August 11: Challengers shuffle across the start line
By Dan Morrison

Racers get under way at the start of this year's Eco-Challenge

Such as when Australian herpetologist Steve Irwin reached into his burlap bag during one of the seemingly endless safety meetings and pulled out a king brown snake, a serpent some 5 feet long with the attitude of a burly longshoreman with a really bad hangover.

Irwin then reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out a taipan, another 5-footer so deadly that letting one loose on the floor of a crowded hotel room would seem reasonable grounds to charge someone with a major felony.

And finally Irwin managed to bring the room full of rowdy Eco-Challengers to a hushed silence when he pulled out and displayed a death adder, a charming little viper that can very quickly, if you're foolish enough to step on it, assist you in settling once and for all the eternal question of whether or not you should run to the light at the end of the dark tunnel or fight it with your last gasping breath.

Then there was a parade of nations of sorts, as the Eco-Challenge teams were marched through Forgarty Public Park along Cairn's oceanfront to assemble and sit in neat rows for yet another round of speeches by VIPs.

By the time the rock concert got underway in the evening, accompanied by a fireworks display, most of the competitors had fled the festivities and were back in their hotel rooms attempting to organize their gear in drop boxes, hoping, if not to actually outsmart Burnett and the other race designers, to at least come up with a workable strategy to cope with the now revealed nature of the course.

Which turned out, according to the maps, to require carrying much more food and water than most teams had anticipated and to offer much less access to gear than most had hoped.

Early Monday morning, buses hauled the 188 competitors and some 100 members of the media inland through the hills, winding around the eucalyptus trees and red clay to Undara, a trip of nearly five hours.

A racer gets ready to hit the start line

Most were unnecessary adjustments, but in the pre-race nervousness, adjusting a strap, duct taping a boot, redistributing food bags, and anything else to occupy the mind was better than just sitting and waiting for the race to get underway.

As Mark Macy, a 42-year-old attorney and veteran of the Eco-Challenge summed it up as he fought with a line on his hydration system, "Let's get it done, man. Let's get it done."

There was one last question-and-answer session for the teams with Mark Burnett, during which several teams argued that they had not been informed they were required to carry smoke signals, and during which Burnett firmly informed them that they most certainly had to.

Burnett won the argument. Rather easily.

Race director Mark Burnett

While the teams assembled in a line to pick up the extra batteries, Louise Cooper-Lovelace, captain of Team Endeavor, stretched out on the ground to relax and offered her assessment of the course. "This first leg is going to be a tough leg," she said. "I'm more concerned about ankles and rough footing than I am about the creatures. It looks like there's going to be a lot more hiking and biking. It seems more balanced."

The teams returned to the staging area to once again muck about with their gear. At 4:30 p.m. everyone began a stroll through the Undara National Park along a rock-lined trail to a large field where the race would start.

Jason Middleton, running his third Eco-Challenge with Team S.C.A.R., wasn't taking this year's event lightly. "I was just telling my teammates," Middleton said, "that for the first time in my adventure-racing career, I'm totally freaked out. I think it has to do with the fact that there's so many great teams, and our team is going to try to be really competitive this year. Then there's the unknown terrain, the spear grass. I'm freaked out."

At the starting line, helicopters carrying television camera crews buzzed overhead while on the ground members of the print media did their best to add to the chaos.

Once it was determined the proper level of chaos had been reached, members of the media were shooed behind a restraining rope and Mark Burnett descended from the clouds onto the field in a helicopter, like some modern-day Olympic god bestowing his blessing on his legion of athletes.

Whether or not the competitors felt they needed either blessing or bestowing, or whether, when referring to Burnett, it might be more appropriate to add a couple of adjectives to the word god, is all a matter of conjecture and debate.

In any case, at 5:30 p.m. on August 11, Burnett gave his trademark 10-second countdown on a bullhorn and the 1997 Eco-Challenge was officially underway.

Most teams shuffled off along the course rather than sprinted due to the rough terrain in the field immediately in front of the start line — competitors all seemed to have a wary eye on what might lie hidden in the tall grass.

The notable exception was the French/U.S. team of Team ARS, led by Cathy Sassin, which did sprint off down the field — rocks, chuckholes, and snakes be damned!

Toward the middle of the pack some team felt inspired to veer off-course and run to the top of a ridge, perhaps hoping to find easier footing. And like lemmings, nearly all the competitors behind those intrepid trailblazers immediately gave chase up the ridge. And just as quickly gave chase back down the ridge and back onto the original course when the team of nonconformists realized they had made a foolish mistake.

If nothing else, the zigzag was entertaining to watch. And it was no doubt a quick lesson to the less-experienced teams in the back of the pack about the strategy of dogging a team further ahead in the pack: Just because they are slightly ahead is no indication whatsoever that they have even the most vague idea of where they're going.

And if you don't know how to read a compass and a map, or know to go with your best instincts, you may want to reconsider adventure racing as a hobby and look into synchronized swimming instead.

As the competitors disappeared into the distance, the press corps was just as quickly disappearing to look for their drivers to transport them off to either CP-1 or CP-2 to wait for the frontrunners to arrive.

They would have a few hours to wait, but not nearly as long as they thought.

The course led the teams from the start line across scrub outback terrain and finally through the tall grass near CP-2 down a dirt road.

After the entire course had been laid out, Burnett and a few others ran it (which led to a two-day hospital stay for Burnett when he punctured his lower leg on a hidden tree branch). It took them six hours to travel from the starting point to CP-2, so it was a bit of a surprise when the first three teams, who were traveling together, sprinted into the checkpoint in just four hours.

Teams France Raid Adventure, ARS, and UC VR were eight minutes ahead of their nearest competition, Team Red Wolf. The first three teams, consisting mostly of French racers, had traveled without using their headlamps, a rather remarkable comment on their navigation skills.

For those teams, so far so good. As Team ARS Captain Cathy Sassin said, "No problems; no problems yet. There's a lot of little rocks and sticks and tripping. But we have a couple of really good navigators, we're travelling together, and so far it's going great."

Members of Team Dew passing a rope test

First blood could be claimed by David Kelly, captain of Team S.C.A.R., as he arrived at CP-2 with a minor, yet bloody, cut just below his right knee. The medical team inspected, cleaned, and dressed the wound while Kelly smiled at the media piranhas who were shoving each other like sumo wrestlers, each jockeying to get the best close-up shot of the red stain on the competitor's leg. "Just call us Team S.C.A.B.," Kelly laughed into the porcupine of microphones in front of his face.

Kelly's teammate Terry Schneider offered her succinct opinion of the race so far. "The footing is really bad, uneven," she said. "It really sucks."

According to an unconfirmed report, Chloe Lanthier of Team Canada had stumbled into a hidden strand of barbed wire and was continuing the race with a deep gash in her leg from her ankle to her knee.

"I'll be very surprised if someone doesn't break an ankle in this," Schneider said.

By CP-2, the defending champions Team Eco-Internet had fallen far back in the pack. Some members of the press began to speculate on what that development means.

During the first four hours of a 350-mile multi-discipline, multi-day race, what it means is absolutely nothing.

Dan Morrison covered the Marathon des Sables for Outside Online.