Adventure Racing We Will Go

Giving “no pain, no gain” a whole new meaning

By Mike Bitton

About four years ago, I was introduced to a sport called adventure racing. You may have seen it on TV. There was the EcoChallenge in Borneo, New Zealand and Fiji; and more recently, Primal Quest in the Tahoe region of California, Washington state’s own San Juan Islands, and the red rock desert surrounding Moab, Utah.

During these expedition-length adventure races, participants slog on and on for hundreds of miles, trekking, mountain biking, kayaking and rappelling, literally for days on end. I’d never seen anything on TV that made me sit up on the edge of the couch and say, “Now THAT’S for me!” But adventure racing looked appealing. It took activities I loved, and others I’d love to try, and strung them together in an alluring chain. Could I really do that? I wanted to. So I signed up for an adventure race training camp.

I’d done a lot of hiking, some rappelling, a bit of mountain biking, and no kayaking when I arrived at the E-Camp adventure race training event at Big Bear, Calif., in the spring of 2004. By the end of the 29-hour experience, I’d hiked more than was enjoyable, rappelled multiple times from a terrifying ledge, mountain biked until my back went into electrifyingly painful spasms, and kayaked until my shoulders felt they were aflame. Sounds terrible, right? But I was beaming when I crossed the finish line. Beaming!

I couldn’t walk right for a week. My knees hurt. My hips ached. My nether regions had experienced, to put it lightly, “chafing.” Physically, I was a wreck. But still, a grinning wreck. As more days passed, I started to realize what I’d accomplished. And I think that’s where the smile came from; the undeniable fact that I’d done something quite far out of my fitness league, and lived to tell about it. Had I cheated death, or discovered I can do way more than I ever imagined? I wasn’t sure.

But I certainly was hooked. In no shape to actually repeat my first attempt at adventure racing, I instead offered my writing and photography services to adventure racing websites, and to adventure race organizers here in the Pacific Northwest. In 2005 and 2006, I was a fixture at the Wicked Adventure Racing events in and around Portland, as well as at the TRIOBA adventure racing events near Seattle. I’d do my best to get magazine-quality photos of every team on the course. I was so inspired by the athletes as they passed by that I got into the habit of cheering them on. They began to view my presence with a telephoto lens as a sure sign that they were on the right path to find the next checkpoint.

Eventually, one of the athletes talked me into trying my first real race. It was a four-hour mountain biking and trail-running event near Seattle, in the spring of 2006. My friend, Duncan Sailors, led me through the race, and we finished in just under four hours. That familiar smile returned to my face. I was itching to do more.

A few months later, while working as a media escort at the Primal Quest Utah adventure race, the idea of leading an all-newbie adventure racing team through the 2007 season was hatched. The owner of Checkpoint Zero Adventure Racing told me he’d cover our entry fees if I would blog about the experience of trying to build a team from scratch, train with them as often as possible, and keep them together through several adventure racing events. Thus was born Rookie Rampage Adventure Racing. You can read all about our 2007 adventures online at http://www.checkpointzero.com/rookie_rampage.

It’s a new year now. Other interests have edged in to replace Rookie Rampage for 2008. I may not race this year, but I already have plans to write about and photograph the Primal Quest race this summer. Set to take place in Montana, it’s likely to draw the best teams from North America and possibly the world. I’ll also be at the Wicked Gorge adventure race in the Columbia River Gorge in July. I’m confident it will be the most important adventure racing event this year in the Pacific Northwest.

If adventure racing sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, check the resources I’ve included on this page. Send out some feelers. You’ll soon find the adventure racing community is inclusive, not exclusive, and more than willing to show you the ropes.

Adventure Racing Resources:

Portland Adventure Racing Club

Checkpoint Zero adventure racing news

Primal Quest Expedition Adventure Race

Wicked Adventure Racing