For the past few years our team has talked about doing one of the most isolated, pristine and truly epic adventure races out there – the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race. We had seen the pictures and spoke with past racers who con- firmed this is one amazing expe- rience. Unfortunately our regular teammate – John Ranson – could not make the commitment with De- nise Rispolie, James Galipeau and myself. It was November and the race was in only 3 months so we needed to contact some others we knew who might be up for the task. The first person we asked was An- drew Cameron, from Team Salo- mon-Suunto. We’d raced with him twice in the summer of 2009, both to some enjoyable overall wins, so we knew he’d be a great fit, plus a very strong athlete and navigator. Amazingly he responded he was up for the challenge and our team was set.

Next, we contacted some compa- nies who we thought might be in- terested in helping us with some of the extensive gear required. The amount of support companies we received was outstanding – compa- nies like Princeton Tec, Hilleberg the Tentmaker, Fox River Socks, Aquatabs, Icebreaker, Meal Kit Supply Canada, Smith Optics, Mountain Hardware along with our usual sponsors Running Free and Salomon, Phat Moose and Rohloff – all provided us with some essen- tial equipment needed for a suc- cessful race. We would be named after our title sponsor (and a favor- ite race of ours!) Team Untamed New England (which drew some curious questions given our home country of Canada!).

We took the 20+ hour flight out as late as possible, missing the official registration and crammed in regis- tration, grocery shopping, packing and testing for the next few days in Punta Arenas prior to race start. The international atmosphere and an exciting course preview had us restless in the nights prior to the race. The course would feature an 8K paddle across the Strait of Ma- gellan, followed by a mix of 300+K of trekking and biking across the relatively flat portions of North- ern Tierra Del Fuego. Once at the south end of the island, it featured a 100+K trek across the Darwin Cor- dillera, featuring many mountain passes and basically up-and-down (repeat 5-7 times) for the entire trek. Finally arriving near the Bea- gle Channel, we would kayak 50K across to Navarino Island where a 40K trek and similarly distanced mountain bike took us to the finish in Puerto Williams, the southern- most city on earth. Total distance was right around 600K.

By Nicola Cameron

I was so mad. I couldn’t switch off the voice in my head – “this is IMPOSSIBLE; this is DUMB; there is NO WAY we’re going to get there.” And more than that – “this HURTS.” It was dark, and so misty it was difficultto tell if it was raining or not. I was biking up a steep mountain road with my four team-mates, 36 hours into the Huai- rasinchi, an Ecuadorean adventure race with the claim to fame that it is the highest adventure race in the world. That was a hint: the top of the hill was a long way away.

My team-mates and I had just left a check-point where we had been informed, over the blasting radio that celebrated Ecuador’s Carnaval weekend, (even though all that was left of the party in the dingy square in the dusk was garbage and a few drunks attempting to play volley- ball) that the cut-off time for our next checkpoint had been pushed back – we now had a chance at making it – we had 3 hours left to cover 40 km. What was more, the volunteer chirped, most teams
were SO HAPPY to hear this that they had biked VERY FAST and had made it with lots of time! Mu-cho time! We stared grimly at him. The mountains were so steep, and we were so unprepared for the length of the climbs, that we were averaging 5km an hour. When we were going fast. By the time we left the checkpoint, we had 2 and a half hoursto go. “That’s like, time- trial speed!” said Trish.

Huairasinchi actually means something along the lines of “the strength of the wind” or “the agil- ity of the wind” in Kichwa, one of Ecuador’s indigenous languages. Our local support crew member Raul taught us how to pronounce it – and then fell in love with its vowels and, presumably, its spirit and used it to cheer us one when- ever possible. Hooo-eye-rrrrra- SEEEEENCHEEEE!!! When Le- anne, our team captain, emailed me to say that she was putting together an all-female team for the race, my response consisted largely of enthu- siastic exclamation points. It would be 60 hours: two nights,three days of biking, paddling, and trekking across a new landscape. The web- site promisedthe discovery of “hid- den places in Ecuador, rich places” of natural and cultural significance and a chance to exceed your own physical and mental limits. I love racing with Leanne and an all-fe- male team and the chance to visit Ecuador conjured up appealing im- ages of llamas and ponchos.

