Fort Leavenworth Adventure Race
Melissa Bower, Staff Writer / 08.10.2012
Fort Leavenworth's first Warrior Adventure Quest Sept. 29 was intended to introduce Soldiers and military families to the sport of adventure racing. The sport has been around for years, but recently gained interest in military communities for allowing Soldiers to engage in high-intensity activities as they transition out of deployment and back into Garrison life.
Lucas, a noncommissioned officer at the Army Irregular Warfare Fusion Cell, Combined Arms Center, said he became interested in the Warrior Adventure Quest on post and attended an initial seminar about choosing a successful strategy.
Some physical competitions in the Army like "Best Soldier" or "Best Ranger" are structured, Lucas said, which doesn't always encourage creative thinking.
"This kind of organization allows the Soldier to use whatever methods possible to achieve the same goal," Lucas said.
This year, Installation Management Command began providing the event at no cost to Soldiers. Fort Riley, Kan., and Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., have similar events.
For the Fort Leavenworth Warrior Adventure Quest, participants used their land navigation skills to mountain bike to various points on post and perform specific tasks such as paintball, rappelling, pull-ups or canoeing. Usually it's a team event in which team members must stay within 20 yards of each other at all times.
Connie Carpenter, coordinator for the event, said she began adventure racing as another outlet after competing in triathlons.
"In this thing, the fastest is not necessarily the winner," she said. "I have beat young men in teams because it's about the strategy — knowing your strengths and weaknesses."
Carpenter also said part of the strategy is being flexible and knowing when to change course. Certain checkpoints at Fort Leavenworth's quest were only open for a short amount of time, so teams had to decide which ones they were more likely to finish successfully.
Teams also have to understand they can't always get 100 percent of the checkpoints.
"If they are going to get 100 percent of those checks, they are going to have to run their teams, and by doing so they are going to physically exhaust their teams," she said.
Carpenter said the "team" portion can be an added challenge for some people, especially married couples. Fort Leavenworth's quest had two married couples successfully finish the event.
Maj. Jamie and Holly Jordahl formed their own team, the Pirate Piggies. Maj. Jordahl is assigned to the Mission Command Training Program's Operations Group C.
Jordahl said his initial thoughts going into the quest were about strategy.
"They only give you so many points as possible at each point, so there's a little bit of thought that goes into it," he said.
Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation on post is planning to conduct another adventure race next year.
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