Adventure Racing - What Is It All About?

The sport of Adventure Racing is growing in popularity rapidly. This growth is caused by the challenges that are offered to adventure racers. It is one of the sports where just finishing the race is usually seen as a victory. And, in adventure racing it’s all about teamwork, instead of it being an individual achievement.
Adventure Racing is a good mix of cycling, running and water sports, just to name a few. There are teams of 2-5 people in the races, and there are some events that now have solo categories. The disciplines can differ in each race. Adventure racing can involve doing a track on a mountain bike or hiking through a dense forest. As an adventure racer you can find yourself going down rivers in a canoe and then abseiling off a 100 foot rock face. The race can last from a few hours to a couple of days and can cover 10 - 100 miles and more! Orientation
The most important component of an adventure race is the orientation. The more control you have of your whereabouts, the less walking or cycling you need to do. Moreover navigation errors cost a lot of time. There are some things you can learn by reading, but you also need to train to develop good orientating skills.
You have to know how to read a map, understand the scale of the map, know the most important symbols of its legend, how to use a compass, and find your location by using map coordinates.

Decide where you have to walk to. This is absolutely the most essential part of winning an adventure race. See to it that your coordinates are correctly entered. To run fast is tough, to run in the wrong direction is a waste of energy. Seams like a stupid tip, right? Wrong! The largest differences between competitors are nevertheless caused by stupid mistakes, such as entering the coordinates in the wrong kilometer area. If you did not know where you are, it becomes cumbersome find the control point or the check point for that matter.
Rule 1: flawless navigation. Decide your route. Before you start running find out what the fastest way is. Are there no obstacles? Fence, streams or hills are indicated on the map. The shortest way is not always the fastest. To run over asphalt is not always inspiring, but it is generally the fastest way to get from one point to another.  If you know that a certain route contains junctions that are easily recognizable, or where you have a number of good recognizable points, then take it, knowing where you are will help you get to the target location faster. Run, but continue to check that you do not run the wrong way. Retrace back the things you see along the way. To count junctions or side roads is not a good method. Decide the direction in which roads run with your compass and verify if this is correspondent to the map. Translate the map to reality and the other way around. Remember what you see and check that it correlates with what you should see according to the map (e.g. house in the distance, are you walking alongside a field etc…)

Adventure racing is perhaps a name that sells an illusion. This race is not about seeking adventure, but rather about cleverly avoiding it.
Though it may be clearly an adventure to find your way through rough and unmarked terrains, and getting through a route fast is what the word "racing" means, the adventure race is after all mostly about careful planning and preparation. Be prepared to navigate your way!
Plan the route that will get you to your destination fastest (not through the hardest
terrain). KISS - keep it simple, stupid - if you do so, you are likely to contribute most to the winning of your team. This is a survival of the fastest race! You need to be very fit to be very fast and always on top of your location!