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Adventure Racing Tips for Beginners

Posted on Aug 2, 2023

Recently, I had the pleasure of taking part in ITERA-lite 2023 as a pair with my good friend David. We crossed the start line (our main ambition) and made it to Transition 3 after 26 hours and 150km before my fitness gave up and we withdrew.

However, in the process of preparing for the race, we were lucky enough to be supported by a bunch of people who have a lot of experience with this event and adventure racing in general. During the many hours of cycling around a forest, we discussed the tips that we had been given that don’t necessarily appear in other ‘beginners adventure racing’ articles.

We will assume that you can google just as well as we can and have therefore seen the numerous kit lists and ‘make sure you have shoes!’ type articles that are out there. This is a list of the things that are quality of life tips. They may not make or break your event, but might make things easier.

Disclaimer: These tips may be ITERA specific, or more suited to longer events. Check your event rules and mandatory kit lists.

Kit

  • Bring a mug - A simple camping mug, probably titanium, will be incredibly useful. It’s lightweight, doesn’t take up much room, and is a true multi-use tool. Use it to scoop from streams, carry food, and not have to worry about getting a hot drink at transition.
  • Drybags for your packs - Bring a dry bag that is big enough to either get both your backpacks in, or one each. If you have kayak or water stages, it’s a lot easier to just shove everything in one drybag as extra insurance.
  • Bungees for the kayaks - This might be ITERA specific, but if you’re on sit on top type kayaks, bungee ropes or similar to strap your packs, bags, spare paddle, etc down will be super useful.
  • A spork - Similar to the mug, bring a spork. If you’re considering dehydrated meals or similar, you’ll probably have already though of this, but just in case.
  • Drybags - Pack ALL of them to the pre-race. If it’s an unknown route or similar, you might need to re-arrange things last minute before the race. Bring more drybags.
  • Sharpies and highlighter pens - At least 3 colours. You don’t need to take them out onto the race, but multiple colours will help with route assessment.
  • Sticky back plastic - Bring a roll of clear sticky back plastic. Your maps are going to take a beating, even if they’re on waterproof paper. Try to protect at least one set.
  • Look for options - There may be an obvious route. There may be a better route that isn’t as obvious. There may be a worse route that is even less obvious but looks more fun.
  • Check your times - If there’s a stage with a closing time, check what the start time is too. Double check cutoff times, especially if they’re not given in 24 hour clocks.

Food

  • Variety - Have a variety of foods for the race, slow acting, quick acting carbs. Salty, sweet.
  • Taste - Find out if you like the food before you go.
  • Calories - Dehydrated meals are good for transitions since they’re quick and high calorie, we’ve seen meals up to 1000kcals. Test that you like them before the race! Itera had boiling water at the majority of transitions, making meal prep really fast.

Efficiency

Even if you aren’t planning to be the fastest team out there (if you’re reading this, you won’t be) then you’ll likely have the ambition of getting as far as you can. This means limiting the amount of wasted time standing still. That means efficiency.

  • Faff while you wait - while your food is rehydrating at transitions, you have about 5-8 minutes to get some other things done. Even better, get the hot water in the pouch as the first thing when you arrive. That way you have time to wait for it to cool whilst you get changed, move kit around, etc.
  • Make lists - in the planning, make a list of tasks to do (and in what order) at each transition. Try not to make plans too rigid, you’ll need to change them a bit, but they’ll help you outsource the thinking from your tired race brain to your not-so-tired brain beforehand. Bonus tip: waterproof the to do list!
  • Just keep moving - steadily: for adventure racing, slow and steady wins the race rings true. If you burn out powering up a hill unnecessarily, you won’t get to the end any faster than if you just plod up it at a sustainable pace.