we strong, fast, and determined. We finished first in the Co-ed division despite one teammate riding off of a piece of single track and falling over a ten foot cliff into the lake with her bike. After our success in our first sprint race together we signed up for a Cal Eco 24 hour event in Auburn. The race information said that the race would take 14 hours for the winners. Our success in the sprint length race made us confident that we’d do well and finish in around 16 hours. We were in for a rude awakening! The race started at midnight Friday night…I HATE that. One of my teammates was supposed to be at work by 11pm Saturday night and none of us thought it’d be a problem to get to work and patrol Tracy functionally on the graveyard shift…wrong! His supervisor was on the support crew and ended up put him off on leave.

We actually got off to a fast start and finished the first leg, a 24 mile trek, in the top five. Our only minor navigation error resulted in crossing the American River about 1/4 mile downstream from the intended crossing at Ruck-a-Chuck which was the end of the trek. That is where things began to fall apart. I found out that our female teammate suffered from Raynaud’s Disease which is essentially an acute sensitivity and exaggerated adverse reaction to cold. Swimming across the American River was a bad thing for her. At the transition area she shivered violently in a heated car while we transposed the next several checkpoints onto our maps. She was finally getting warmed up on the ensuing bike leg when we reached some rocky and slippery sections of trail that her triathlon cycling experience hadn’t prepared her for. Several teams passed us. About then we also discovered that after six hours of racing she had only consumed one energy bar and about a quart of Gatorade. She was frustrated by the rocky trail, the teams passing us, and was also bonking hard which resulted in a physical and emotional breakdown. She sat and cried and told us to continue without her. “No way!, we’re a team, we can do this” we replied. I was just like Mark Burnett’s coverage of Eco Challenge, the emotional highs and lows, made for TV. We talked her into continuing. To continue we had to get some food into her which is when I discovered that the crew had not put any food into my pack at the TA and I was to get by on what was left over from the previous leg and we were well into an 8 hour ride. Eventually we got back under way and even moved steadily on the fire roads that weren’t too steep. I could tell that every team that passed us was taking an emotional toll on our girl. We struggled on big climbs. I had to actually ride past her and grab her bike by the stem and take her it from her grip because she was too proud to accept assistance. Halfway through the race both of my teammates were struggling badly. My 12 year of competitive cycling were serving me well, but my strength did not benefit team because my teammates weren’t letting me help them and I didn’t know how to help except to take one of their bikes at a time and push them up the hills for them. The bike leg was to be about 35 miles. We made it about 32 miles as a team. Then we decided I should roll ahead and send the crew back to pick up the rest of the team. One teammate was completely bonked and the other was experiencing symptoms of heat stress and had to quit to avoid a medical emergency.

The volunteer staffing the transition area offered to let me finish the race which would only have involved a 2 mile trek, 3 mile paddle, and a 5 mile trek. But since some of our crew had to be at work in three hours, my only ride home was leaving so I was forced to drop out.

That was my first attempt at a 24 hour race. I was a “DNF”. I have only dropped out of one race since then. I would go on to be an “unofficial finisher” in the next seven 24 hour Adventure Races I entered as I never managed to get to the finish line with the whole team intact and all the checkpoints covered. Finally at the end of 2003 I became an official finisher at the Cal Eco Finals in Kernville. I have been an official finisher ever since in all but one race, Cal Eco Ft. Bragg 2004, a distinction shared by many Nor Cal adventure racers. My current philosophy is that I will finish any race unless the promoter makes me quit or if I need to get to a hospital pronto!

What I learned in all those unofficial finishes was teamwork. There are many ways to help a team move faster as a unit:

• Carry some or all of a teammates gear.
• Tow a teammate moving slower than the rest…practice this before you try it in a race.
• Monitor everyone’s condition by asking regularly how each other are doing and answer honestly.
• Assign some one to be the food and drink monitor. Every half hour or hour remind everyone to eat and drink.

The biggest negative characteristic a teammate can have is a big ego. Anyone who is too proud to allow another teammate to help them should stick to triathlons or race solo. I have had too many teammates whose pride did not allow them to accept help from others on the team. This has proved especially true of adventure racers with less experience. Nothing frustrates me more. I had the long term goal of being on a team fast enough that I’d be the one getting towed, a goal I finally achieved racing on Bull Moose Extreme at Tehama Extreme in 2005, thanks Ross. Individual pride and ego have no business in Adventure Racing because it is a team sport and teamwork is the single most crucial aspect of the sport. Racing with Dirty Avocados now affords me the luxury of always racing with people with similar goals, skills, and teamwork ethic. When someone is having a rough time we take it in stride and move ahead as a team.

Other mistakes for new adventure racers to avoid are:

• Not developing off-road bike skills.
• Packing too heavy
• Not sharing a goal as a team.
• Not practicing navigation
• Not eating their race food when training. Learn to eat while mountain biking and paddling.
• Writing detailed race reports that feature the failure of teammates (Sadly, I’m an expert on this one, but am reformed).

Team Karma’s Gold Rush races offer an excellent venue for newbies to try their first Sprint and 24 Hour Adventure Races. Both races offer teams the choice to choose short course options. A team can choose to skip a checkpoint, accept a time penalty and still be an official finisher. The Gold Rush Summer Challenge is a 6-8 hour sprint race in July featuring orienteering, cycling, and paddling. The orienteering is challenging but the rest of the navigation is not difficult. The Gold Rush 24 hour Challenge in November is not a race that will be completed in 14 hours. Top teams will finish in 20-24 hours, and slower teams will too because of time cut-offs that allow everyone to experience completing an adventure race 24 hours long. for more information see the Team Karma website at www.teamkarma.com.

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