training
Trying to balance work, training and family lives is a continuous battle for anyone who takes up adventure racing. Especially if your team members have strong work commitments that tend to eat into your training time. Three of the team members are married and have very supportive wives who put up with our complaints of being sore or tired plus not having us around. (actually they may like it like this mmmmmmmm) They call themselves the XPD widows.
You must find time to train that suits your lifestyle. During the week our team members train by themselves where necessary, we all try to encourage each other to do as much as possible by letting each other know what we have done. This also creates a little competitiveness amongst the team as no one likes to be left behind especially when we do our training weekends away.
Training weekends - we try and do a minimum of one a month, our training weekends are where our fitness really improves. We usually go away on the Friday night and finish up on Sunday lunch time or a little later. Lake Eildon is our favourite spot for our training weekend. It is important to try a find a spot for your team to get away and try your hand at navigating a course that one of you have set up that covers all disciplines. Make sure you try going into or through the night to see how the dynamics of the team work when everyone is tired and hungry.
It is a good idea to try and recreate similar circumstances that you will face in the race. This can be difficult if you're doing a 5-10 day event simply because of time. All races will give you a gear list so train with all the gear that is required, test the gear you have to make sure it works ok during race conditions, get use to the weight you will need to carry, how much water you need, try different food, experiement with transitions.
In our experience we have found that it is important to buy good quality light gear, cheaper options just don't last so you end up having to buy again, and usually when they do fail or break it is when you need them the most.
Some of our favourite and not so favourite training spots:
Lake Eildon: The terrain is perfect allowing us to experience all disciplines. Great for trekking, kayaking, and Mountain Biking.
Lysterfield Park: Fantastic mountain bike track, has some great hills for climbing and fast single tracks to improve your skills.
Yarra River: We do a lot of kayak training on the Yarra, because we don't all own kayaks we hire them from Studley Park boat house. It is easy to get to and you can go up stream for many kilometres.
Mt Donna Buang: A long day in the office, we start from the car park just out of Healsville. It is a 55km round trek over some challenging terrain. Takes between 11 - 12 hours to do.
Hurstbridge to Marysville: A tough mountain bike ride, about 110 km depending on the way you go. Will take about 11 - 12 hours. Good tough day for the legs.