December is here and if you followed either of the previous posts (the first one or the second one) on training for a big adventure race, such as Untamed New England, you’ll know that I owe you one non-physical, one physical, and one “Untamed Aspect” training suggestion for the new month.  My aim, as I mentioned in the previous material, is for you to arrive to the race start as prepared as possible and ready to make the most of your race experience.  I would consider this December material in tandem with the previous suggestions, as these monthly installments will create a cumulative body of knowledge that can help you to make the most of your time preparing for the race.

First up: a non-physical step you can take to prepare. Safety on the race course is your first responsibility, and a Wilderness First Aid (WFA) class will give you specific training for handling emergencies in the wild.  Everyone hopes they never need to use the skills developed through a First Aid class, but it isn’t a cliché to say that this measure can be a life-saver!  If you hang around adventure racing long enough, you’re bound to find yourself in situations where you, your team, or another team you encounter on the course has a need for your Wilderness First Aid training.  It’s only a matter of time.  Let’s hope it never happens, but you owe it to yourself to be prepared.  Typical WFA classes take 2 full days, and if you want to take backcountry safety training to a higher level you can do the 5-day Wilderness First Responder (WFR) class.  Truly, any medical training can be an advantage in a race, but these WFA and WFR classes are all about improvised care with the limited resources of a wilderness setting. Continue Reading

The Untamed New England Adventure Race has opened registration for their June 2012 edition; the race website has been updated with the relevant details, but let’s run down some highlights:

1) It’s a 4-day race, one day longer than previous versions (for some background on this decision, read Breathe Magazine’s write-up on a conversation with race leadership)

2) It’s based from Northern Outdoors at The Forks, Maine — the same venue that worked with Eco-Challenge 16 years ago when it was run in Maine as part of the X-Games.  This is the only locale to ever host an Eco-Challenge East of the Mississippi, so it’s a special kind of place.

3) Race disciplines will have the usual mountain biking, paddling, trekking and for this year pack-rafting has been included, along with whitewater rafting.  Back-country navigation is a signature element of Untamed New England, and this year will be no different.  Expect lots of strategic route choices.  The rope(s) sections advertise rappelling, ascending, and a tyrolean traverse.

4) The race is once again a Qualifier for the AR World Championships; in 2012 this will be in the French Alps in late September, so teams looking to compete on the highest of international levels have this race to circle on their calendar.

The ExploreCompeteLive website is going to start running a regular segment on preparing for the Untamed New England, targeting teams newer to multi-day racing.  A good place to start is on the UntamedNE.com website, with a piece titled “So you’re thinking about Untamed New England…”.

The Untamed race slogan is “more an adventure than a race” and participants need to be ready for what Untamed New England can throw at them . . . that means serious wilderness, with real navigation, and handling the consequences of your race decisions . . . our goal is to help you arrive at the starting line as prepared as possible.  But you’ll never be prepared enough.

Finally, here’s a nice video clip Breathe Magazine did on the Untamed New England.  Let’s get pumped for those Fall races and workouts — and start thinking about June 2012!

We raced in Ecuador as “The APEX Race” team, sponsored by the APEX race for the 2011 edition of the Huairasinchi Adventure Race.  Things started off badly.  It inexplicably took us 30 minutes to change Russell’s flat tire in the opening few km of biking from the starting line (the 10,000 ft of altitude messed with the CO2s, perhaps?).

Every team passed us — and I mean also the “adventure route” short-course teams — so we were literally the final team to reach the first checkpoint of the race. We slowly overtook teams for the rest of the ride, passing maybe 10 teams before the leg ended.

The trick to the first bike leg, it turned out, was embracing the hike-a-bike as there was no way to ride the full distance to the next transition area.  We resorted to climbing barbed wire fences, densely vegetated ravines, and pushing our bikes where riding was impossible . . . and we made the decision to do this earlier than several other teams, which accounts for most of our recovery in the standings at the end of the bike leg.  For the sections we could ride, our lungs were taxed to the limit at these high elevations.

Our bad start, however, shifted into “seriously bad” mode when we started the long trekking leg in the high Andean mountains.   Trekking at 12,000+ feet of altitude hit us all, but my teammates Sherry and Joel were vomiting and showing symptoms of altitude sickness too obvious to neglect.   We stuck it out, moved slowly, they took some pills and we eventually missed a time cut-off and completed a shortened version of the trekking leg early the next morning.

For the lead teams of the race, hats off to them for succeeding in the altitude — there was a  lot of altitude sickness in the Andes that day, and several teams had to drop out of the race because of it.
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For 2010, I did a run-down of all the races in the Adventure Racing World Series and talked about the particulars of the event, the organization,  and some of the teams involved.  With the first ARWS race starting next week in Ecuador, it’s about time I get this first piece together for 2011!  This is particularly key to me since I’m competing in the race on the APEX – Alpine Expedition Switzerland team, so I have a keen interest in the details of this event!

