Yishail Horowitz has been adventure racing for about five years. He produced the Central Coast Adventure Challenge in San Louis Obispo, California, as well as, the Pine Mountain Pull-Down, a bouldering competition in Ventura, California. Yishail is also the course designer for many adventure series races in California.
YISHAI HOROWITZ: Hello, my name is Yishai Horowitz. Today we're going to be talking about adventure racing. So adventure racing, amazing sport, a big combination of trail running, kayaking, mountain biking and any other kind of wacky, zany adventure that the race director wants to throw in there. Adventure races range from sprints that take about two to three hours. They're generally pretty straightforward, everything is marked. Then it goes up to six to twelve hour races whereas it's a little bit more orienteering and navigation required. You can find those pretty much all over the place. Then it gets into the 24 hour races. This is the good stuff based in my opinion. Twenty-four hours, you go straight through, lots of navigation, trail running, kayaking, mountain biking. Then from there, it steps up into expedition racing. These races can be three days to about 10 days. So to get started in this--in adventure racing, should definitely build up a little base level of fitness in the kayak, on the mountain bike, on foot. Then look into doing a sprint. These two to three hour events are great. As far as training tools go, there's an excellent book here written by Ian Adamson. He was once on team Nike. It's called Adventure Racing, great book. Another big thing about adventure racing is the navigation component. So you want to get good at reading those maps. You're going to be reading topo maps. Pretty much all adventure races requires some sort of navigation. Mountain biking, it's key, you got to get solid on that. For kayaking, get out on that flat water kayak. Lot of events--well, most adventure races are flat water kayaking, flat water paddling. There are some that have some white water. It's usually after class two, sometimes class three. Those are the bigger races like Primal Quest. But the majority of them are flat water. So get out. Do some ocean kayaking, paddle on the lake. Get comfortable. You want to get a good technique on the paddling. Otherwise you're going to burn yourself out really, really quickly.
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