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Outside Magazine July 2001

Multisport
Smells like Team Spirit
Adventure races have come into their own. Time to join the self-punishing fun and tackle your first one.

By Matt Fitzgerald

Intro | Prep Talk | Finishing School | Top Event Picks | Hard to the Core

"Humans are animals," says Cathy Sassin, 38, owner of a Los Angeles nutrition consulting firm who has competed in nearly two dozen adventure races and placed first in the 1999 and 2000 Elf Authentic Adventure. "The more time we spend staring at screens and jabbing at keyboards, the more our animal instincts cry out to do something wild and extreme." Along with Sassin, plenty of others are freeing their cubicle-confined inner wildcat by joining the planet's hottest multisport trend.

In recent years, adventure racing—single-day to weeklong competitions in which teams hike, bike, rappel, paddle, and navigate through wilderness—has grown from a cult sport confined to the Raid Gauloises and the Eco-Challenge to a mainstream activity with hundreds of events worldwide. According to the United States Adventure Racing Association, an estimated 350 races will take place in North America in 2001, from the Endorphin FIX in West Virginia to the Cal-Eco Adventure Series in California, up from just two events in 1995. In those six years, the number of participants has grown from 400 to some 10,000. Armchair adventure-racing is on the rise, too; the USA Network's ratings for this year's Eco-Challenge doubled compared to the broadcast last year. Survivor-mania plays a role too. Wipe that grin off your face, Mark Burnett.

Why the adventure-racing boom? Competitors say that training for a race offers a nice departure from the typical endurance-sports formula: There's no asphalt, no stopwatch, and never the same activity twice in a row. "I think of what I do more as a lifestyle than a training program," says pro racer Robyn Benincasa.

Fortunately, adventure races no longer require weeks of sleep-deprived, leptospire-infested competition in the Borneo jungle or the Australian rainforest, thanks to a plenitude of homegrown one- and two-day events (compared to the six- to 12-day races like the Eco-Challenge). Hence the following primer, dishing on everything from choosing a race to choosing your socks. Read on, round up your teammates, and begin your training. After all, you really are an animal. Isn't it time you started acting like one?

Next Page: A successful adventure race begins long before the starting gun sounds

Intro | Prep Talk | Finishing School | Top Event Picks | Hard to the Core

Matt Fitzgerald is a freelance writer in San Diego who is still perfecting his wilderness-navigation skills.

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