One final note before I start, the ARWS recently changed leadership (Australia’s GeoCentric took over from founder Geoff Hunt) and I don’t want to gloss over the significance of this . . . but I’ll save a conversation about all this for a bit later.

Even with the big shake-up at the top of the AR World Series, all the member events are still continuing as scheduled and the first contest of the 2011 year is in the Andean highlands and jungle: the 3-day Huairasinchi race in Ecuador.

The race is advertised as 3-days in duration, provides a local support crew for all international teams (but requires support crews for local Ecuadoran racers), and is run in conjunction with a stage race that attracts a more casual field of athletes.  The stage racers camp each night at a transition area, while the full Huairasinchi expedition racers continue on without stopping.  The course could involve some looping routes where the same TA gets reused a couple times.

The atmosphere, from what previous racers have told me, can be like a party at the TAs at the conclusion of the stages . . . and it is a logical hub for media and spectators to follow both events simultaneously.  For the expedition teams, leaving the comfort of such transition areas is always a bit of a challenge!

Huairasinchi roughly translates in English to “power of the wind” from the native Incan dialect, and the competitors in Ecuador will explore all the diversity of terrain that the Incas dominated for so long.  Teams will visit rain forests at sea level, towering Andean peaks over 4,000 m high, and everything in between.  There will be exposed, windy stretches where the temperatures drop to freezing . . . and hot, humid areas with temperatures in excess of 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

According to race organizer, Santiago López, there has been more rain than is typical in Ecuador this year.  Teams should expect conditions muddier than usual.  Could it really be a race through the rain forest without mud, though?
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Santiago López, the Race Director for Ecuador’s upcoming Huairasinchi Adventure Race in March, took some time to discuss the race with me.  We talked about ancient Incan trails and, of all things, diapers!

Question: How is the 2011 Huairasinchi race coming toghttp://www.adventureworldmagazineonline.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=11454&type=image&TB_iframe=1&width=640&height=486ether?

Santiago: The  race this year is probably the one I have enjoyed the most putting together.  The diversity we’ve found is impressive!  Not only because of the different ecosystems, but also because of the people.  We have learned that Ecuador has many ethnic groups, and in this race course we found many of them!

Question: I know our team is excited about a genuine cultural exploration of Ecuador . . . but we’re also intimidated by the altitude of the Andes.  What will be the highest elevation teams will reach?  The lowest?

Santiago: Crossing the Andes is always a challenge, so racers can expect elevations over 4000 meters.  In Ecuador the coast and the rain forest are at very low elevations, so independent of where we are heading the lowest elevation will be close to 0 meters — that is sea level.  So a range from 0 to 4000 meters, and potentially a lot in between!

Question: Can you comment more specifically about the environments teams are likely to race through?

Santiago: Ecuador has highlands with strong cold winds, beautiful mountain views, and the headwaters of the rivers that feed the Pacific Ocean  and the Amazon — these are some of my favorites.  There’s  cloud forests with so many different types of birds.   Even some ancient Inca trails will be part of the journey!

Question: Can you explain for those who don’t know, how does the support crew requirement work for international teams at your race?  We’re excited to get to connect with locals, and think that is such a fun innovation on your part.

Santiago: In Huairasinchi, we require all teams to have a support crew during the race. Every team must have a minimum of one car and 2 person and a maximum of 2 car and 4 person as support crew. For international teams we work with local guides, friends, and volunteers with experience providing each team with a car and 2 local support crew members. The support crew has the job of helping the team in every TA. This becomes a different race and experience while support crews do their best to help their teams with dry clothes, food and any other little needs that a tired racer can have.

Question: Do you have a favorite funny story from all the years organizing Huairasinchi?

Santiago: Every year has funny stories . . .  but I remember one that happened 5 years ago.   A racer had to stop their team and ask them for help because he wasn’t able to sit in his bike no more.    It was too painful for him.   Too much saddle time.  The team stopped at a local store and the only thing they found to help him where diapers.  He wore diapers during the rest of the bike leg looking very funny!

The 2011 Adventure Racing World Championships wil be contested on the island of Tasmania, some of Australia’s most rugged and remote terrain.   There are three ways to claim a spot at the starting line:

1. Place first or second at one of the qualifying AR World Series races (24 spots are available this way); this is an elite criteria!
2. Apply in the “Application Category” as a team of international accomplishment or special interest (30 spots are available in this category)
3. Go the first-come, first-served route via the “General Category” where 20 team entries are available to any team brave enough to face the challenge

The race organization announced today that the 30 spots in the  “Application Category” have been filled (after 60 teams applied!).  There are teams accepted from Canada, USA, UK, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, France, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.  View the current list of teams at the XPD Australia site — North Americans will recognize names like “Milton Basement Racers” and “Spirit Canada” from Canada, and Masha Glanville’s “Dancing Panda” team from the USA are on the list.  BRAT, mostly a US team (but with a Danish navigator, at least at Untamed New England in 2010), are on the list too.  These are joined, of course, by the reigning world Champions in Buff Thermocool and tough southern hemisphere teams like Blackheart (Australia) and Merrell Adventure Addicts (South Africa).

