Latest / Do Hard Things™ with Siegfried Tiegs / Conquering Castlewood: Inside the World of Adventure Racing

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Conquering Castlewood: Inside the World of Adventure Racing · Do Hard Things™ with Siegfried Tiegs

• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of the Do-Hard Things podcast.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, jay Teiggs, and I have in studio with me Lacey Teiggs.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: How are you?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I'm good.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I'm good, she's good.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: We're driving.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: We're going to Pier Marquette for a trail run.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It is considered to be the Midwest's premier greatest trail run in the Midwest.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It's quite the statement there, but it's actually really good.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: It's 7.8 miles just north of Alton, illinois.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: That's where we're headed, but that's not what we're talking about on today's podcast.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Today we're talking about adventure racing.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: This is a recap of the Castlewood 8-Hour Adventure Race.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: It is the country's third largest adventure race.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: It happens every the first weekend in December every year in the St Louis area.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: It's named after Castlewood State Park.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite events.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk about it.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: We talk about doing hard things.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: What I like about it is that it combines numerous disciplines.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: They consider it trekking, mountain biking and canoeing.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It's all point-to-point.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: You have to navigate, utilizing maps to get from point A to point B.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: It's trekking and not running, because you're kind of going cross country.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Cross country meaning it's not like standardized trail.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You might be just walking in the woods, whatever you got to do to get from point A to point B and you're not running the whole time because the distances are pretty great.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So it's trekking, mountain biking, canoeing, and navigation, orienteering from point to point.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: And so Let me pull up my my notes here.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Give me just a second and we'll get into it.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I don't have my notes here, so I'm gonna have to edit that part out.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: What do you call that?
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: All right, so what is adventure racing?
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: All right, so adventure racing is a multi disciplinary sport geared towards endurance athletes who love the outdoors, so something different than triathlon because of the navigation aspect.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: You may have heard of other endurance events like obstacle course racing and mud runs, and you know variety of different triathlons and sometimes they're mistakenly referred to as adventure racing.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: But adventure racing it is its own specific sport on its own and it's a multi disciplinary sport where you have trekking, mountain biking, kayaking.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they have like additional events in them, like you might zip line or do some form of mountaineering, but the goal is that the the adventure racer or the team is using a combination of strategy, navigation skills and their own athleticism To find and collect as many checkpoints as possible in the least amount of time.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: So when you hear like, you'll often hear, like the event name, like the castle would eight hour adventure race.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: You have eight hours to find as many checkpoints as you can and there's a penalty if you go over on the time.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: So Adventure racing, I mean, how does it work?
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Well, just think of it like a giant scavenger hunt.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Team teams must find pre-hidden checkpoints spread out all over the race course Using a map and compass.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So you can't use any GPS devices, can't use any form of like smart watches, which makes it really cool and definitely adds to the challenge.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: They must get to these checkpoints using various disciplines predetermined by the race director.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: So the you'll get the maps and you'll have various segments where you might have a choice on whether or not you want to trek or mountain bike or canoe, but oftentimes much of the race is kind of dictated to you what modality that you're going to find the checkpoint.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Let's see here.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: So that's part of the.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: The appeal of adventure racing is the navigation it's it's you don't know what you're going to get into until race day.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Like you, for this particular race, you pick up your packet the night before and you don't know what the course is going to be and until then, which is kind of.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: It just makes a lot of fun.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: They'll give you maybe a course overview prior to, but they're not going to give you a lot of details.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: They might give you just enough so you can kind of plan.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: They might tell you, hey, you're going to have to have your mountain bike in your canoe so you can kind of plan for that right, or you're going to have a packing list and things of that nature, so all right.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: So there's typically there are some races that have solo competitors, but most of them are two or four person teams.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Some races do have three person teams and they could be single gender or coed.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And when it comes to having teammates, there's typically a rule that you have to stay together for the entirety of the race.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Like for the Castlewood adventure, you had to stay within 100 feet of one another or you'll get penalized, because what you don't want is you'll want your team of four to split up and find different checkpoints and clear the course.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: That way you have to stay together.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: The course is generally unmarked, so the team gets to choose what routes to take from checkpoint to checkpoint and it's almost entirely up to that team, which adds to the fun of it and the strategy.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: It's not just about fitness and athleticism, it's about the right strategy.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: There are certain points throughout the race where you might encounter what's known as a transition area, a TA, where you're going to switch from one discipline to the next.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: So you might start trekking on foot and then you make your way to a TA, and that's the point where you transition to the mountain bike.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: You might transition from mountain bike to a TA and then they give you a new map to do orienting and trekking for the duration of that segment.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: So it's interesting.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: So, really, the critical skill that you have to have for adventure racing.