Size Matters… But Not the Way You Think (Adventure Racing Edition)

Ok folks here’s the first of a handful of essays putting what’s in our heads down on paper. Jason and I love adventure racing and clearly spend way too much time thinking about it, so we thought we’d share some of those thoughts with you as a means of working to create a transparent, positive, and reflective culture around this sport we find ourselves committed to, both as racers and RDs. We think it’s important to be willing to discuss things–what works and what doesn’t, in order to move the sport forward both in NZ and globally. We welcome feedback and discussion, let’s just aim to keep it constructive and meaningful.

Reflection #1:

Is Bigger really better? 

We’ve asked around. Big can indeed be satisfying, but so can small, so long as things are adventurous enough. And often things that are "too big" don't leave room for skill and technique, while things on the "smaller side" require more technical skill to lead to a memorable result.

Ok. Now that we’ve got that low hanging innuendo fruit out of the way, lets make it clear we are just talking about adventure racing–specifically expedition adventure racing and course design.

Climbing Mt Rainier with skis and packraft on a "Too Much Fun" expedition.

I’ve LONG loved to do hard things, and FEAR’s whole DNA is based on a certain level of absurdity. We’d take concepts like a simple thru-run of a track (aka Kepler Challenge) and ramp it up–Hollyford Pyke in a day, Milford+Dore Pass, Taki Traverse, the Mountain Marathon. Maybe it was the expedition mountaineer in me, seeking harder and harder climbing objectives as a means of progress. Hard and big though, are not necessarily the same thing. 

I remember learning about the Canadian Death Race, a strange masochistic event where things kept getting added on and there was no definitive end except extreme bodily breakdown. I get it, we have comfortable lives, and for many of us some sort of regular test which includes suffering in some strange way fills the cup. We ARE part of this tribe, for sure. But when i experienced my own version of that–an expedition race in Idaho, USA, in which the course designer had included ‘extra’ stages to be rolled out to keep every team moving the entire 10 days–I hated it. I like suffering, but I also like an achievable goal–if not for me, for someone who is enough like me that it inspires me to get better at the sport I love.  While I appreciate the place attrition plays in many expedition races (particularly with 5+ day finishing times), a ‘last team standing’ type of contest has less appeal. I’d rather leave that to the backyard ultras. 

Wait -Jason's not carrying a pack? Must be the only time that has ever happened.

HARD and BIG have some overlap of course. But adding distance and/or stages just to increase the difficulty is a lazy man’s tool, or the tool of an RD who’s too driven by ego. It takes no skill at all to create the world’s toughest adventure race, or any other race for that matter. Just add one more mountain to climb. But to what end?

Brutal courses will always have some amount of appeal for some. Some people will achieve enough of what they want to be happy. Some people loved the death race, after all (10 laps up the same mountain carrying a sandbag! Er, your done? Make that 20 laps!). Teams that suffer together may indeed have positive bonding experiences that make them fondly remember an event even if it was unachievable. But trust me, the fact that it was unachievable did not add to those fond memories. Had they had the same experiences and manage to achieve more? They would have been just as happy, if not more so.

Look, it’s a fine calculus, and it certainly is hard to get right in AR, particularly because each year an RD faces the daunting task of starting from scratch.  But as RDs we can get better with practice, hence the need to be open about what works and what doesn’t. Here are a few takeaways after our recent period of reflection last week, and some insight into what rules we apply when creating the course for the MAGNIficent.

1. It’s an adventure RACE. People don’t just sign up for the suffering, at least a fair few of them sign up because they want a bit of competition. A well designed course allows for this as much as possible while still containing plenty of the things people love like route choice, adventure, etc. But to still be a race, there needs to be contingency plans to allow for most of the teams to complete the same course over the event’s duration. This can require a certain amount of ‘weather proofing’ of certain sections, and or careful placement of technical sections that require support. While it’s not always possible to ensure a full field (especially with a big field) gets to do every section of a big course (weather proofing isn’t ever 100% achievable for all stages), contingency plans should be in place and enacted early so that a race has a favorable chance of still feeling like a race.