By Travis Macy • Photos by Monica Dalmasso

In 1994, when I was 11 years old, I watched from the support car as my dad, Mark, ran 146 miles from Death Valley, California to the summit of Mt. Whitney, more than 14,000 feet above. The Badwater
Ultramarathon is one of the hardest races on earth, and during those two days in the support car a lifelong reverence for the desert grew within me. While I always relished brief forays into the empty, dry spaces of North America, nothing I had done previously compared to what I would experience in Abu Dhabi in December of 2009.

Flying out of Denver International Airport just ahead of a looming snowstorm, I realized that missing a few good powder skiing days in Colorado was a small price to pay for a chance to race in the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge, a six-day multisport race in some of the most inspiring, unique, and unforgiving terrain on earth. For the next week, I would run, bike, paddle, swim, and climb through the vast sand dunes, deserted trails, sprawling seas, steep cliffs, and incredible cities that make Abu Dhabi a true treasure of the Middle East. Although the temperature at my house was well below freezing, I hoped that running through deep snow in the weeks before the race would prepare me for romping up
and down sand dunes.

The Players
The stakes were high with 40 coed, four-person teams from 20 countries competing for the largest cash purse in adventure racing. Like most international adventure races, the field included a disproportionate number of Kiwis. Race-hardened in the unforgiving climate and steep hills of the Southlands, the experienced athletes of Team Qasr Al Sarab and Team ADCO (who had both gained the support of local sponsors for this race) could be expected to contend for podium positions.

The Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge is a distant descendent of the original Raid Galouise and Raid World Championship, and a number of competitive French teams toed the line in an event organized by a French company called Community. Other familiar faces included the Swedes of Team Lundhags Adventure and Spanish/French of Team Buff Thermocool.

Strikingly absent were the Americans of Team Nike, the most successful adventure racing team in history, but interestingly present were the Germans of Team Abu Dhabi Triathlon. Led by Faris Al-Sultan, winner of Ironman Hawaii in 2005, this team of uber-triathletes generated whispers across the field and media before the race.

Would the fittest triathletes in the world have what it takes to complete a multi-day adventure race? Could they win?

What is adventure racing? Not many people have any idea. In fact, when I try to explain it, the response
I usually get is a blank stare or a nodding of the head in such a way that I know they have no idea what I’m talking about.

So when our son, Thomas, told us he was coming to New Hampshire from California, along with his three teammates, to race in the “Untamed New England” Adventure Race, we jumped at the chance to see him again and to also see what adventure racing is all about – close up. Off we go, my wife (Ann) and I, to northern New Hampshire to take a look.

Even though our son is a veteran racer, with him living on the west coast and us on the east, we just have not had the opportunity to see him perform in person. I’ve seen the pictures, but pictures do not tell the real story.
Thomas and his teammates “Track Me 360” from northern California raced against some 50 plus teams through the untamed parts of northern New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. The teams came from New Hampshire, Connecticut, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,
Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, Maryland, Maine, New Mexico, Arizona, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Australia, South Africa, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

Ok, so it’s a race through the wilderness of New England, you might say – now I get it. Well, no, I don’t
think so. It is not just a race; it’s a test of all of a person’s physical and mental capacities. First, when you enter the race the only information you get from the
race committee is when the race is, where the starting line will be, and when to be there. In this case it was
up on the cliffs of the Balsams Resort in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.

The pre-race literature also tells you to bring your mountain bike, paddles for kayaking and canoeing, your climbing gear to get up and down the side of a mountain,
a sufficient amount of food, clothing, repair kits, edicines, and orienteering skills because you are going to be out in the wilderness for almost three days of nonstop racing.

Once you arrive at race headquarters on race day, all you get from the committee is a set of topographical
maps made specifically for orienteering. These maps show accurate and detailed terrain variations and
are used by the racers to plot their path to each checkpoint they must pass to stay in the race. So, with
about an hour or two before race time, you have the maps, but they don’t show the checkpoints. You
get a separate set of instructions that gives you certain coordinates for the checkpoints that must be found on the orienteering maps.