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: You need someone that can navigate to be the head navigator of the team, and that's usually the one skill where a lot of people may struggle or be apprehensive to get into the sport.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: So your overall physical fitness and strength are meaningless if you can't figure out where you're at or how you're going to get there.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Hence the navigation is so critically important.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about trekking.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: So some of the unmarked course of the adventure race will be covered on foot, and this means you might be running.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: But if running isn't your thing, then walking is totally acceptable.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: So trekking covers hiking, bushwhacking, crawling under obstacles, climbing over obstacles, and it just essentially means that you're on foot, you're not on bicycle, you're not in boat.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: When it comes to mountain biking, the mountain bike is.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: There'll be many races that have road segments, so it's not all like single track.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: But the mountain bike kind of equalizes, because if you have a road bike you're going to be much faster than someone on a mountain bike.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: So typically all the adventure races are on a mountain bike to kind of equal the playing field there.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So having basic skills and feeling comfortable riding for a few hours is definitely sufficient for the mountain bike segment.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: And then paddling there's usually some type of paddling discipline, whether it be kayaking or climbing, canoeing.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: In every adventure race Kayaking tends to be the most popular.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: There's also canoeing, rafting, or some races even have stand-up paddle boarding.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: That's not unheard of in some longer distance races.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: So there's a combination here in the Midwest.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Predominantly, though mostly, what we use is canoeing here.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: So you might have other disciplines that are sprinkled in some longer races, like rock climbing, belaying, speedlunking, whitewater rafting, riverboarding, swimming, roller blading.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Even horseback riding might happen on an adventure race.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: So usually during your longer expedition type races, and sometimes you might have just a crazy checkpoint or a crazy feat of some kind.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: There's something unusual.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Like in the castle wood, we had the Dirt Crit segment.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Dirt Crit is just a single track mountain bike course that was 1.5 miles long and I had a teammate and each of us had to do two laps and then we basically tag team it.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: One person would do two laps and then tag out with the other and that was that particular segment.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: So just something fun and unique and different and you often don't know until the day of the race Adventure racing team role.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: So some races do offer solo, but most of the time you're going to be racing with a partner or a four-person team and typically the roles of an adventure race are you have the team captain and they're responsible for overseeing everything the team is doing and you have to have someone that's going to make the final call on race strategy during the race.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: If there's going to be a difference of opinion or argument, you're going to have to have the tiebreaker or someone that's good, that's leading and in charge, that has the final say so, and that's why you'd identify the team captain.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So you know, one person in charge of decision making is incredibly helpful, especially when you're tired and you're worn out and you might be grumpy and cranky and all those things you've got the one person that can ultimately make the final decision.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: And knowing that someone else is in charge can allow others to focus on their individual roles.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You know it doesn't work very well when everyone, when there's no identified leader, it usually you'll have some challenges there.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: You'll typically have a lead navigator the role of the lead navigators to navigate the team from checkpoint to checkpoint during the race.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: They're usually the most experienced in navigating.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: They're the most proficient in map reading, orienteering and plotting and their ability to use a compass and reading the train.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: It's incredibly important skill to have.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: And then another role might be the pack mule.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: This is the person that's usually the strong one that can that isn't really slowed down by carrying extra gear.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: They're the person who can pick up the slack when the rest of the team is struggling.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: The mule will carry another teammate's pack if they need to.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they can physically drag them.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: In adventure racing you'll often see some teammates get pulled or dragged either on the mountain bike or in the canoe or trekking, and that's what the pack mules job is.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: So they're the broad, they're the ones that they carry the load when necessary, so other teammates can conserve energy.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Let's see.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: What else do we need to know about adventure racing?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: There's a variety of different formats.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Here's some common questions, aren't there?
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So here's some common questions and misconceptions about adventure racing.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Aren't there obstacles, mud, pits and fires you have to go through and jump over?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: So probably the most common confusion when you introduce someone to adventure racing is their mind Mind go to obstacle course racing, often referred to as OCR.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: This would be like tough, mudder, spartan races, and adventure racing might have natural obstacles to navigate.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: It's a different sport than obstacle course racing, so oftentimes those terms are confused.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: So obstacle course racing and adventure racing are different disciplines all together.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Next question that you often get I'm going through frequently asked questions Don't you have to train or be in very good shape to adventure race?
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Well, it's highly recommended to be in good physical shape.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: I mean especially when you're doing some longer events that are 20 plus hours.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Sprint races are highly accessible and they could be as little as four hours to eight hours and anyone in decent, moderate physical shape can complete one of those.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: So you'll see people out there of all shapes and sizes.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: You'll see family members out there, with young ones out there, and so I would encourage definitely start off with a sprint, see what you're capable of and then move up from there.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Do you need to spend a lot of money on outdoor gear while adventure racing?
