Author: Modern Athlete

Adventure racing is exactly what the name promises: an adventure that allows you to experience places and scenery that not many people get to see, while racing many exciting and different sporting disciplines. Each person that competes in an adventure race usually says they came out of it with a new philosophy on how to tackle life! And though it’s a sometimes gruelling adventure, it is definitely not just a sport for hardcore elites. It is for anyone who wants to experience the wonder and beauty of nature with a couple of sporty mates.

Adventure racing is a non-stop multi-disciplined sport in which some races can be as short as 30km and some as long as a 1000km! It can take competitors from two hours to 10 days non-stop to complete a race. And of course, the first team to cross the finish line wins. All navigation is done with a map and compass to reach various transition areas where you change from one discipline to another. At big races, each team must comprise four people, of which one has to be of the opposite sex. The stronger teams therefore consist of three men and one woman. An interesting aspect of adventure racing is that a team needs to stay together at all times and be within 100m of each other.

Races include a variety of disciplines, but the main sports are generally trail running/hiking, mountain biking and paddling. Other disciplines involve inline skating, some sort of rope work, swimming and rafting. Running/hiking is the most important discipline as competitors spend the most time doing this.

THE MERRY MERRELS
With nicknames such as Tweet, Hobbit, Houtkapper and Eye Candy, it is no surprise that the Merrell Adventure Addicts have loads of fun. But don’t let their nicknames mislead you, all of them are accomplished athletes in their own right. The team recently competed in the Adventure Racing World Championships in Spain, where they were one of 61 teams from 26 countries around the world. After 720km they finished in 14th position. Though not one of their best races, because of mechanical mishaps, it was another race that brought them closer as a team and made each of them even stronger in the process. The team is currently taking an end-of-year break, but they’ll be back in action in early 2011 as they start building up to the World Champs in Tasmania, Australia in October.

The team is lead by Graham Bird, better known as Tweet, who fell in love with adventure racing after competing in a short 30km race in 2004. He has been one of South Africa’s top canoeists since the early nineties, winning 28 South African titles and finishing in numerous top five placings at World Canoeing Championships and World Cup events all over the world. “Adventure racing is a spiritual journey for each person. You learn and discover new things about yourself, you re-look and adjust your outlook on all things, from life in general to small issues, and you definitely come out of each race with a new philosophy on how to tackle things,” he says.

Graham is the navigator in the team, which he says is mentally hard, “because you have to concentrate all the time while the team members just follow.” Donovan Sims – better known as the ‘Eye Candy’ – serves as a back-up navigator. Donovan’s strengths lie in the fact that he is not strong in any one discipline, but pretty much the same throughout all of them. That applies throughout the team, with all the members very similarly skilled. “You can’t put a strong cyclist who can’t run with a strong runner who can’t cycle. They will get frustrated with each other! A successful team consists of four people who are similarly skilled across all sports,” says Graham.

The only woman in the team is Tatum ‘Hobbit’ Prins, who is the jovial and outgoing one. “This sport is so incredible. It has this way of humbling you. You end up having this love-hate relationship with it. One minute you are crying and ready to call it quits, and the next you are laughing hysterically and loving every second. Quite simply, it’s a beautiful kind of crazy! Your highs and lows are amazing, so much so you can’t understand them. All I know is adventure racing sucks you in and keeps you there. It bares your soul. At times it rips it apart and just lays it open for all to see. It teaches you the importance of living life. It puts life into perspective. It teaches you to never give up, to keep looking forward. It pushes your limits. It shows you the importance of having three friends as team mates, because without them in adventure racing you are nothing. They are your world for those five days. It’s you, them and the elements. Life becomes simple again.”

As in each team there is always one solid, consistent member and with the Merrell Adventure Addicts it is no different. Hanno Smit, also known as ‘Houtkapper’ or ‘Smelly’, is this guy! He is also an accomplished paddler and the only person to partner Martin Dreyer on the Dusi and not win just once, but twice!

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH
The essence of adventure racing consists of teamwork and support. “We all go through bad patches. That is bound to happen over 1000km of racing, but we pull each other through every time. Sometimes we go 45 hours without sleeping. We have done races where we got to the end and had only slept two or three hours in four days! Adventure racing is an extreme sport but mostly a mental challenge, one you need to be prepared for,” says Graham. Team members are also often relieved to change from one discipline to another. “After 60km of hiking or trekking you just want to get onto your bicycle, but then halfway through you just want to get back on your running legs!”