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He has his place in history — Greg Kolodziejzyk currently holds two records in the Guinness Book of World Records. Greg is an ultraendurance athlete, 12 time Ironman finisher and has qualified to compete at the Ironman world championships in Hawaii. He has completed over a dozen marathons and qualified for Boston marathon twice. No person has ever traveled
farther under their own power in one day on land or water than Greg.He owns two Guinness World records for human powered distance: in July of 2006 he pedaled his human powered vehicle 647 miles (1041.24 km) in 24 hours, and in September of 2008, Greg pedaled his human powered boat 152.3 miles (245.16 km) in 24 hours.

A page in the Record Books was something he dreamed of from a young age. But, his journey has taken this adventurer to the absolute limits of human power. And,
he hopes his journeys will bring attention to some important causes in Canada and across the world…
obesity and the environment!

Currently, nearly 2 out of 3 North Americans are overweight or obese and this epidemic is costing Canadian tax payers nearly 5.8 billion
dollars a year in health care. One of the major causes of the obesity epidemic is our sedentary lifestyle and our increasing reliance on the automobile. Canada burns 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, and in the process, we are damaging our environment beyond repair.

“I want to inspire people to get active. Not only is using your human power good for the environment, but most importantly, it’s good for YOU!”

— His next goal: 3000 miles across the Pacific Ocean by human power!! Greg now plans to turn his passion for human power to the sea in a challenge he calls “Pedal the Ocean”.

Greg will set out to accomplish what no person in history has ever done: to pedal 4500 km across the Pacific Ocean from Canada to Hawaii in a specially designed human powered boat that he calls “WiTHiN” – in less than 40 days. WiTHiN will be a fully faired self-righting pedal powered boat capable of high speed in good conditions and maintaining way in adverse weather conditions. The
boat will be performance optimized for continuous power output and weekly provisioning requirements.
WiTHiN will incorporate modern materials and technology to ensure a lightweight craft without compromising safety and overall performance. WiTHiN -Prototype is
a proof of concept boat based on a 2- man kayak hull that will enable rapid development of the technology
required to make WiTHiN viable.

It’s been raining for two weeks in north Texas. In the last 48 hours it’s rained 5 inches. The 2009 USARA 24 Hours National Championship is supposed to take place in and around Lake Ray Roberts. The problem is nobody is exactly sure where the shoreline for Lake Ray Roberts is anymore. UTM coordinates that were once on the shore are now 100 yards out in the lake. The race directors are scrambling around trying to salvage the course. Now the wind is blowing 25 mph and there are whitecaps on the lake.

David, Mary and I are holed up in our room watching countless episodes of Duck Commander and
Whitetail Massacre (OK – first one is real, second one is a guess). I have seen so many ducks blasted from the sky and deer pierced with arrows or lured to a blind with girl deer scent and then dropped in a hail of lead that I am thinking of becoming a vegan.

Not David, he wants to see if the local convenience store sells rifles. Mary is now sleeping up to 16 hours a day and has taken to accusing me of setting alarms just to annoy her. I am re-reading a 4-day old New York Times for the 5th time. The room seems small.

Finally the race directors get a course together that works and tell us to pick up the maps at 5:00 a.m. on race day. A lot of racers are disappointed that the original start, a paddle across the lake, has been canceled and instead we will bike
around it.

I wasn’t one of them.

The Start – 7:09 a.m.
Elapsed Time 00:00
It was dark, windy and cold whenthe gun went off (reflexively Ilooked for the dead deer…). Almost 70 teams poured out from under the start banner and bolted down the driveway of Lantana’s, the host hotel, about 300 yards to where our bikes awaited. With 200 red taillights flashing it looked like we were running into a multiple car pile-up.