There’s a new adventure/travel reality TV Program in the works from “EcoChallenge” producer Mark Burnett (remember him?).   The show is called “Expedition Impossible” and will follow several 3-person teams as they complete challenges and solve problems while traveling through the wilderness areas of the world.  Burnett calls it “an epic Indiana Jones-style experience” and the casting director likened it to a mix of EcoChallenge and Amazing Race.

More details are in this flyer that we’re circulating for the casting effort: http://www.UntamedAdventure.com/media/flyer.pdf

A bit more from the casting director:

We are currently on a nation‐wide search looking for dynamic,

competitive, and energetic teams of three people for Expedition Impossible.  Don’t spend the month of April at your boring job. Spend it on the experience of a lifetime! You MUST be at least 18 years old, a legal US resident and have a US passport valid through the end of 2011 to participate.

Expedition Impossible is Burnett's Next TV Adventure

To apply, email David Polanzak at dpo.casting@gmail.com. Your email must include the following:
• Name, age, location and contact info for all three team members
• Recent photo of all 3 team members
• Level of individual and team’s experience with competitions/races, etc.
• Brief description of why your team is great for this competition and why you will win
• Anything else that makes your team memorable and unique

On a related note, he mentioned that the US resident requirement *could* be waived for the right candidate, so all my Canadian friends should also give it a shot!

[12 Oct 2010 - Update: the final rankings coming out of Spain continue to shift, so I've updated the results I reference below]

The two teams racing at the AR World Championships with just North American personnel, GUATS Adventure and Untamed New England, both crossed the finish line in Spain this past Friday afternoon.  I *think* GUATS adventure finished in 16th place, and the Untamed New England team finished in 21st.  Considering the caliber of competition, and the long list of strong teams who withdrew from the race or finished below them in the final standings, this is an impressive achievement!  Over 50 high-quality teams entered the race.  Congratulations!

Also in these pictures, courtesy of Brian Schmitz at the finish line, we have Canadian (not American!) Jen Segger who raced with South Africa’s Cyanosis team (finished in 13th).  There’s the Adidas Terrex team from the UK (the World Champions from 2009), and also — for those who followed them to their 2nd place finish at the Untamed New England race in August — there’s a pic of the Danish team Skandia.

With the sun setting in Salamanca on Thursday, the adventure racing team “Buff Thermocool” crossed the finish line to win the 2010 Adventure Racing World Championships.   Hailing from Spain (with one French team member), the years of racing and teamwork finally came together for a glorious win on their own home turf.

The race was closely contested for the first couple days, but Buff Thermocool used their fast mountain running to build a comfortable lead while trekking and biking through the rocky Spanish highlands that had been one of their training grounds.  Team Blackwater (USA/New Zealand), Silva Gerber (Sweden/New Zealand), and other teams from Denmark, France, and the UK continued the chase.  By Wednesday evening, the Blackwater team had nearly closed the gap — but again Buff Thermocool’s trail running prowess proved too much for their adversaries (more details on the chase are in this Adventure World piece).

With a 3 hour cushion after the final trek, Buff Thermocool’s final 70 km kayak leg was not as dramatic as the preceeding several days.  The race had been decided in the Sierra de Gredos and Spain’s mountainous ridges extending West of Madrid — this is where Buff Thermocool literally and figuratively found their stride and sped to their insurmountable lead.

Adventure racing is not just about speed and navigation, it’s also about intelligence and organization.  Buff Thermocool ran a smart race and negotiated the mental hurdles better than any other team; this race — with a staggering number of transition areas and logistical details — really put teamwork, communication, and resourcefulness to the test.  They were smart about when to sleep, and when not to sleep.  They kept all their gear bins organized between the frequent transition areas.  They knew when to push the pace and when to back off.  Certainly, good fortune comes into play . . . but in this sport, like no other, teams make their own luck by bringing all their experience to the table.  Buff Thermocool have been competing at the highest level of adventure racing for years now, and they’re a fitting foursome to claim the highest prize for 2010.

