Some very interesting points brought up by both Eoin & Nathan

In the absence of any answer to Eoin’s original question I think we have no option but to give Nathan and this site the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has competed in many races and has built up the knowledge necessary to advise people of all levels on how to successfully complete an adventure race.

If this is not the case - well possibly going any further than this on the subject - would be like shooting fish in a barrel!

If there is one thing I have learned from some of the more hardened AR competitors - is don’t believe a word they tell you(especially if they give you tips midrace!!). Secrets & strategy are all part of the fun of Adventure Racing.

Looking forward to seeing you all racing this season.

If you confined your tips to your own areas of expertise I wouldn’t even be replying in this thread. However you are giving out tips specifically on adventure racing, an area in which you have no experience, and boy is it showing. So you seem to be trying to give the impression that you are some kind of adventure racing authority, which you clearly are not.

I would be appalled to think that novice adventure racers were paying good money to get bad advice from someone with no expertise in the subject area. Running training weekends on Kayaking or ropework, concentrating on bringing people up to the standard to allow them to compete in AR is great. I’d be delighted if AR in Ireland grew to the extent that someone could make a living doing this. However, handing out advice on areas you don’t have expertise in is crossing a line. To be perfectly frank, if someone asked me where to go for training I would be more comfortable sending them to one of the instructors who I know is not going to be handing out spurious advice.

Adventure racing is a lot more than the sum of its parts. If you actually go out and race you’ll hopefully start figuring that out for yourself.

On lightweight gear: I often go to races with two sets of gear, and choose the optimal one depending on circumstances. I have a few bits of extremely lightweight gear that I bring on races, but only if I know for sure that I won’t be using them. If you don’t understand the logic of that, then get out and race and figure it out for yourself. As I said earlier in the thread, I have seen teams pull out of races because their (expensive) lightweight gear wasn’t good enough to enable them to get through the conditions they encountered. Its very easy to beat teams that operate on the simplistic unintelligent assumptions you are handing out as advice by simply surving while they wilt.

On training: The short answer to your questions is absolutely no way would I recommend anyone to do a 3 day hike to train for a 3 day mountain marathon (or do 3 days of non-stop AR training to train for a 3 day non-stop AR). Thats just plain stupidity.

I will happily part with all this knowledge for cash(if I ever figure out the secret) - get back to me for course details in about 10 years or so!

Over the years I’ve heard a lot of useless or even counterproductive advice and opinion given about AR, so I’d hate to see another waffler join the fray and be taken seriously, especially if his only interest in AR is to make some cash on the back of non-existant expertise.

He may well be a qualified climbing or kayaking instructer (I don’t know), which would make him an expert in those areas, but that is all it does. AR is more than the sum of its parts, but it helps to take part in the races to figure out why.