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Addicted to adventure
Athletes around the state are getting hooked on the ultimate sports challenge
They tortured their bodies to points of exhaustion foreign to non-racers as they thrust themselves into an unrelenting wilderness. They suffered through the continuous pain of swelling blisters and aching bones. Their muscles cramped and the freezing wind slapped their exposed skin. Their chapped lips cracked and they could taste the blood as they licked their lips. The physical and mental fatigue weighed down on the shoulders of the two adventure racers as they cursed, “Tell us why the hell we do this again?”
Adventure racing, or AR’ing to insiders, has swept the nation, attracting gutsy athletes who crave the raw feeling of pushing their bodies and minds to the limit. With more than 100,000 racers in the United States alone, this daring challenge consists of a multitude of sports. Races vary in everything from length to types of events. Shorter races, or sprints, take 10 to 12 hours and others can take days.
Although adventure races have no set format, most races involve mountain biking, hiking or trekking, navigating and some water event. Still, race directors’ creativity has exploded and races now can include practically anything: inline skating, rappelling, horseback riding, canoeing, kayaking, swimming and rock climbing. For athletes audacious enough to voyage into the inconsistent and demanding abyss of adventure racing, the sport and its benefits are limitless.
“Adventure racing promotes teamwork and definitely stretches people’s envelopes,” says Troy Farrar, president of the United States Adventure Racing Association (USARA), an organization created to aid the sport’s positive growth.
Courageous and daring, the first adventure racers set out to conquer 400 miles of New Zealand’s treacherous terrain in 1989. The unprecedented event, “The Raid Gauloises,” hurled racers into a slew of disciplines, including mountain climbing, horseback riding and rafting. The fearless sport first hit the United States in 1995 in Utah at the Eco-Challenge and in recent years has seen a surge in growth. Between 2000 and 2004, the number of USARA-sanctioned events jumped from 34 to 320.
Like the sport itself, the racer mold is also malleable and evolving. Software engineers, technicians, graphic designers, teachers, police officers, nurse practitioners, mothers and fathers by day, all transform into fierce athletes outside of the office. These super-humans not only spend their weekends enduring the often hellacious conditions of the wilderness, but they also manage to balance their training with their professional and personal lives.
The average racer is in his or her thirties; yet, with the sports growing popularity, AR’ing has seen an increased interest, particularly from twenty-somethings. Having finished their formal schooling, these people crave an organized team activity, and their local gyms are unable to satiate their desire to test their physical and mental limits.
“We are seeing younger and younger people get into the sport. The veteran racers think this is great,” says Andy McCarthy, race director for the Wisconsin Adventure Racing Association and veteran AR’er. Some of his teams have even included younger members like 28-year-old Tim Hall.
Hall, a middle school teacher, husband and new father, finds peace and consistency in the sport. Hall has managed to become a serious competitor, balancing twice-daily training sessions with the stress of having a baby, building a new house and selling their old one, finding a new job closer to family, and earning a master’s degree.
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| need for speed: Six-foot Keith Lamb tipped the scale at 350 pounds but is now in the best shape of his life after getting addicted to adventure racing. photo: keith lamb |
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| adventure racing calendar: time flies when you're on the run find information about upcoming adventure races in the midwest. |
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curb magazine 2005: balance for wisconsin's young professionals