Blackwater took second place a few hours behind, and the rest of the field will cross the finish line later today (Friday) after being stopped on the final kayak leg for an overnight “safety zone” where no paddling would take place in the dark.  3rd place is expected to go to Sweden’s Silva Gerber team.
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Brian sent me a salvo of hastily taken photos this morning, showing race leaders Buff Thermocool and 2nd place Team Blackwater going through their last major transition of the race.  I’ll share those pictures below, but let me first set the scene.

Early yesterday evening (Spanish time), it looked like Team Blackwater were on a trajectory to overtake the Buff Thermocool team.  The separation was 4 hours, then 3 hours, then 2 hours, then smaller still, and on pace to keep dropping until Blackwater had snatched the race lead away from the Spanish team.  It looked like this might go down as an amazing final push from the Blackwater team to grab the victory in the final day of the race.

I woke up this morning and eagerly checked the race tracking map, and to my surprise Buff’s lead had held through the night!  The online tracking shows a story of Blackwater’s pace slowing and Buff Thermocool extending their lead again to a comfortable 2 hours or longer.  I wondered if I would ever get an explanation and I was relieved to read the Sleepmonsters report of what, to me, must be the turning point of the race:

Blackwater, and especially Nathan Fa’avae, had had a hard time on the overnight trek/ropes/skate stage. They are limited in which of their kit cans they can access at the various transitions. At the end of the MTB stage prior to the trek, the only one they could access was their MTB can, to deposit biking gear – meaning they would need to be carrying their trekking shoes with them on the bikes. While Buff Thermocool had read through this correctly, Blackwater were not carrying their shoes, and at transition, rapidly realised their mistake. Faced with an agonising 23km trek in their bike shoes, Monique, Mike and Chris managed to scrounge shoes from the marshals, but no-one had anything to fit Nathan’s size 48 feet. As a last-ditch solution to keep them moving, he took the insoles out of his bike shoes, stuck them inside his socks, and soldiered on.

This will surely go down as one of the greatest “not fully reading the race instructions” incidents of all time.  There may be other factors at play here, such as a translation issue (Buff Thermocool may be reading in their native Spanish, while Blackwater are likely using a translated set — hopefully reviewed more thoroughly than the English side of the race website).  This race has the most transitions of any event I’ve seen, and I’m thinking a combination of the frequency of transitions and the day 4 “racing brain syndrome” could also contribute to the oversight by Blackwater.  While I’m not a fan of races requiring support crews, one would think that a full race support crew could have prevented this too.

On a related note, and as a Race Director myself, I question whether the Blackwater team wearing shoes taken from race staff constitutes “outside assistance” but it wouldn’t be the first time rules have been interpreted “loosely” for a high profile team.  I’ve done 20 km treks in my bike shoes, for example, when I’ve made similar mistakes.  I’m just sayin’.
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I got an update on the Untamed New England team racing at the AR World Championships; they’re still on the full course, ranked in 20th (approximately) and there’s a steady stream of teams withdrawing from the race due to fatigue, injury, equipment failure, or any number of issues.  The point is, the race has moved seriously into the war of attrition phase, and the if the team keeps pushing they will move up in the rankings once the dust settles.

The team has had some bike problems from early on in the race; James broke his derailleur off at one point and, fortunately, one of the teams that has withdrew from the race (the nonstop.cat team) has loaned them their bike from this point forward.  These pics are from the paddle take-out, where teams switch to mountain biking, and then they dash off over the horizon.  Just a few hundred kilometers still to go!

The general state of the 2010 AR World Championship is this: Spain’s local Buff Thermocool team have a slowly diminishing lead over Team Blackwater (lead by Mike Kloser).  Running in 3rd place is Silva Gerber.  Blackwater has banked 90 minutes more sleep than Buff, at least, and the gap between first and second is decreasing as the hours tick by.  The question is: will Blackwater have enough course to overtake Buff Thermocool?  I think there is plenty of racing still to come, so I think the American/Kiwi combo racing as Team Blackwater are going to have their chances to win this race.  I’m not saying they ultimately will win, but I’m saying this is going to be interesting to track the final day or two of racing!

I have some photos from a bit further back on the course, most notably of the OS-Direct team from the Ukraine/Russia.  Enjoy!

It’s a bit like Christmas when I get a bundle of pics from Brian on the ground in Spain.  This set of photos tells the story of a busy transition area yeterday, Monday, during Day #2 of the race.

One of the racers with the podium hopefuls on team OrionHealth required emergency evacuation yesterday after a scary mountain bike accident.  The racer is fine now, after spending the night in the hospital in Salamanca, but Orion had an ordeal on the trail that no team can prepare for.  Nathan Peterson was knocked unconscious for about 15 minutes, and had the team not activated the “Send Help Immediately” button on their emergency tracking beacon it could have been much worse.  The South Africans from Cyanosis (team #15) came upon Orion and also activated their emergency help button.  A third team, French I believe, also encountered the teams huddled around their immobile teammate.

