It’s been a few years since a dabbled in adventure racing (2009… a Solo Sprint and a longer CoEd Team race). I enjoyed it, though, as I’ve become more focused on mountain biking, my adventure race interest slowly dwindled. I haven’t done any running (other than the few seconds of running in CX races), and I definitely don’t perform orienteering/pace counting very accurately. I did, however, start feeling a little antsy the first time I saw a FB friend post a link to this:

2013 Knoxville Tennessee Adventure Challenge

It’s basically a 6-hour time limit adventure race that takes out two of the biggest things that keeps people from wanting to try adventure racing- the orienteering (navigation with a compass, topo map, and pace counting) and the laundry list of required equipment (to participate, you only need running shoes, hydration pack, mountain bike, and helmet). All of the paddling equipment you’ll need is included with your race entry, and, while the course isn’t marked, you follow a pre-marked map to get to the checkpoints.

Once I figured out that I wasn’t going to take cyclocross quite as seriously this winter, I decided it’d be the perfect thing to make for some fun off-season training. Tuesday afternoon, I went for my first “run”- 5 minutes walking, 5 minutes jogging, 5 minutes walking. Hey… you gotta start somewhere! My strategy is to build up to at least a 10 mile trail run by the first week of October. Easy peasy. Last time I decided I wanted to do something related to running, I went from super bike-fit to running the Ouachita 50k in exactly 1 month’s time. Of course, I could barely walk for 5 days following that race, but I figure there’s no way the adventure race course will include 32 miles of running, so I should be safe.

It’ll be a really fun change of pace before I get bundled up and back into my winter adventures.