Taking a cross-country trip to the extreme By KATHRYN BONN Date: 07-28-2002, Sunday Section: TRAVEL Edtion: All Editions.=.Sunday
"Papa Charlie one six, this is control. Do you read? Over."
Location: Passport Control Point 16, the Lythgoes Adrenalin Rush adventure race, Northern Ireland. It's pouring as I haul a kayak through waist-high reeds and mud on the frigid Erne waterway. I'm at mile 250 of the 300-mile cross-country course of one of adventure racing's most grueling events. My swelling wrist aches, my feet are pickled from the cold and wet, I'm stumbling from exhaustion, and I'm wondering how I got myself into this.
And I'm only a volunteer. All I have to do is check competitors' "passports" as they come through.
The racers are much worse off, having spent the last four days biking, kayaking, trekking, horseback riding, rope climbing, and caving through some of Ireland's most rugged terrain.
The radio calls to our station usually come in the middle of the night. "Papa Charlie one six, three teams are approaching your location," comes the alert at 2 a.m. My tent-mate Renee and I stagger out to meet the arrivals as they cycle in with an assortment of injuries: a black eye from falling off a bike after inadvertently falling asleep; a badly bruised hip from a horse kick; torn tendons, blackened toenails, exhaustion.
For the 32 four-person teams competing in the Rush, this is fun.
Ranging in age from 20s to 40s and hailing from places such as Sweden, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland, and the United States, these unusual athletes regularly compete on a circuit of elite -- some would say insane -- multidisciplinary endurance tests. Adventure racing involves full-tilt exertion for a about a week, with little - if any - sleep.
Thanks in part to publicity generated by the Eco Challenge, the best-known event on the circuit, adventure racing is growing by extreme leaps and bounds. The top teams are in it to win and are often well-paid by sponsors, but most competitors simply aim for the more modest goal of finishing, no easy feat in itself.
Racers, some of whom are marathoners, Ironman veterans, and former Olympians, may also be competing for a cause: At this year's Rush, a team of law enforcement officers, including New Jersey native Cindy Coppola, raced as Team NYC 911, to honor and to raise money for the families of their fallen colleagues. Coppola, an FBI agent, and others on her team, were involved in the recovery effort at Ground Zero and lost dozens of friends in the disaster.
"It's been helpful in the midst of all this to be able to train for the race," Coppola, 38, said. "It gives everyone a diversion."
To prepare for the extremes of race conditions, teams such as NYC 911 train by exercising outdoors for several days straight. As part of her routine, Coppola kayaked for 24 hours on the Hudson River and spent three days hiking the Appalachian Trail and kayaking the Delaware River - with no sleep. She also gained weight, since competitors can lose up to 10 pounds during a race. (During the Rush they ate mostly protein and candy bars and trail mix, washed down by prodigious amounts of Red Bull, a race sponsor.)
As a volunteer, my own pre-race regimen consisted of eating caramel corn on my couch and watching the Eco Challenge on television. Power training days included perusing sports catalogs and ordering foul weather gear and energy bars. While some of the checkpoints require that you hike into them, or camp out for a few days, you don't have to be in top physical condition to volunteer.
What I experienced at the Rush was just as dramatic as reality TV, only alarmingly real. We saw the strongest athletes imaginable hurt and spent, pushing their implausibly fit bodies past endurance: NYPD Det. Chris Ballou arrived at one checkpoint with his head hanging, too exhausted to lift it. Ballou was a scuba diver investigating the crash of Flight 800, and he untangled a French parasailer from the Statue of Liberty; he called one cycling segment of the Rush among the top 10 worst experiences of his life.
Why do they do it? Most racers said that each time they race their swear, "never again." All that changes, Ballou said, 12 hours before the finish line, when you know you're going to make it.
Many competitors work in law enforcement, jobs that require fitness as well as personal risk on a daily basis. Racing offers them an opportunity to test their physical and mental abilities outside of work. Others had vocations in the physical fitness field: Among this year's participants were a kayaking guide, an executive with Outward Bound, and a personal trainer with model good looks (who was spotted plucking her eyebrows before the race).
An equally mixed group of 60 volunteers were bonded in their efforts to protect the safety of these extreme athletes. They came from places such as Holland, Great Britain, and United States, and ranged from an 18-year-old Swedish student to a retired RAF mountain rescue officer. There were doctors, accountants, computer programmers, cops. We quickly formed a close community led by Brian Elliott, the organizer of the race. We took our responsibilities seriously but still had lots of laughs. It's like summer camp for an unusual group of adults: You stay up all night, listen for radio transmissions, play cards, sleep and cook outside. (Volunteers who staff the checkpoints have to bring their own tents and buy food in town; they receive a per diem of 60 pounds - about $93.) While volunteers must be prepared to rough it physically, the roughest part of the job may be to stick to the rules and not help competitors. One shivering racer saw our camp stove and asked me for a cup of tea: My fellow volunteer shook her head and I realized the answer had to be, "No, sorry." Volunteers have been known to become racers after helping out, and vice versa.
Volunteering - or racing - also provides a reason for visiting pristine places you might not normally discover. Locations for past contests have included Australia, Borneo, Scotland, and New Zealand; October's Eco Challenge is in Fiji. The dramatic natural landscape that makes these settings ideal for adventure racing makes them stunning places for anyone to visit.
The Adrenalin Rush brought me to Ireland for the first time, to the lovely lake country of Enniskillen and County Fermanagh in the North, which provided easy access to the rest of Ireland and an opportunity to see this mystical country from a unique perspective.
By going around to several checkpoints as a volunteer, I crisscrossed the border between North and South, and spent a couple of days on tranquil Donegal Bay in the South. (I even needed two currencies, the pound and the Euro.)
After getting to know race organizers and locals over the week, I learned a bit about the Northern Ireland conflict, a topic that isn't casually discussed with most tourists. The country's compactness and good public transport made it easy to explore Galway, Roscommon, and Dublin after the race.
Racing is clearly not for everyone, but for moderately adventurous types, volunteering offers a taste of two exotic cultures: the place you're visiting and the rarefied adventure racing community. It's an uncommon opportunity to make new friends and get a close-up view of human nature and physical extremes.
On Day 5 of the Rush, the mud, cold, and wet had taken its toll, and we were relieved when the last team passed through our checkpoint. But I was already nostalgic when it was time to transmit for the last time: "Control, this is Papa Charlie one six, over and out."
(SIDEBAR, page T04)
IF YOU GO
Contact the New York Adventure Racing Association for information on racing, volunteering, and upcoming local and international events. NYARA also offers training clinics of all sorts. Don't be put off by thegroup's name: 20 percent of the membership is from New Jersey. Visit www.nyara.org.
For information on NYC 911: www.teamnyc911.com; (718) 442-6048.
For more on the Adrenalin Rush: www.adrenalinrush.co.uk or www.britchamps.com.
For information on Ireland call Tourism Ireland at (800) 223-6470 or visit www.irelandvacations.com
I flew the Irish national airline, Aer Lingus ([800] 474-7424; www.aerlingus.com) to Dublin and took a pleasant three-hour bus ride from Dublin to the center of Enniskillen. Information on public transport throughout Ireland is available at www.irelandvacations.com.
Illustrations/Photos: The beauty of Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, belies the struggle that awaits contestants in the Adrenalin Rush adventure race. Competitors come from around the world to push themselves to the limit. Keywords: TRAVEL, NORTHERN IRELAND, GREAT BRITAIN, SPORT