With 3 “Send Help Immediately” buttons activated in the same couple minutes, the race organization in Spain acted to urgently get to the scene.  Two helicopters were called-in, with ultimately just a single helicopter reaching the scene to evacuate the OrionHealth racer.  The emergency response was impressively quick, and while some may fault the race organization for a lack of public news updates it seems they’ve got priority #1 straight: participant safety.  Brian, who was at the TA and witnessed the organizational response unfold, was genuinely impressed.

Let me insert at this point a quick note about the value of the satellite tracking devices in Spain.  Full disclosure: I do programming work for the provider TrackMe360.com and so I’m not a neutral observer.  It doesn’t take a neutral observer, however, to recognize the potentially life-saving technology these beacons provide.  These are the same beacons that provide the online tracking of the race, and we all complain when tracking updates are less frequent than we’d like, but the 911 emergency features of the beacons are never “off” even when the beacons are dormant (the devices require a daily refresh to keep transmitting position information for the internet — talk to my boss at TrackMe360.com for a full discussion of the operations).   It’s important for spectators to appreciate that the tracking element on the website is more of a side-benefit to the key safety features these devices provide.  We witnessed these safety features in action on Monday, and we’re all glad the racer is now recovering well.

The race for the podium was over for OrionHealth, but the other teams who stopped to assist (Cyanosis and the unknown French team) continued to race — perhaps with a bit more nerves following the accident.

The photos below show the initial helicopter response and then the first few teams through the Transition Area.  Teams arrived on mountain bike before leaving for an inline skate section.  Only the best skating teams (such as Silva Gerber) relished the steep sections for inline skating, and a couple of the pics show teams “skating” with their skates in their hands or on the sides of the road instead of embracing the paved road surface for the speed that it affords.
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It’s Tuesday morning in Spain and the Buff Thermocool team, the best hope for the host nation to reach the podium, has fought for a couple hour lead over Sweden’s Silva Gerber team. Blackwater (a team from the USA and New Zealand), Outdry (a team from France), and Daredevils AR (the lead Danish team) along with several other top contenders are chasing not too far behind.

A picture is emerging of a determined Buff Thermocool team out in front of the rest of the field. Brian Schmitz, our man on location overseeing the tracking devices, reported this morning his latest impressions:

“The front pack of the race came in to midcamp in the early morning hours. All the teams looked tired and, in a word, worked. Buff Thermocool, on the other hand, looked good. Their gal is a horse and the heart of that team!”

Brian was welcoming teams back from a tough mountain trek, ropes courses, and cold overnight conditions. There’s no doubt any mere mortal would return “worked” from the experience, and for these elite teams it was night #2 on a challenging Spanish race course. There’s good reason to be tired!

I think leading the AR World Championships mid-way through the race would be ample inspiration for any team, and so it’s not a shock to learn that the Buff Thermocool team appeared better off than the other front-runners. Another dimension to this story is that Buff Thermocool are Spanish, and talk around the transition area (again, courtesy of Brian) is that at least one of the Buff Thermocool racers already knew the trails and mountains of the overnight trek well. Spain is a big country, but the odds of some of the race course overlapping with training areas for the best Spanish team are fairly high, so chalk this up as another advantage the Buff Thermocool team enjoyed overnight.

The question is at what point will the momentum and excitement of leading the race get the better of Buff Thermocool, and lead them to make navigation errors or push too far without sleeping? This team knows how to win races, though, having bested a field of strong teams in Ecuador earlier this year — and that race is set at the highest elevations of any race in the world, so you know Buff Thermocool can cope with physical adversity. The question for the next couple days is how will the pressure and any mental adversity impact these race leading Spaniards?

At the moment, they’ve wrestled control of the race from the other contenders and are proving a formidable local challenger for the crown of AR World Champion 2010!

Visit the race website for a live tracking map, additional photos, and (occasionally) news on the race . . .

I have an update for you from the World Championships in Spain; my info came through very early this Monday morning from Brian, and he took the photos below from the action on Sunday.  I tried to sprinkle some pics in of other teams, too, so besides the photo montage to Team Blackwater in the transition area (still in their Nike uniforms, indicating a short term sponsor arrangement for Nike at the WC?), we have some shots of Orion looking lean and mean, the Untamed New England team (let’s go gang!), Team Ecuador, Team 28 (SPORT NATURE VILLE-LA-GRAND team) from France, and the Buff Thermocool team.

Brian reports mild conditions for the start of the race on Sunday morning . . . but conditions turned ugly by Sunday evening.  The mountain bike sections have gotten pounded with rain, so let’s hope teams have good tread on those tires!  Check the final picture in the gallery below for evidence of the wind and rain Sunday evening!