   
   

2. Course timings are important (and challenging). They will always need to be taken with a grain of salt of course, but without a reasonable level of accuracy here things can go pear shaped really quickly.

   
   

   Look, this is really COURSE DESIGN 101 here.  The course needs to be well vetted–every inch of it, by real humans with adventure racing experience, understanding, and critical thinking skills. If your super-human wife who is the former 24 hour mountain-biking world champion does the 60km hilly as f*!k ride in 3 hours after a full night’s sleep, carrying a hydration pack and no mandatory gear and only dismounting to open and close the farm gates...and you think top teams will do it in the same 3 hours (because hey, top teams!) on day 5 - you’re delusional.

   
   

   Systematic and repeated errors like this adds up. And on longer stages of 12-36 hours it compounds because of nutrition. Get it wrong by 25% on a 4 hour stage and you’re hungry for an hour. On a 24 hour stage that becomes 6 hours and you’re cooked.  We saw this time and again this year in big races across the globe from Canada, USA, and NZ. World Champs this year tried having NO time estimates which most teams did not really like, as it was VERY hard to plan food and resources for - but most did agree that NO timing information is better than time recommendations that are very very wrong. If a team has extra - no worries they can always eat extra. If a team plans conservatively (say assumes the slow times are for them), but the fastest teams are not meeting those times, well things get more uncomfortable. Add a bit of weather, navigation challenge, etc and we edge toward danger.

3. Hard is good. Big can be ok.

   
   

   But Achievable is critical.

   
   

   Again, it’s a race. People want have a shot at crossing the finish line. I think a good rule of thumb as an RD is to create a course that we (the RDs) physically, could go and do, start to finish, in the time allowed. As a course designer, we are basically sayng, "hey, this is a great route to send people on over the next 7 days". So could we actually go out and do said route in the amount of time we're expecting others to do it in? If not, then maybe we need to rethink things. Or we just rename our event "Mission Impossible Expedition Race". Or the "Revenant USA edition" or the "Barkley NZ edition."

   
   

4. Like we said, Achievable, but not for everyone–heck no. An expedition race definitely needs to be hard, and if big is a part of that, great. The sweet spot is hard, big, AND achievable. But hard and big without achievable and you’ve got a something like the big missions I used to dream up in my early 30’s which were successful in the sense that we survived, but less successful had there been CP's that we were trying to achieve.

   
   

   This can be fine when your failure or rather limited success is the result of your own hubris. I mean, I’m clearly all for biting off more than you can chew and having a go, but when you’re paying good money for that bite and it ends up being too big for anyone to chew, well it can be understandably disappointing. 

   
   

   (Entertainment break)

   Check out a video of our second "Too Much Fun" expedition which included most of the Magnificent crew. The Magni twins of course, as well as Chelsey Magness and Sam Salwei (who will be an imbedded cameraman in Mag 2). Watch it to see us "miss the cut-off" (Andy missing his flight home cause he was still miles from nowhere!)

   
   

   

   We've bitten off more than was possible before. Another "Too Much Fun" moment.

   
   

So, long story short–we aim to have a hard and adventurous course that is also achievable. Getting all the checkpoints (i.e. a maximum ‘score’) should be something that experienced teams with good fitness and navigation are able aspire to do. We anticipate the top team finishing in maybe about 5ish days, meaning there will be about (if we get it right and the weather is no worse than average) an extra 24 hours of racing after they cross the line with a passport chock full of controls. If we get it really right, we’ll have 5-10 teams (this is highly dependent on who shows up of course) completing 100% of the course in the allotted time. While many newer or less experienced teams won’t really have a shot at nabbing all the Pro and Orienteering points in the 6+ days the course is open, we hope that many of them will be able to judiciously ‘self-select’ a course that allows them to still ‘race’ from the start to the finish and have a MAGNIficent experience. 

We will accomplish this by carefully vetting 100% of the course with boots on the ground, wheels on the ground, and paddles in the water, and doing our level best to provide realistic time estimate ranges for stages that take into account the true racing experience–transitions, fatigue, sleep deprivation, carrying capacities, navigation, and the fact that travelling as a team tends to be slower than travelling on our own.

Ngaa Mihi, and happy training

The Magni