What is adventure racing?

image001Popularised by television coverage of Mark Burnett’s Eco Challenge events, adventure racing is no longer an obscure extreme sport. In a classical sense, adventure racing is a multi-discipline multi-day endurance sport where competitiors compete in teams of four, navigating from checkpoint to checkpoint to cover vast areas in a number of disciplines. Sprint and short course categories now exist, luring those hesitant adventurers out for a morning or day of gloriously dirty, off-road fun.

Disciplines frequently include: mountain biking, kayaking, abseiling, orienteering and hiking. Each event will differ from the next and could include any of the following: kloofing, caving, swimming (sea/river/lake), coasteering, rock climbing, traversing, sea kayaking, obstacles & tasks, white river kayaking, snow/ice/glacier crossing… This is the charm of this sport – each event location is unique and it is up to the creativity of the race organiser to exploit the environment by incorporating unusual disciplines.

Teams are expected to navigate using a compass and 1:50 000 topographical maps. GPS-assisted navigation is not allowed. This is where the whole ‘strategy’ aspect of adventure racing comes in. Like the hare and the tortoise, just because you’re fast and strong, it doesn’t mean you’ll do well. You have to be clever. Teams often get lost through inexperience, bad decisions, and they most frequently discover that short cuts aren’t always what they appear to be.

Teams are required to check-in at passport control (PC) points between discipline transitions, where they have their passports checked by the event organisers. This keeps track of where the team is on the course – safety factor – and provides navigation points, places they have to locate.

The racers are supported by their own seconding team who, particularly on longer events, they may not see for a day or more. The seconds meet them at designated transition points. Here the team refills their supplies, changes clothing & gear i.e. collect bicycles, and sleeps, if necessary. Sleep plays a major role in this sport – the less, the better.

But, no matter what your fitness, the distance over which you race or the level at which you compete, there’s one common rule; teams are required to complete the entire race distance together, helping and assisting each other.

Adventure racing is about teamwork, not individual achievement.«

Popularised by television coverage of Mark Burnett’s Eco Challenge events, adventure racing is no longer an obscure extreme sport. In a classical sense, adventure racing is a multi-discipline multi-day endurance sport where competitiors compete in teams of four, navigating from checkpoint to checkpoint to cover vast areas in a number of disciplines. Sprint and short course categories now exist, luring those hesitant adventurers out for a morning or day of gloriously dirty, off-road fun.

Disciplines frequently include: mountain biking, kayaking, abseiling, orienteering and hiking. Each event will differ from the next and could include any of the following: kloofing, caving, swimming (sea/river/lake), coasteering, rock climbing, traversing, sea kayaking, obstacles & tasks, white river kayaking, snow/ice/glacier crossing… This is the charm of this sport – each event location is unique and it is up to the creativity of the race organiser to exploit the environment by incorporating unusual disciplines.

Teams are expected to navigate using a compass and 1:50 000 topographical maps. GPS-assisted navigation is not allowed. This is where the whole ‘strategy’ aspect of adventure racing comes in. Like the hare and the tortoise, just because you’re fast and strong, it doesn’t mean you’ll do well. You have to be clever. Teams often get lost through inexperience, bad decisions, and they most frequently discover that short cuts aren’t always what they appear to be.

Teams are required to check-in at passport control (PC) points between discipline transitions, where they have their passports checked by the event organisers. This keeps track of where the team is on the course – safety factor – and provides navigation points, places they have to locate.

The racers are supported by their own seconding team who, particularly on longer events, they may not see for a day or more. The seconds meet them at designated transition points. Here the team refills their supplies, changes clothing & gear i.e. collect bicycles, and sleeps, if necessary. Sleep plays a major role in this sport – the less, the better.

But, no matter what your fitness, the distance over which you race or the level at which you compete, there’s one common rule; teams are required to complete the entire race distance together, helping and assisting each other.

Adventure racing is about teamwork, not individual achievement.

Author: Lisa de Speville