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Well, a lot of veteran racers certainly can spend a lot of money on equipment, but it's not really required.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Most of your adventure races include a kayak or canoe.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: They include the paddles, the life jackets, which those that's obviously expensive equipment, so that's typically provided.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: You can typically, you know, contact your local outdoor outfitter if you need to rent equipment like a mountain bike or something like that, if you don't have one.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Sometimes there's.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: There might be some sprint races that have no biking.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: That doesn't require a bike.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: So that's typically.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Your expenses are gonna be with the bicycle and the helmet, the canoe and paddle gear, which is typically provided.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: So, really, ultimately, running shoes and then whatever's on the packing list, which you probably have a majority of those items.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Do you have to be an expert navigator to do an adventure race?
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: This is the most intimidating aspect of adventure racing and simply no, you don't have to be an expert.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: In the more beginner friendly level races, you know, distances between the checkpoints are much shorter and the checkpoints tend to be more obviously placed.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: As you get into the more longer distances and disciplines, then you're gonna have to have more skill because they're gonna be over a greater distance and so If you're lucky or you live near an urban environment, you might want to go check out an Orienteering Club they call them O-Clubs, I know in St Louis, or we're near.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: They have meets all the time, like typically once a month, and they basically set up checkpoints in a park and you can go and practice and they have people out there that can help you.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: So that's probably the best way and easiest way to focus on improving your land navigation skill.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So some of the individual gear.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: So I'll just read through the gear list on the Castlewood Adventure that we had to carry and every race is going to be different, but here's some of the gear just to give you an idea of what you might have to carry.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: So all of these items must be sized to fit user and they must be worn or carried during the race.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: So the equipment list was wool fleece.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Synthetic hat fleece.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Long sleeve top.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Waterproof jacket with hood, no ponchos.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: We had to have waterproof pants.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: We have to have gloves or mittens, a pack with hydration system, 40 ounces minimum energy food like sports drink, gels, bar sandwiches, et cetera.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Headlamps, a whistle, an emergency blanket, a compass and a sharpie.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: So every individual for this particular race had to carry that equipment, your team gear.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: This is to be carried or worn by each teams.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter who carried it maybe your pack meal or whoever carried these additional items.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: The passport, which is the piece of paper that they give you, that when you get to the checkpoint you typically have a paper passport and you take this device and you click on it and it punches a series of holes, like a little code, onto your passport device.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: You need a waterproof map case because you're going to get wet or rained on and you want to keep your map dry.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: You need a method of marking your maps, so permanent markers, highlighters, pens, all of those things, a charged cell phone and a waterproof case.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: This is just used for emergency.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And then you had to have a first aid kit, just a basic medical kit that would have some gauze pads, some waterproof tape, maybe some antibacterial ointment, band-aids, maybe some painkiller, some medical exam gloves, and I would recommend that you have some type of iodine and maybe some additional gauze, because typically what I've seen people get hurt, they usually have cuts more than anything else, and I've seen people get head injuries and things like that and you need to have enough to cover that.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: So recommend some type of bandage that can cover that.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Some additional teen gear would be a multi-tool for your bicycles, your patch kit in case you get a flat, and then some type of tire pump where oftentimes people use these CO2 cartridge inflators.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Your individual gear for the paddle would be for this particular race was a canoe, which was provided for us, the paddle itself, the PFD, the Life Preserver, personal Flotation Device, and then the prohibited items these are items that were not allowed were a GPS device, any additional cell phone, handheld or communication, anything that could connect to the internet, any other types of maps that were not provided by the race director or officials, any type of firearm and, for this particular race, no whining.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: So leave your whining at home.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: And so that's kind of a general overview of what adventure racing is, what some basic frequently asked questions and your individual gear, and that's it what I'm going to do in the next episode of the podcast.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to do a short overview of the Castlewood eight-hour adventure race, just a race report.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: So if you're interested in listening to that, check out the podcast right after this.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I'm just going to kind of do a deep dive of my thoughts on the Castlewood eight-hour and it's, like I said, just one of those disciplines where you can get out and do hard things and if you've never tried one before, definitely encourage you to team up and go try one.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: If you have any questions about the sport or discipline I love talking about it just reach out to me directly.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: You can connect with me on the website doourthingsnationcom.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Reach out to me on social media or email.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And yeah, so this episode just a highlight overview of what adventure racing is, and I'll see you in the next episode.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Keep doing hard things and, as Angie would say, make someone smile.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: We'll talk to you soon.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Bye.