Each team member carries equipment and food – generally things such as a rain jacket, thermal clothing, a space blanket, knife, safety rope, mobile phone and a first aid kit are compulsory items. One needs to be ready for any emergency, as teams can often go days without seeing anybody. If you take a wrong turn it can cost you up to 12 hours of extra racing. “We have raced in Australia where the organisers thought it would take 20 hours to complete, but it took us 36 hours! We did not see another team for 26 hours and we were totally in the wild with no cars and no other human beings!”

TRAINING
So if you race for 1000km, surely that involves excessive training in many different disciplines? “No way! If you train excessively you will never be able to race well. We make sure we are competent in running, biking and paddling, and train these disciplines consistently during the week with longer sessions over the weekends. We are experienced and know by now how to get through 40-50 hours of racing for days on end. Once you race for longer than two days it becomes a mental game and not only just about how much you have trained.”

The team members are all competent in rope work, inline skating and other disciplines, and don’t really need to train this often. Novices to adventure racing will naturally have to become competent in these elements, though there are many beginner adventure races that only involve running, paddling and biking, a superb way for a newbie to get into the sport.

RACING WITH A DIFFERENCE
One of the most exciting things is that in each race the environment differs. Some terrain can be so overgrown that it could take you up to an hour to cover 1km! “One year we did a race in Brazil where we started right in Rio de Janeiro. From there we paddled out across the bay before landing in the jungle and later on the beach! The next year we went back and raced in the dessert in temperatures of 50 degrees. Recently in Spain, the terrain was more urban and we raced over mountain ranges, on tracks, through small villages and up mountains again.”

Another notable feature of these events are their finish lines: don’t expect anything like the Comrades Marathon or any other road race or triathlon, where hundreds, sometimes thousands of spectators wait and cheer. Often adventure teams finish hours apart and it can happen that a team gets to the finish line with hardly any spectators. “All you want to do when you finish is shower, eat something decent and sleep! I have slept 15 hours non-stop after a race.”

THE BEAUTY OF IT ALL
The most incredible thing about adventure racing is definitely the beauty of the sport. “We get to places that the public don’t get to. I have abseiled off waterfalls and 200m cliffs, and I have been on major rocks in the Utah dessert. I have been dehydrated because I haven’t had water for 10 hours in 50 degree heat, I have been overhydrated because of too much water, and I have been so freezing cold I could not feel a single thing on my body!”

“As a team we experience the highs and the lows, the joys and sadness, the pain and suffering, and the tiredness. It makes us stronger mentally and physically. It shows us just what our bodies and minds are capable of. We all love being outdoors, that’s what we live by and why we get on as a team.”

HOW DO I TRY IT OUT?
There are many novice races around to get you started. It is best to start with shorter races of 30km and build up before you tackle the longer multi-day races. “The main thing is to believe that you can do it! Some people think they can’t race for so long. You just need to overcome your mind and fear. If you can do one to two hours of mountain biking or one to two hours of running, you can do adventure racing. It is definitely not just for elite athletes,” says Graham.

You’ve probably seen them either in a movie, advert or on a YouTube video. Most of them look like Spidermen scaling walls or jumping off three-story buildings. They blitz through city streets, run from obstacle to obstacle, and instead of running around these obstacles – like most of us – they choose to run over them! They call themselves Traceurs and they’re doing Parkour, better known as ‘Free Running,’ something that is slowly taking South Africa by storm.

Just recently the very first Free Running race, or so-called Urbanathlon, was held in Johannesburg. Participants ran, crawled and climbed 12km through the urban sprawl of Sandton. They had to negotiate a massive inflatable obstacle course, slide down a fireman’s pole, scale a climbing wall, stride across balance beams and descend 258 steps… not your average road race!

CHILD’S PLAY
It all started with two Frenchmen, David Belle and S?bastien Foucan. As youngsters the two friends amused themselves in their backyards by running from obstacle to obstacle and jumping over them. Little did they know that their fooling around was to develop into a sporting discipline with jaw-dropping visual effects.

The public first became aware of Free Running in 2003 when the BBC aired a documentary about this new phenomenon called Jump London. This film is widely regarded as a turning point for Free Running, as the broadcast helped it gain so much momentum that it became an international movement.

