“How do you feel? Are you nervous?” asked a reporter at the starting line of the race.

“Nervous? Nah. I would say it is more a feeling of resignation,” JJ replied as he looked through the balloon arch at the starting line of the Huairasinchi Adventure Race.

It was our first adventure race and I had lost plenty of sleep in the weeks before thinking about the numbers: 3 days to cover 200 miles, reaching elevations of 14,435 and dropping to just 108 feet in the last 60 miles. A good 45 miles of the race does not fall below 11,500 feet. As the organizers presented the map and introduced the course the night before the race, they promised it would be cold and we would suffer. Oh yeah, we would be skirting an active volcano that was spewing ash over the trail; it happened to be Carnival and we should not be surprised if locals threw water balloons or eggs at us. Don’t worry, it´s tradition.

You gotta love Ecuador.

Competing in an adventure race seemed reasonable, considering I have spent the last couple years traveling by bike with my friends, looking for adventures at every turn. Our goal has been to stay off pavement as we ride self-supported from Alaska to Patagonia, following the continental divide. Regularly, we find ourselves off map, dragging our bikes through mud, and asking locals for directions in unfamiliar languages, something like adventure racing, but without checkpoints and jerseys. We already had a solid team, in good shape, and well acquainted under highly stressful conditions in just about every climate possible. We are all friends from college with lots of shared adventures and able to settle all important decisions with a civilized game of Ro-Sham- Bo. A great team situation. Originally our trip was to take about two years, but after settling into the lifestyle we realized the last thing we wanted to do was actually arrive at the tip of South America. Huairasinchi was to be a new twist to our journey, one that would push our limits and force us to do what we normally avoid…Rush!

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