It’s frustrating to see no Leaderboard updates (and that is not what Brian and TrackMe360.com were contracted for), and it looks like the volunteers in charge of refreshing the tracking devices in El Rincon were not as diligent as we would’ve hoped.  Brian’s final note to me was that he was being shuttled out to a lead TA to get a handle on the devices and reset them himself.

One final point before I insert the pictures . . . don’t read too much into who is leading on the race tracking map since there are some time penalties that aren’t reflected on the map.  Let me be specific: the race started Sunday with some quick urban orienteering before moving into a long mountain bike section.  In the middle of the bike leg was a “difficult” foot orienteering section (declared “difficult” by the race organization).  Teams could choose to skip the orienteering section and remain on the full race course, but incur a time penalty.  I don’t know how draconian the penalty is, but teams that bypassed that section will appear ahead of teams who did the full orienteering.  Only an updated Leaderboard can tell us who skipped the orienteering, and I understand the Spanish are working on it.

Now, on to some pictures from Sunday:

I’ve been in frequent touch with Brian, who is currently at the Spanish race headquarters; his first job is looking after the GPS tracking system and devices (which seem to be working pretty well right out of the gate!) and he may not get out into the field until tomorrow.

There are some optional sections of the course, he tells me; while all the serious contenders will pursue every optional point there are less experienced teams who may opt to take the shorter route (and be penalized in the rankings — but their hope is to just reach the finish without much regard for their ultimate position).

Brian did catch some of the pre-race festivities and I’ll insert his pics below.  As our readership is mostly North America (but growing internationally…), he just sent the detailed photos for the North American teams . . .

Let’s see, apparently teams could encounter some snow in the higher reaches of the course . . . and a bit of home town news : the Untamed New England team had 8 punctures while testing their mountain bikes on Saturday.  The team spent hours running around town finding a “slime” solution for their tires, to deal with all the prickly thorns the Spanish have spread through their course.  Not the best way to spend your precious pre-race hours!

I got a quick note from Brian, our man on the ground in Spain, and he sent me a few photos from Friday at the AR World Championship check-in formalities.  There’s pictures of Argentines, French, Colombians, Czechs and even the Canadians making up the Untamed New England team .  Brian reported:

“Check in and gear checks were all day today.  The usual craziness.  Overall, though, no real drama from what I could tell.  All the teams looked to be controlled and calm.”

He continued to tell me only 4 teams have yet to check-in, these are local Spanish teams that will just be driving instead of arriving by plane.  In looking at the photos below, I shudder a bit as a race organizer to consider transporting all of them to/from the airports and hotels; the pre-race logistics are significant by the looks of those buses and vans.

Further complicating matters, Brian reports some athletes’ gear (bike boxes) were lost in transit, making for a few very frustrated teams.  They may have to consider renting bikes or substituting their ultra-light tent with a car camping tent purchased from the local shop.  Ah, yes, the glamour of international racing . . . it’s not a real race without lost equipment by some airline!

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Just a note about our contact on the ground at the race, Brian Schmitz.  TrackMe360.com has been contracted to provide the GPS tracking services to the race; Brian is the hired help to oversee this operation in Spain.  Brian’s main assignment is to configure and troubleshoot any tracking problems on the course, and Adventure World Magazine has got it’s claws into him for a secondary assignment: give us an inside look at the race!

In Brian’s own words:

My AR background is primarily racing versus staffing adventure races.  Currently I’m splitting my racing between two teams, Dirty Avocados Adventure Racing and Tecnu Extreme/StaphAseptic.  That said, the opportunity to participate (even from the sideline) in the adventure racings World Championships is one I relish and will not forget!

I didn’t go out on any limbs with my top 3 picks for the AR World Championships.  The racing in Spain starts on Sunday, and at this point conventional wisdom would probably put the Blackwater, SilvaGerber, and Orion teams in some combination near the top.  It’s more difficult to turn the focus a bit further down the rankings, and that’s what I’m going to do here.  Here follows my predictions for 4th – 6th position, and then some other teams to watch below that.

4th – Thule Adventure Team (Team #10 on the race roster I’ve been sent), Sweden

• With their two notable Kiwis sitting this one out (the Usshers), Thule slides a bit in my prediction but ONLY SLIGHTLY.  Expect them to be near the front of the pack early in the race, and to stay there.

5th – GUATS Adventure (Team #11 on the race roster I’ve been sent), Canada

• While you might claim this is a sentimental pick for me (since GUATS earned their Spanish trip by winning the Untamed New England race that I’m involved with organizing), I can point to the track record that team captain, Bob Miller, has assembled over the years.  A 4th place finish at PrimalQuest 2006 (remember the team chasing Merrell to the finish line for 3rd?) comes to mind, when Bob led the SupplierPipeline team.  His supporting cast is different from that 2006 campaign in Utah, but Bob Miller and his band looked unstoppable at New England when the going got tough — GUATS banked about 2 hours more sleep than any other lead team, yet still won by a comfortable margin, so I slot them in as my 5th place pick without reservations.

