Adventure Racing 101

Despite the best efforts of my morning running partner, I’m bored by the idea of a marathon no matter how many crooning rock bands are staged along the route. But I’ve been frustrated with my search for a training motivating goal. A triathlon? My cruiser and I would get laughed off the course. Taking up a new sport? And drop hundreds on start-up gear? Definitely not an option. Kick-ball? Does lifting beer cans really counts as training?

When a friend suggested adventure racing, I stopped in my singletrack. Adventure Racing? It even sounds cool.

But where to start? Internet searches yielded race reports chock-full of orienteering gibberish and misery-soaked race reports: 1,000-kilometer relays through Portugal, and an epic televised event, PrimalQuest, staged in the wilds of Utah or Montana each year. I live in Boulder arguably the hard-core hub of the country yet there aren’t many races and no beginner-friendly learning options nearby. So, last month I headed to Lake Adventures in Milford, Kansas for a training camp run by seasoned racer Charmion Harris, with the help of Mark Alft, from the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Team GCAR.

Some of the lessons were intuitive for an outdoor-woman like myself, things like gear selection, maintaining fitness and physical training, and riding singletrack. But, some of the best lessons were things I would never have learned on my own: endurance nutrition, ropes, navigation techniques, transition area strategies, and, perhaps most importantly, the fine art of team dynamics.

Perhaps my favorite quote of the course: You re not only as fast as your slowest teammate, you re only as fast as you can help your slowest teammate to go. I’ve thanked Charmion for the tip, it definitely came in handy when I hit the trail on Day 4 of camp for the sprint race where I teamed up with Angry Cow Adventures.

Read a short Q&A with race organizer Charmion Harris, and sign up for her October sprint (23 mile) or extreme (50-60 mile) races at www.adventureracekansas.com