Adventure racing; combining mountain biking, trail running, kayaking and orienteering, is one of Australia’s fastest growing sports. And for good reason; it’s great fun, is raced in beautiful locations and provides challenges for all fitness levels!
The courses are usually located are amazing national parks & outdoors settings all around Australia, where you’re quickly distracted from the task ahead. You’ll often find yourself trekking along a
Here comes fun…
bush path, sand dunes or along a beach before mountain biking down a trail with swathes of gum trees overhead while bottlebrush & wattle complete the bush colour scheme. It’s so great to get out of the city & back to nature for a day or a weekend. And get a great fun workout at the same time. The race is also a bit of a mental challenge as well as you need to navigate through the course & find the check points using your mapping & orienteering skills. All the while fighting fatigue & trying to ignore the urge to tear off down a track ‘on a hunch’ without consulting the map. Needless to say everyone takes a few wrong turns in their first few races.
The races are challenging but suitable for anyone with intermediate fitness who is keen to tackle the challenge. Generally in teams of 2 or 3 (depending on which race you do) the legs & race formats are usually quite different from race to race. The ‘sprint’ distance races are 3-5hrs, with longer 12hr, 24hr & multiday races for the serious competitors. Whilst the race organisors will generally give an idea of the distances (eg 10km of running 40km of riding & 3km of kayaking) you never really know what to expect as you have to go from one checkpoint to the next and the race legs are broken up differently in every race.
The ‘10km’ of running might be a 3km section at the start before jumping on the bike for 10km, then another 4km run before another mountain bike or kayak leg. All the while navigating using the map & collecting checkpoints.
This weekend we’re competing in the Kathmandu adventure race at Glenrock state conservation park in Newcastle. My teammate, Paul Hadfield, is an experienced campaigner but we’ve managed to talk a few other friends into it as well (some for the 1st or 2nd time) so it will be a great weekend away as they experience everything adventure racing can offer. With 6 teams amongst our friends I’m sure there’ll be some rivalries out on the course. 2yrs ago we raced at this park & the paddle was great, as it went out through the surf, around the headland & onto the next beach south beach through some small waves. It was also very hot. 43 degrees on the day of the race, so everyone certainly worked hard! We’ll be thankful for cooler weather (& maybe even some rain) this weekend.
To get involved all you need is a bike & helmet plus some way of carrying your fluids & essential food (a backpack with a bladder is always easiest). It’s a great goal to train for and the perfect reason for a muddy weekend away. Getting out on the trails and mountain biking and doing with a group of friends is certainly a fun way to inject some exercise into your weekends.
For any tips or advice on getting started or training program for an adventure race contact us at OUTFIT health + fitness.
Some other event websites to check out include;
http://www.maxadventure.com.au/adventureseries/
http://www.adventureraceaustralia.com.au/
http://markwebbertasmaniachallenge.com/
http://www.xpd.com.au/
Happy training!
Cheers,
Michael Hennessy
www.outfithealth.com.au
The ‘10km’ of running might be a 3km section at the start before jumping on the bike for 10km, then another 4km run before another bike or kayak leg. All the while navigating using the map & collecting checkpoints.
It certainly was a muddy race!! Torrential rain in Newcastle on Friday & Saturday made sure the track was very wet & the adventure high! Add a couple of lagoon crossings through waist deep water, sand runs, muddy hill scrambles & some great mountain biking and it was a fantastic race.
Our friends who were racing for the first time absolutely loved it and all teams finished in good times. We ended up finishing in 4th place (not that the placings really matter) so it was a great weekend all round.