Adventure Challenge - How to Succeed

It is my hopes that this document will help you in the Adventure Challenge series reach the finish line. Adventure racing is not about winning the race it is about discovering what you are capable of. Looking back on my last ten years of racing my most memorable and successful races where not the events that I won but were the races that I struggled with my team. In my first three years of racing my team had been in last place at least once during most of the races. By keeping positive and focusing on solutions we were able to persevere, finish and even win. The harsh environments and race conditions adventure racers face do not always reward the fittest and fastest but those who reach to find the hope and strength inside themselves and their teammates to overcome the obstacles and discover their true potential.

To state the obvious, the goal in adventure racing is to get your complete team to the finish line as fast as possible. The time it takes for you to get there is determined by the pace you are moving at, the amount of time you spend moving and the distance you end up traveling. Understanding these three factors is the key to maximizing your performance in a race.

Pace – The pace your team is traveling at is affected by many things – the terrain you are traveling on, the fitness of your team members, injuries, your equipment, etc. Your goal in an adventure race should be to maximize the sustainable pace of your team at all times. It is important to note that the pace must be ‘sustainable’. It will do you no good to race hard for the first few hours and then struggle for the rest of the race because someone on your team has bonked or is injured. It is also important to note that your pace is the pace of the team as a whole. Everyone must travel together so you are only as fast as all team members can travel. Learning how to work together to maximize the pace of the team and learning techniques and training to increase the potential for each team member is key to maximizing performance.

Time in Motion – The second major factor effecting the time it takes for your team to reach the finish line is the amount of time you spend in motion or, more to the point, the amount of time you spend stopped. There are many different reasons to stop during an adventure race and some of these are completely unavoidable. Learning how to minimize stop time by eliminating unnecessary stops and streamlining the necessary ones will make a huge difference in overall performance. In fact, this is often the single most important factor that separates the top 5 teams from the top 15 teams in a long race. The best teams are experts at maximizing time in motion.

Distance Traveled – Since adventure racing involves navigation and choices in routefinding, the distance traveled is not the same for all teams. Learning to choose the fastest route and avoiding navigational errors is a significant factor in performance for all lengths of races. Although navigation can be a reasonably technical skill, it is definitely something that can be learned and practiced to greatly improve your chances of completing an adventure race and being competitive.