Mary, David and I had agreed that we wouldn’t bolt to the bikes. Yeah, right. David is genetically incapable of holding back. I have hit my max heart rate 2 minutes into a 24-hour race more times than I can count. Mary and I stick to the plan and arrive at the bikes a few seconds behind David. We were on the bikes and headed out the long entrance road to Lantana’s, towards the town of Pilot Point.

We grab the wheel of a group that forms in front of us and confirm we are all together. I know we are going to the front of the race in the next few miles; it is all David can do to give us five minutes to warm
up. He is itching to go…

Town of Pilot Point – 7:21 a.m.
Elapsed time: 0 hours 12 minutes
It’s only 3 miles into town and we are there very quickly. We have already bridged up one or two packs
of riders. We hit the crossroads near the center of town; it’s deserted at this hour. Actually it’s deserted at
almost any hour…

The Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race has a reputation for uncompromising courses in true wilderness and the 2009 race did not disappoint. If anything, that reputation was enhanced when the race finished with the racers temporarily stranded at the world’s most southerly continental point, and the last team on the course lost in the forest nearby for a couple of days. (More on that later, but for those of a nervous nature it turned out O.K. in the end.)

The adventure began by the docks in Punta Arenas, a long flight south from Santiago in the southern half of Chile. Punta Arenas is the principal town in the region and the jumping off point for Chilean Patagonia, the fabulous Torres del Paine National Park and Tierra del Fuego. The usual pre-race formalities were conducted in a hanger on the dockside, including a cold kayak roll in the waters of the Magellan Strait. In February it was still summer, but the forecast for the race was for Patagonia’s famed mix of chilling wet and windy weather.

The race began with a formal, staged start in the town square and some local entertainment. Then it was time to decamp for Torres del Paine, several hours drive away. The start would take place next morning on the waters of Grey Lake, and it was a nervous group of 9 teams who tried to rest and relax on the bus. Ahead of them lay almost 600km of racing over 7 days through the most remote and wild terrain any of them had ever encountered, expect perhaps those who had raced here before. Race Director Stjepan Pavicic had warned the teams to be fully prepared with enough food and clothing and to not underestimate the course. He also told me that he only expected 2 or 3 teams to finish the race.

It was late by the time teams reached camp (thanks to a puncture on thebus), but there was a lamb carcass roasting over an open fire when they got there to warm and feed them.
All too quickly the rainy night was over and dawn revealed brooding clouds which allowed only fleeting glimpses of the famous rock towers Torres del Paine is famed for. And it was windy. Very windy. The gale whipped up the waters of the lake and drove the rain horizontally as teams prepared their kayaks. Team Prunesco Helly Hansen from the UK were very glad of their decision to bring dry suits.

The plan had been to paddle out to a nearby shingle spit, beyond which floated a couple of icebergs, broken off the nearby Southern Patagonian ice field, but against the wind it was going to be impossible to even reach the spit. Getting off the shore was hard enough and US team Calleva had an early capsize as the small fleet turned onto the Grey River and set off downstream to paddle to the confluence of the Serrano River and continued to the ocean. The 90km paddle on
the fast flowing melt water was an exhilarating start, and Easy Implant……………

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You may not immediately recognize his name. But, no doubt if you’ve ever picked up a National Geographic or watched one of their specials you have probably admired his work .. Jon Bowermaster is a writer and filmmaker for National Geographic.

He has just returned from an exploration of Antarctica by sea kayak, foot, sailboat and small plane. His documentary – “Terra Antarctica, Re-Discovering the Seventh Continent” – will be released later this spring. Bowermaster has seen the world from a sea kayak and has a deep appreciation for health of the world’s
oceans. And, is profoundly aware of their importance for the nearly 3 billion people around the globe who depend on them. His biggest concerns are: Climate change, overfishing, and plastic pollution. His 2007-2008 Antarctic expedition was the final in his OCEANS 8 project, which over the past decade has taken him and his teams around the world by sea kayak, including
expeditions to the Aleutian Islands, Vietnam, French Polynesia, Chile/Argentina/Bolivia, Gabon, Croatia and Tasmania.