The word parkour is French for ‘obstacle’ and this essentially encapsulates what free running is all about. Where parkour aims to enable someone to move smoothly, quickly and efficiently past obstacles, Free Running has a greater emphasis on self-expression within the environment. Though there is a difference between the two, the terms are often used interchangeably. Within both disciplines, you will see elements of gymnastics, dancing and martial arts. Both disciplines produce some pretty spectacular physical feats, but despite the visual delights, Free Running followers believe there is much more to it than just looking cool!

CHALLENGING YOUR BODY
Although the big jumps are usually what you see when the media showcases free running, this is only a small part of the discipline, says Dane Grant, founder of Free Running in South Africa. “I dislike it when someone asks me what the highest jump is I’ve ever done. Any idiot can jump off a roof! Parkour is about training your body in a natural way to be as strong and useful as you can possibly be. It is pointless to have huge muscles and not be able to do anything with them.”

Dane lived in London some years ago and met one of the founders. He soon started learning the tricks of the trade before becoming part of one of the most respected Free Running teams, Team Traceur. He brought his passion to South Africa and introduced new people to the sport every time he returned to his home country.

Dane fondly remembers the early days of Free Running in South Africa. “I was handing out pamphlets on the streets of Pretoria and leaving them under students’ car windshield wipers to advertise our sessions. We mostly met at the Union Buildings or at the University of Pretoria, but we actually had no idea what we were doing!”

A MATURE FREE RUNNER
It takes about two years for a Free Runner to reach maturity. “By then you usually start questioning your reasons for Free Running. After two years most people are past the honeymoon stage and the idea of being cool is no longer enough of a reason to keep at it,” says Dane. “Free Running can be a huge sacrifice and you have to push yourself to improve all the time. It involves so much more than jumping off high things. It’s about moving smoothly and fluidly through your environment. I believe it has a huge philosophical side to it.”

“It’s a personal journey for everyone. You start seeing life through the eyes of a child, where things are simpler and more fun. You don’t stop playing because you get old, you become old because you stop playing, and Free Running makes you realise it’s a playground out there.”

RUNNING VS FREE RUNNING
Free Running is an excellent form of training for seasoned road runners who are bored with their usual morning runs. Free Running can turn your morning jog into a creative, individual expression of yourself. You will look at your normal route in a completely different way and probably see things you have never seen before.

“Free Running takes your blinkers off and makes you see things differently. I am intensely aware of the environment around me. Where other people will barely notice a railing next to the road, I will see it as a challenge. I get a rush every time I clear an obstacle or make a jump. This keeps you alive, but you can never get too confident,” Says Dane.

However, Free Running is not only beneficial for road or trail running. The opposite is also true, as running is such a big part of Free Running. “It’s pointless running to an obstacle and not having enough strength to clear it. We often do a circuit during training sessions and before you know it, you’ve run 3km without even realising it, so yes, running is an essential part of Free Running.”

Dane is adamant that injuries are no greater risk than in any other sport as long as Free Running is performed correctly and you do not try moves that you aren’t capable of yet. In the seven years that he has been jumping over walls and railings, he has only been injured twice. “If you practise Free Running smartly, then there is no reason for you to get injured. If you do get injured, however, it’s all about how you recover and come out of it.”

RUNNING FREE IN SA
The South African Free Running community is growing slowly, with about 2000 people on Dane’s national e-mail database. The hub of the community is in Johannesburg, while other big cities like Pretoria, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Pietermaritzburg also have active communities. Dane’s future plans for Free Running in South Africa include updating their website and creating a space where anyone can log on to see where the best free running routes in every city are.

So if you feel a little adventurous, maybe it’s time you try the roll, the tic-tac, the pop vault or even the drop jump. Trying to explain these in print is near impossible and when you see someone Free Running you soon realise that this activity is a little like the movie The Matrix… no-one can explain to you what it is, you have to experience it for yourself!

Log onto www.modernathlete.co.za and check out our cool video on Free Running.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?
Dane presents weekly workshops in Johannesburg that teach essential Free Running skills, and anyone is welcome. “We mostly have adventurous people signing up, but we do have a big mix of participants. Free Running isn’t restricted to the super fit, but basic fitness is required to progress. To excel, you have to put in the hours.” Sessions cost R60 and are held on Thursday evenings from 5:30pm to 8pm and Sunday mornings from 10am to 12:30. Visit www.parkour.co.za for more information.