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I keep waiting for the Spanish organization to publish complete information on who is actually racing at the Adventure Racing World Championships, but time is running out.  I get paid the big bucks to write articles, not wait for websites to be updated, so I’m going to see what I can do!

I do have a preliminary list in my email from the Spanish (not to be distributed publicly), updated this week, that shows the 53 teams that they expect to race (as opposed to their list of 70+ on the website).

So here goes; I’ll attempt AR World Championship podium predictions, but with just the name of the team (and team names are frequently in flux!) along with the name of the team captain, it’s very difficult.  Take the following predictions with several grains of salt because my understanding of the composition of a team could be way off from the reality of who lines up at the starting line.  In many cases, I’m relying on “I heard that XXX is racing with team YYY” sort of intel!

So . . . with the big caveat out of the way . . . here are my top 3 predictions and I’ll follow up tomorrow with my picks for positions 4-6, and some notes on other teams to watch:

My predicted 2010 AR World Champions – Team Blackwater (Team #2 on the race roster I’ve been sent) from USA / New Zealand

• It’s Kloser’s last stand, with a new team name but it will always be Team Nike to me.  Kloser is joined by Monique Merrill (fresh from her scary near-death experience in France earlier this year) and Kiwi Chris Forne.  The clincher for me to pick them to win was their 4th teammate, another Kiwi: the legend from Team Seagate’s days of domination in this sport, Nathan Fa’avae.  Although he “retired” from the sport a couple years back, he’s been popping up at big events here and there and I would be foolish to pick against the combined experience of this team.

2nd – Silva/Gerber Adventure (Team #6 on the race roster I’ve been sent), from Sweden/New Zealand

• This Swedish team (Lundhags in years previous) won Europe’s longest race this year, Explore Sweden, in decisive fashion (they were like a day ahead of the organization’s fastest estimates!).  That was nearly 3 months ago and, while the Silva/Gerber team has had time to fully recover, they’ve also had time to win at Sweden’s national series just a few weeks ago.  They finished 3rd at the World Championships in 2009, and I’m predicting them to jump another notch up the podium this year.

3rd – Orion Adventure (Team #3 on the race roster I’ve been sent), New Zealand

• It’s been a couple injuries and DNFs for this team since the World Championships last year, so I think they’re due for a successful race.  For this team, the 2008 World Champions, the third spot on the podium may not sound “successful” but this is where I placed them.  I don’t know if Marcel “the Savage” Hagener is racing for them or not (once again, a complete race roster would be nice!), but he can be a key piece to the Orion puzzle.

I’ll forge on with 4th-6th place predictions, and other darkhorse teams, tomorrow.

[UPDATE: some key info has just been shared with me so note the big UPDATE section at the bottom of the original post]

The Adventure Racing World Series culminates with the World Championships in Spain, starting next week.  I’ve been covering the World Series all year and this final fiesta in the center of the Iberian peninsula should be fun to watch.  While I would normally be there in person, and I have several inside connections that give me a unique perspective, our family is welcoming a new baby in a few weeks and it’s not feasible to be at the race in person this year.  I’m hopeful, however, that following the race from afar is better than it was in Portugal in 2009 . . . ultimately, we’re at the mercy of the race organization and what they put together.

There is a lot to discuss in advance of this race.  Foremost in my mind is the format: this race will be a traditional “first to the finish wins” affair, returning to the classic adenture racing style that the Portuguese championship so controversially deviated from (see the Adventure World overview of the format from 2009).

One glance at the PDF list of teams at the Championships shows a large international field will attend.  That PDF is a month old, however, and I know of some changes to the race roster that aren’t reflected on it.  At a minimum, I know another North American team will be racing — Team Untamed New England (actually composed just of Canadians, but racing as representatives of North America’s AR World Series event) — and there are some other last minute withdrawals and additions.  The Spanish organizers should have final information posted soon, I would hope!

It sounds like the Spanish are pulling out all the stops for this race.  They advertise rafting, ropes, and the ever-popular (in Europe) inline skating to go along with trekking, paddling, and mountain biking.  While the race requires support crews, the race organization is emphasizing the special measures they are taking to correct what happened in Portugal last year: teams with the “race provided” support crew were at a severe disadvantage in the 2009 Championship!
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The AR World Series, as noted in a previous post, had a very crowded August calendar.  The United Kingdom hosted their World Series event  — named the Addidas TERREX — over the final weekend of August in the scenic Lakes Region of the UK.

