Have you heard the news?? Eco-Challenge is back! Televised adventure racing at its best! But I digress. This post isn’t about Eco-Challenge. It is, however, a post all about a recent 24-30 hour adventure race that I just took part in, Wilderness Traverse. The linkage is that the whole reason I began adventure racing, and indeed my entire athletic ‘career’ was thanks to watching Eco-Challenge so many years ago. That show opened my eyes to true adventure and challenge in the great outdoors, and I HAD to get into it and experience if for myself. 16 or so years later, […]
Wilderness Traverse
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Off the top, no, the power napper was not me. However, this was going to be absolutely necessary to ensure finishing the race as a TEAM. That, my dear friends, is what adventure racing is all about. Doing the right things at the right times as a TEAM in order to get to the finish line. Of course, I’m reporting to you all on the 2012 Wilderness Traverse Race. This is the 3rd time the race takes place, and the 3rd time I participate. Also, for the third year running, I ended up racing with a completely different team. I figure as long as I keep racing with new people, I’ll eventually get ‘called up to the majors’, right? Every race more than 24 hours is a unique challenge. This one would prove so more from a mental standpoint than a physical one, but more on that later. This year, I was invited to race on a a variant of Team Spirit, a team that has been around since nearly the dawn of AR! Two of my team-mates (Dave Hitchon and Mike Popik) have reams of experience on the international, expedition-length circuit (think Eco-Challenge, Primal Quest, etc.). The third member was actually the 16-year old son (Will Hitchon) of our captain. I was also covering the event for Get Out There Magazine, and it seemed like it would make a pretty cool video to follow this rookie in his bid to complete his first ‘overnighter’. This was so true, that I ended up making it a 3-part video (See Part I, Part II, and Part III). I also took loads of pictures on course. Now read on for all the gory details!
It is my great pleasure to bring you another race report. This time, I’ll be covering my part in a 30-hour Adventure Race known as Wilderness Traverse. Yup, the very same race that I did last year. However, I’m sure this time the weather will be much better, right? Not so much, but you’ll have to read the whole thing to hear more about that. I had been planning on re-doing this race since last year’s DNF, but two weeks prior to the event, I still had no team lined up! Lucky for me, some last minute cancellations presented me with a couple options to explore, and I found myself on a great team to undertake the experience. Not to name drop or anything, but I would have two Mount Everest Summitters on my team in Adam and Laura, as well as a veteran racer who designs and builds map boards for navigation on mountain bikes! How cool is that? It was a pretty amazing race, and I can’t wait to share all the details with you all. Have a look at the various pictures that I took on course, as well as some from Deanna (who was volunteering), then come back and read the whole story!
Ahhh Adventure Racing. Probably one of the ‘fringest’ of the fringe sports, right? We toil in obscurity, with both the racers and the races themselves pretty much unknown. We train for hours on end in places unknown, be it the wide open roads or deepest forests or raging rivers. And what for? Well, the chance to take part in really cool events like the Wilderness Traverse, a new 24-hour adventure race put together by the incomparable Bob Miller. Yup, whether you finish or not is never certain when you start, but you can pretty much be guaranteed a good time. That brings us to this post, a brief tale about my teams performance at this race. I hadn’t done a 24-hour race in a couple years so I was pretty stoked. Read on to learn more about it, and don’t forget to check out the pictures I managed to get from the event.