European Adventure Race Finals
Different Perspectives
Rob Howard / 29.07.2015
Teams arriving at a multi-day adventure race come from all sorts of different backgrounds and with experience ranging from complete novices to experts. The elite teams may come to win and regard a 3 day non-stop race as ‘short’ compared to the longer races of the AR World Series, while those new to multi-day racing may be stepping well outside their comfort zone and racing for much longer than they ever have before, with their aim being to finish the race ... preferably as friends.
This morning I spoke to two teams with very different perspectives on the race ahead.
The first was Adventure Race Squad Extreme (yes that’s team ARSE) – who are in their first expedition race and have never done anything quite like this before. The idea came from Frank Nash who asked friend Sinead Keogh if she was interested in entering a 40 hour adventure race after seeing reports on last year’s Beast of Ballyhoura. Only later, after putting a team together, did they discover this year’s race would be 72 hours!
They were joined by Bryan Mathias and John Sherry, colleagues and friends from hiking events, and all come from County Clare. “We mainly met through hiking,” Nash said, “and though we are all strong on foot we have different sports skills to bring to the team. I was a former international triathlete, but that was back in the 80’s, when I could run! I’m not expecting to do much running in this event.”
The team have met and trained every month in the lead up to the race and competed in the 24 hour multisport Coast to Coast race as part of their preparations, but that is the longest they’ve raced together. They’ve also competed in rogaines and distance challenge walks and Sherry will be their main navigator during the race.
When I asked about different skills other than sporting ones; who was the team leader, the motivator, the organiser etc, the answers didn’t come so easily and as a team it was clear this was one of the new challenges they had yet to encounter. “I guess we came close to finding that out in the C2C,” said Keogh, “and meeting all the ups and downs as a team is going to be one of the biggest challenges. The answer is we’re not sure about how the team will work together really – you’ll have to ask us on Sunday!
“We are survivors, we are not out to win or anything, just get round and I think we have realistic aims and won’t push too hard. It’s not a race for us really. We learned in training not to go out with fixed aims and all guns blazing. I think we need to be vocal about it when we are feeling down too, it’s easy to suffer in silence for the team and not a good thing to do.”
When I asked about how they were dealing with all the equipment and logistics involved they were quite relaxed about it, though Nash said, “I spread all the kit out in my room last night and was surprised how long it took to pack, but it’s not so different to packing for a long trip in the mountains. The C2C was a big help in teaching us what we will and won’t need, and to pack that bit extra ... and to look after our feet.”
All of them agreed the race had become something of an obsession and that their friends and family really didn’t understand what they were setting out to do. “I just hope my sister-law- is wrong when she says I’m too old for this stuff!” Nash said. Sherry just said, “My wife will be glad when I’ve finished. She asked about going out next Wednesday ... but I’m not thinking beyond Sunday!”
Nash said, “I think I’m more apprehensive about this than any of my ironman triathlons. You knew what to expect in those – here we are going into the great unknown.”
In contrast Team adidas TERREX, who are the race favourites and include two World Championship winners in their ranks, are embarking on a shorter race than they usually compete in. They’d completed all their bike preparation and bike box packing already (whereas Team ARSE had not even started), and were in their rooms packing personal kit bags with clothing, going through each section in turn to determine what they’d need.
Their aim is to win and they’d already looked at the course outline to see if they could get all the checkpoints. “I don’t think it’s going to be doable,” said Nick Gracie, “so we’ll have to miss some checkpoints out somewhere.”
Having estimated how long each stage would take he was already focusing on the first night. “I think if we can get all the coasteering done in daylight it will be a big bonus,” he said. “Maybe we might even miss an early CP to ensure we do so.” After that he wasn’t so sure how the race would play out – he’s expert enough to know not to plan too far ahead.
Thinking about sleep on the race he said, “It’s too long to go without sleep at all so we’ll have to sleep sometime – not on the first night, but maybe a couple of hours on the second and then we’ll see. The 3rd night is a bit near to the end of the race to sleep really.”
While he was talking the team were methodically packing clothing, occasionally asking each others’ opinion, partly due to the unpredictability of the weather. They were deciding whether to pack thicker gloves, hats etc, with the consensus being to take some warmer kit in this exceptionally cool July weather. Generally there was very little chat as they all know what to take, what needs to be done and who is doing it.
Following the afternoon briefing when the full complexity of the route will be discussed adidas TERREX will have plenty of time to mark and study their maps, only needing to refine their packing, while Team ARSE will be far more rushed and busy processing the full enormity of what lies ahead of them.
That said if the novices finish their 72 hours of racing as a team unit stronger than the one which started and with a creditable number of checkpoints visited, and adidas TERREX make some poor choices and are beaten, it may be the beginners who are the happier of the two.
It may be an extreme endurance sport, but adventure racing can still be a sport for all levels of ability and ambiton.
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