I recently caught up with one of the course planners for the UK event, Bruce Duncan, and got a great overview of the race.  He shared a detailed course breakdown for me, and you can click on the map below for a great visual look at the race . . . but here are the rough pieces to the TERREX 2010 course:

• Leg 1 Bay Run (24 km)
• Leg 2 MTB Eskdale (110 km)
• Leg 3 Coniston Paddle (9 km)
• Leg 4 Coniston Newby Br Trek (14 km)
• Leg 5 Windermere Paddle (30 km)
• Leg 6 Langdale MTB (18 km)
• Leg 7 Central Fells Trek (30 km)
• Leg 8 High Street MTB (40 km)
• Leg 9 Ullswater Paddle (13 km)
• Leg 10 Helvellyn Trek (21 km)
• Leg 11 Skiddaw MTB (42 km)
• Leg 12 Derwent Water Paddle (12 km)

According to Bruce, this race will be remembered for “the horrific weather that we had for the Central Fells Trek, it lashed it with rain for about 18 hours, so teams really suffered on this section.”

Having done some of my college education in the UK, I can personally attest to the punishing rain, winds, and cold that can afflict that area — nobody goes to an adventure race in Britain expecting gorgeous weather!  Still, nearly a day of non-stop freezing rain is more than most racers at Addidas TERREX bargained for.

Bruce went on to explain: “Many teams had good hospitality from local people, one team saw a guy walking out of his shed, and asked if they could have a sleep in it, which he said was fine.  Another knocked on a hotel door and slept in the foyer, and were brought cups of tea.  Another slept in the drying room of a youth hostel for a wee while to warm up and dry out!”

26 teams eventually reached the TERREX finish line (out of 32 teams that started the event), which is an excellent outcome given the racing conditions.  The winners, racing as “Team adidas TERREX,” were the current AR World Champions so no surprises to find them atop the podium here; we’ll have to see how this top UK team does at the World Championships in Spain (in just a couple weeks!) to get a true read on their 2010 form.  Full race results from the UK event are on the TERREX website.

Special thanks again to Bruce Duncan for taking the time to discuss this race with me and share the great map overview; you can find Bruce on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bikingBruce.  For the record, Adventure World Magazine is on Twitter at  http://twitter.com/AdventureWorld– and not to be left out, I’m on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Untamed_Adv.

August was a frenzied time for AR World Series races — the absence of an active central governance for the Series can make for situations such as this: the 3-day Raid in France 27-29 August . . . the 3-day Terrex race in the UK 27-30 August.  These events are both in the World Series, and only about 700 miles apart.  To fuel the fire a bit more, the Quechua team — arguably France’s finest adventure race team over the last several years — skipped the race in their home country to go to Costa Rica and race the World Series event scheduled there a few days prior to Raid in France.   Costa Rica’s race took place Aug 24-29.  It’s not like there’s a couple World Series races each weekend — in fact, from March through June there were zero events on the World Series calendar.

I’m not going to turn this into an exploration of the AR World Series schedule and coordination (full disclosure: I organize the Untamed New England race that has been North America’s AR World Series event for the last couple years, and also scheduled in August this year), I’ll save that for another time.  Let’s agree to declare August a very busy month for the Series and start looking at the events outside of North America starting with France.

Raid in France 2010 was organized as a shorter edition over past years, and they included a new beginner-oriented division to the race.  This beginner initiative, called the ICDI (“I Can Do It”) race, would be a 10 hour version of the full 3-day Raid in France and help teams develop the skills to compete in longer races.  I think it’s a great concept, but as a race organizer I know our staff must focus 100% on just a single race — having a  shorter race going on at the same time has always caused us more headaches than rewards.  I haven’t heard how the ICDI race worked out for the French, but I think they only had 7 teams competing on this more gentle race course.  It seems a shame to go through all the effort to plan and organize an ICDI event for just 7 teams, though!

As for the main Raid in France 2010 race, they had 35 teams participating and — in a nostalgic twist for North America, where races requiring support crews have all but disappeared, Raid in France 2010 would still require “team assistants” to stage gear and setup transition areas for each team.  The course was in southwestern France, including the southern Hautes Alpes and traversing through Provence.   Having seen a bit of this terrain myself, I can say emphatically that it’s an amazing location for an adventure race!

The hot sun of Provence took a toll on the teams, with some having to withdraw from the race due to heatstroke.  The speedy ERTips team dropped out of the race after a serious mountain biking accident.

Route selection played a key part in the outcome, and even the eventual race winners Team Raidlight of France found sections to be extremely challenging — they declared themselves “out of the race” based on a few poor early navigation decisions, but overcame these to claim the victory.  Paddling, caving, trekking and mountain biking (with some apparently signature Raid in France hike-a-bike) over 53 hours . . . Team Raidlight emerged the winners and earned the paid entry into the World Championships in Spain in late September.