Adventure racing a natural step for lifelong athlete
By Dan Morrison

Schneider says rock climbing will be her "biggest obstacle"

Terry Schneider, of Team S.C.A.R., is one exception to the rule.

Over the years she has done so well in triathlons (second place, '92 Hawaii Ironman World Series; first place U.S. woman, '90 and '92 Hawaii Ironman; nine-time top-five Ironman finisher; 16-time top-ten Ironman finisher) that she has enjoyed sponsorship.

As one of the world's best triathletes, involvement in adventure racing was a natural course for the 36-year-old.

"For me this is an extension of my athletic endeavors," she says. "This is about participating in life, what I live by. I'm not one to spectate, I want to get out there and get my hands dirty and check it out."

As a member of Team S.C.A.R., she finished 17th in the Utah Eco-Challenge and ninth in British Columbia. It has been a learning process.

"I originally went into the race last year thinking it wasn't going to be that different from triathlons," says Schneider. "I thought I was going to be able to do my triathlon training during the week and then work on some of the other technical stuff I needed to learn on the weekends, no big deal. But it just becomes a totally different endeavor."

The disciplines involved in adventure racing, although similar to those in triathlons, are surprisingly different. "I had the false assumption that being a strong runner — someone who's run for 25 years — that hiking is a piece of cake. I can run miles and miles and hours and hours. So, you know, what's the big deal about walking, right?" asks Schneider rhetorically.

"But it's totally different, a totally different activity. I found hiking to be complete agony. Oftentimes we're on rough terrain, which is really difficult on the ankles, the achilles tendon, and knees. I do a lot of trail running, but it's still not the same. Trails I run on are like freeways compared to the stuff we hike on." Carrying a 45-pound pack for several days was a new form of torture as well.

And Schneider had never climbed or done rope work. "The technical work, as far as mountaineering and rope work, I found took a lot more time to learn, to practice, to read up on the equipment and become familiar with it so that I felt comfortable knowing what to do, what I needed to use to be safe." High-altitude trekking was one thing, scaling vertical rock cliffs was another.

"Rock climbing was the biggest obstacle for me to overcome," admits Schneider. "I had quite a bit of anxiety about it. I've been an athlete all my life, and I've never done anything athletically that I was afraid of doing, even the intense open-water swimming. But the first time I got up on a rope, it scared the crap out of me. And I was afraid that I was afraid. The fact that fear overcame me was such a new experience. Now I know how to deal with it and move on."

And for all the teams, including Team S.C.A.R., trying to come up with a reasonable training regimen for the new sport was mostly guesswork.

"Nobody knows how to train for one of these things. We have put together milestones where people should be individually during our training, riding 'x' number of miles on a mountain bike, or running 'x' number of miles, blah, blah, blah."

Another novel aspect of training is the rather grubby nature of it all. "Rather than calling it macho, I would call it primitive," Schneider laughs.

"Sometimes when we're out, I feel like we're doing caveman training." She admits she probably reacts differently to the training and to the event because of her gender. "Most of the guys are guy guys," Schneider says. "We go out there, we're in the dirt, we're doing guy-type things, and it's guy talk the whole time. It gets kind of gross."

"I tell them, 'You guys are pigs. I'm going home. I'm going to take a bath. I don't want to see you.' I have jokingly talked with my women friends and explained how I've gone through days of man-hating. Or having a man-hating week."

Schneider laughs easily and often before the big race

According to Schneider, she knew what to expect in the actual event. "I think as an athlete one of my best attributes has been that I'm pretty realistic about what I take on and what I have in store for me," Schneider says, "so I have to say I was not surprised how difficult the race would be. I knew it would bring me down to the lowest I'd ever been, mainly because of the sleep deprivation. And that did happen; it brought me down to the lowest emotionally I've ever been in an athletic event. But it was exactly what I expected.

Still, how to deal with the obstacles race organizers place in their way would remain a mystery until actually confronted. "In Utah," Schneider remembers, "our team motto was 'We just don't know ...' We knew nothing."

The lack of sleep is one of the elements in multi-day adventure racing that many competitors have difficulty dealing with. "We average about three hours sleep a night," says Schneider. "You'll get a good night's sleep because of a dark zone, or someone's injured, or whatever, and sometimes you'll push through and not sleep at all for a couple of days," she says. "In Utah we went the last 40 hours without sleep, but one night we had gotten five hours."

Members of Team Hewlett-Packard, who won the race in Utah, claim to sleep an average of just 30 minutes. And they claim not to sleep at all the first three nights of the event. Exhaustion often leads to short tempers.

"We work together well as a team," Schneider says, "but we're not ignorant and think that we're going to go through this and never have a conflict or an argument or dislike each other. That's a bunch of crap. We acknowledge that there are going to be problems. But the bottom line is we also acknowledge that we are a cohesive unit and we want to get to the finish line and therefore we are able to move ahead and deal with things that come along."

The shared common goal is critical, according to Schneider. "A really important factor is that you all must have the same desire to reach whatever your goal is. So that you all have that. And we all feel the same. We are willing to put ourselves out there, and we are not willing to withdraw from the race, unless we become convinced that we are doing absolutely massive bodily harm to ourselves."

Injuries during the Eco-Challenge are not just common, they are omnipresent. But how much should the competitors suffer before they throw in the towel is up for debate.

For Schneider the commitment is on the edge. "I go so far as to say, 'If I have an arm or a leg dangling from my body, you guys can cull me from the race, but otherwise you're going to have to drag my ass across the finish line.'"

In the Eco-Challenge, all members must cross the finish line together, or the team is non-ranked. If a competitor suffers and injury serious enough to cause that racer to drop out, the team may request permission to continue, but they will finish the race without official ranking.

"We actually had an interesting discussion about whether it would be legal if somebody died, to bring them in a body bag across the finish line and still be considered a complete team ..." Schneider laughs when she relates this, yet you can tell the concept is only partially a macabre joke to her and her team.

That competitors discuss such issues is an indication of the nature of this event. "This race is not for everybody," says Schneider seriously. "People like the concept of it, of doing it, they like what it's about, the team aspect, the places where the races are held, things like that."

But to visualize victory at the end of 11 non-stop days of physical and mental torture is one thing. To actualize the fantasy is another thing entirely.

According to Schneider, "To actually finish and to even enjoy the process of going through an event like this, I really think that there aren't a lot of people that would do it — to really gruel out the Eco-Challenge. It's a select few who can finish it. People want to finish it, but to have the balls to pull it off, so to speak, is another story."

Then she laughs. She laughs easily and often. And that may be a key factor in Team S.C.A.R.'s success. "One of the things David [team captain David Kelly] put on our required list," Schneider notes, "was, 'Bring your sense of humor.'"

Dan Morrison covered the Marathon des Sables for Outside Online.