Chicago’s Tom Tsatas is the type of person who will sleep on a glacier simply to see what it feels like. He sees the positive side of trekking through the Baja desert in life-threatening 140-degree heat. And what Tsatas considers testing his physical limits, might kill an average American.
He is an adventure racer, part of a small but intense group of athletes around the globe searching for new ways to live on the edge and reach the sweet and addictive high from sports.
Bored with what were once considered “extreme” endurance sports like Ironman triathlons–swim, bike and foot races that cover about 140 miles and take at least eight hours–adventure racers have moved into the next realm. And they are a living testament to humankind’s need to push past thresholds–or to foolishly toy with existence, depending on the point of view.
On Tuesday, 19 adventure travelers were killed in Switzerland after a flash flood hit the group while they were canyoning, an adventure sport involving swimming through rapids in wet suits and helmets, jumping off waterfalls and rappelling down cliffs.
Although accidents on this scale are rare, they are a powerful reminder to those in the adventure race and travel industry that the extreme nature of the events always needs to be respected, especially as the sport grows and beginners get involved.
“The races mimic life; you’re going to go in, stuff will go wrong and you can’t prepare for it,” said Tsatas, a Chicago restaurant owner who produces adventure races in the Midwest. “Even if you have a military background or you’re a great athlete, you have to have an adventure racing mentality. It’s really a test of human spirit. The races are all about the journey.”
That’s because the journey is generally a long, grueling one, full of physical challenges and mental strain. Finishing is the primary goal, doing well is a bonus. Sleep is rare. Hallucinations are not. But the races are also challenging, exhilarating and a reminder, participants say, of the joy of being a part of the natural world and discovering hidden inner strengths.
Most adventure races are multidiscipline, coed team endurance events with at least four competitors that can include running, hiking, orienteering, in-line skating, mountaineering, canoeing, mountain biking, white-water rafting, sea kayaking and rappelling.
Throughout the race, which can last one day or more than a week, teams pass predetermined check-in stations. The terrain can be wildly diverse and perilous, and generally racers don’t know the course, or even the starting time, until the night before the event. In the longer races, sleep deprivation is mandatory. And team members must cross the finish line together.
“They’re James Bond or Indiana Jones-like events,” said Tsatas who has competed in several Eco-Challenge adventure races. But despite the technical nature of the sports and high level of conditioning required, adventure racing is growing around the world. In North America alone, according to the Adventure Racing Association, more than 80 competitions will be held this year.
Today there are more race formats, more “stage” races–multiple events with time limits–more solo and multiday competitions, new sports and new skills. Adventure racing schools are opening across the country. Some universities, including Southern Illinois in Carbondale, have adventure racing clubs.
But the 2-year-old Adventure Racing Association, which says it has about 1,500 members worldwide, warns athletes to be cautious.
“Innovative formats are great, but while pushing the edge one needs to respect nature and physical limits,” reads a message on its Web site. The sport is so new that no statistics are readily available on casualties or injuries associated with the sport.
“People are getting into adventure racing and don’t realize it can be really dangerous because they’re coming from a background (like triathlon) where there is a rest stop every half hour or so or they can get a ride back to the finish,” said Bruce Underwood of Skokie, who competed last year in the Desert Quest, a 24-hour race of hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, rappelling and ascending rock faces in Arizona.
“It’s not necessarily the events that can hurt you but the terrain,” Underwood added. “You might find yourself on a mountainside clinging to a tree. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to get hurt.”
In Chicago, about 40 hardy souls belong to the Chicago Area Adventure Racing Association, but Underwood estimates there are a few hundred adventure racers in the area. Those initially drawn to the sport were generally type A professionals who were triathletes and ultradistance cyclists and runners. Now, people from a variety of backgrounds are trying the sport, and companies are even getting involved.
Margann Arata of the Presidio Adventure Racing Academy in San Francisco says 60 percent of their business comes from corporations that see racing as a way to improve team-building skills.
“It’s all about teamwork and maximizing strengths,” said Arata. “The real point in adventure racing is whether or not you are going to quit. It’s more a question of your own motivation. No matter what race it is, there are moments that really suck for each individual. It’s definitely harder than what most people think.”
Adventure racing, Arata added, bleeds, sometimes literally, into everyday life.
“Once you can push through levels of pain and levels of difficulty, you notice you can get over other obstacles in life,” she said. “The sport completely changes people’s lives and how they look at things.”
One of the first multidiscipline endurance events was the Ironman Triathlon, a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and 26.2-mile run first held in Hawaii in the ’70s. Competitors were considered certifiably crazy.
In 1980, New Zealanders took endurance racing into the wilderness with an individual event that combined white-water kayaking, mountain running and road cycling from the Tasman Sea to the Pacific Ocean. But it was the daunting Raid Gauloises, first held in 1989, that really defines adventure racing. The Raid is a unfathomable five-stage race with events designed to fit the geography of the host country.
“The Raid Gauloises is about modern man calling up to God and saying, `I’d like to know what both heaven and hell are like. Right now. And I’d like to bring four of my friends,’ ” wrote Martin Dugard in “Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth.”
In the Raid, self-contained teams race nonstop for seven to 10 days, and the nonmotorized methods of transport can include horseback, camels, white-water kayaking, mountain climbing, rappelling, running, skydiving, or hiking. Competitors must be more than athletes; they must be strong-willed, quick thinking, self aware, smart, adaptable and cooperative. They must be survivors, promoters say.
In 1995, the first Eco-Challenge was held and Mark Burnett, the race’s founder, joined forces with the Discovery Channel the following year. Since then, races of all disciplines and distances have popped up.
In 1998, Tsatas and James Chiarelli founded the Pathfinder Challenge, a one-day race held at Kettle Moraine State Forest in Wisconsin. In the upcoming October race, athletes will travel 50 to 70 miles by way of any of the following methods: canoeing, hiking, mountain biking, trail running, horseback riding, fixed rope climbing or land navigation.
While the competitions are ultimately tests of endurance and physical and mental strength, Raid organizers say adventure races are about “self-sufficiency, total immersion in a natural environment, the discovery of others, oneself and another kind of life far-removed from the everyday existence of a modern society.”
Like triathlon, adventure racing is as much a lifestyle as a sport. Some say the races are nothing more than man’s search for meaning.
“Life is so complicated now with so many options and everyone is multitasking all the time,” said Arata, of Presidio. “Everything is confusing and we’re working so much harder. But adventure racing is so simple and pure. The only real question is, `Are you going to finish?’ “
