Infinite Ideas - Extreme Sports: Brilliant Ideas for Taking Yourself to the Limit

Extreme sports

Brilliant ideas for taking yourself to the limit

Infinite Ideas with Steve Shipside

7. A taste for adventure

Once it was the marathon that captured the public imagination, then triathlon took the limelight. Now adventure racing is fast becoming the aspirational adventure sport of the millennium.

Adventure racing is a mutant hybrid between triathlon and full-on exploration expeditions.

Theres a lot of terrain between those two points, of course, and there are a lot of different sizes and levels of adventure race springing up to fill the spaces. There are beginner-level events taking an afternoon and leaving the racers exhilarated and a little breathless. At the other extreme are multi-day, end-of-the-earth adventures seemingly put together by disaster film buffs. There are, however, a few points that they all have in common.

While there will always be competitive teams racing each other a lot of the emphasis of adventure racing is to get away from clockwatching and focus more on the experience. When marathoning went from something you read about to something your neighbour did, it also shifted from an event where completing one was an achievement to becoming a cue for comparing personal bests. While every adventure race is against the clock, it is wildly unrealistic to compare times from one to another. Plus, adventure racing is a team event, often specifying at least one man or woman in each team. Which means that a lot more of the skills involved revolve around teamwork, personality and psychology. Adventure races go out of their way to challenge the participants, often including sections that have to be completed on horseback (usually without sufficient horses for the whole team), or Tyrolean traverse (crossing gorges while slung under a giant washing line) or river crossings by inflatable banana.

Many races take that one step further by refusing to tell you what youre going to encounter and making a point of adding surprise challenges en route. Before the event starts you will be told of the major disciplines (rope climbing, mountain biking, trail running, rafting, etc.) then on the day you will usually be given the route and told to make your way together to the next waypoint by the means specified. The only constants are that you are going to be fully exposed to the elements, will almost certainly get covered in mud and are likely to come a lot closer to creepy-crawlies than youd like. If its a longer course (several days) then you can add to that the fact that youll not get enough sleep and youll lose your sense of humour at some point. How well you cope defines your ability as a racer at least at much as how fast you run or how limitless your endurance might be. You cant leave a team member behind, by the way, no matter how annoying they turn out to be.

Adventure racing is pretty much what the military have been doing in training for years but with more laughs thrown in. Its no longer exclusively a sport for the great outdoors as urban adventure races have now sprung up (check out the Wild Onion at www.urbanadventureracing.com ). Urban adventure races tend to throw activities like stair climbing and in-line skating into the mix, but otherwise the principle is much the same. A few of the essential skills you will need are:

• A great sense of humour that means laughing at yourself, not just the Simpsons.
• A fair level of fitness think about this relative to the demands of the race and the fitness of your teammates.
• A sense of direction map reading and orienteering are often key ingredients.
• The ability to ride a bike even if it was only when you were a kid.
• The ability to swim preferably while fully dressed and usually when you dont mean to.
• A head for heights not always needed, but if youre going to go weak at the knees getting over a moderate obstacle then it may be better to stick with bowling.

How did it go?

QI tried it but my teammates turned out to be a bunch of lily-livered, lolling-limbed poltroons. How do I get to sign up with a harder bunch?

AUnless youre right at the top of this game (in which case the other top teams will see your sporting exploits on TV and give you a call) then youd probably best start with a touch of diplomacy. More experienced teams will be suspicious of anyone who doesnt seem to respect their teammates, however pathetic they may be. Probably the best thing to do is to ask around an existing sports club (triathlon clubs usually yield the best results) to find out if there is another team in the making. You could always try to put together your own. Some websites help put you in touch with other would-be racers; check out those mentioned in Heres an idea for you for starters.

QI tried and am game for pretty much anything but I just cant run and that dragged the whole team down. Should I give up now?

ANo. Look instead for events where either there is no running or a ride and run. In ride and run, the running is part of a leg where a number of bicycles/horses/elephants are shared amongst the team to get to the next checkpoint. The idea is to take turns but if you have a strong runner in your team you may well fare better if you come to an agreement you hog the bicycle/beastie and they do the extra kilometres on foot.

Heres an idea for you

There are such things as training courses. Based over one or two days these introduce you to techniques for the commonest elements and then usually put you to the test with a short race combining them. Grab some friends, book in advance to get your place ahead of the corporate groups and have a go. In the UK have a look at Ace Races ( www.aceraces.com ). Worldwide details can be found in running magazines and on adventure racing websites such as www.sleepmonsters.com .

Defining idea

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

G.K. Chesterton

8. Cave diving

Descending through crystal-clear water past freakish rock formations in flooded caves is not for everyone. But it may be the closest you can get to the experience of exploring another planet.

Underwater caves are another world, a world seemingly provided with its own geology, atmosphere and physics.

Cave diving, particularly in favourite locations such as Florida and the Dordogne, offers stunning visibility through glass-like water, with no waves, surge or swell. It is like nothing else, and every single dive is guaranteed to be a pulse raiser there is no such thing as a dull cave dive. Plus, the knowledge, skills and judgement required to cave dive mean that any scuba-diving spelunker can justifiably see themselves as belonging to an elite group.

The other-worldliness of cave diving is undoubtedly one of the biggest thrills of the sport, with the battle to keep a lid on claustrophobia often coming a close second. Seasoned cave divers will always tell you, however, that while they welcome newcomers with a hunger for exploration, they could really do without those in search of an adrenalin high. True cave diving goes well beyond the limits of recreational diving and requires technical equipment and extensive training in its use, as well as a sound respect for certain basic rules:

• Get proper training, and stay within the limits of your training. True, there are commercial sites catering for ordinary divers, such as Ginnie Springs or the Blue Grotto in Florida, but elsewhere you must take the appropriate local course and learn about the conditions and how to prepare for them.
• Keep a guideline to the exit. Its easy enough to get disoriented underwater without being in a maze with the floor above your head. Learning navigation is part of the answer but a reel and guidelines complete the picture.