Bowermaster says he has known since he was 15 years old that he wanted to become a writer and has worked at daily newspapers and national magazines. Along the way he has had some truly amazing assignments: “ Roaming East Africa with Peter Beard for the bulk of six months. Shacking up at the end of a mud road in Nicaragua, with a happy gang of Sandinistas. Traveling Chile north to south and back again during the 1990s, just after Pinochet had left office.

Having a front row seat to changes in Antarctica during the past two decades. And more and more and more … I’ve had the good fortune to publish two collections of non-fiction stories – Alone Against the Sea and Wildebeest in a Rainstorm – which I flick through often just to remind myself how lucky I’ve been to see the world and travel it with a wideranging cast of characters.” He has visited close to 200 countries and over 80 different territories.

But, says he has a particular interest in the lands and culture of French Polynesia. Bowermaster shared some time with us and answered a few of our questions. What sparked your passion for ‘adventure’? For me, storytelling came before adventure … so from the beginning, whether it was first descents of rivers in Chile and china or long sea kayak expeditions, my goal has always been to go somewhere, have some experience, in order to bring back a unique story … in words, pictures and video….

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For more than 30 years, “13” has proved to be a rather lucky number for one Alaskan family. In 1978, Dick Mackey won the Iditarod on his 6th try wearing bib number 13. Then in 1983, son Rick takes the title back for the Mackey family on his 6th try wearing bib number 13. Flash forward 24 years, little brother Lance becomes the king of the Mackey family and the Iditarod, you guessed it on his 6th try wearing bib #13! That year, Lance won his first of three straight Iditarod titles. The road to the winner’s circle was not an easy one for Lance. Though it might sound like mushing is in his blood, he still overcame unbelievable odds to not only join the ranks of his father and brother, but to surpass them. The Iditarod has been called one of the ‘last great races on earth’. It is over 1150 miles of the most gorgeous and treacherous terrain one could imagine. It starts in Anchorage, AK and ends in Nome.

Native Alaskan, Lance Mackey, now calls Fairbanks, AK home. The 38-year-old father and athlete is now a fulltime musher and owns Comeback Kennels with his family.

His career in mushing got off to a slow start. In fact, he didn’t even realize mushing was a dream for him. “I grew up around dogs, but my dad always left me the bottom of the barrel racing dogs,” said Lance, “it was his way of teaching me and my brother Jason responsibility.”

As a teen, the highlight of Mackey’s racing career was a 4th place finish in the Jr. Iditarod. By the time he was 18, Mackey had gone from 140 dogs to none. He even became a commercial fisherman for a time. After marrying and becoming a father to his wife’s three small children, he ended up with 10 dogs before he knew it. Mackey just wasn’t sure the title of IDIT champ was in the cards for him. The 10 dogs he had accumulated were actually used to have fun with the kids. “The only racing they were doing was up and down our driveway,” said Mackey. Then the mushing bug bit again. “I think the fever had always been there. I was so proud of my dad and brother, they were legends, I was always bragging about them”

In 2001, he couldn’t resist the temptation of the ultimate race any longer. He ran the race with borrowed and “left over” dogs. “I just wanted a belt buckle for completing the race, only 600 people in the world have them,” he said. He finished 36 out of 58. But then, he realized if he had finished only 6 places higher, he would have also gotten a portion of the “race purse.” He also wanted to make his family proud.

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“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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As we settle into the New Year, it is a perfect time to start training for the upcoming racing season. The key to creating an effective training plan and then to staying motivated and excited about what we’ve created for ourselves is a clear set of realistic and measurable goals not only for race outcomes, but also for personal fitness, technique and mental development as well.

To get started, take some time in the next week to think about where you want to be with your sport in a couple years. What is your ultimate goal? I mean the one you are almost hesitant to share with anyone because it seems a bit outrageous, but it is secretly in the back of your mind as you plod along on an easy over-distance run or when you are registering for your next event thinking maybe it could happen this time? Write it down!

Intention is 100% of what it takes to achieve a goal. So set that intention by clearly and specifically articulating in writing where it is you want to be – no matter how far beyond reality it may seem today.
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