by Jess Evans
September 28, 2018
This may come as a surprise, but I really like to sleep, so the idea of racing throughout the night was not appealing to me… at first.
My first 30-hour adventure race was the USARA National Championship race in 2011 on the Cave Run Team. The nighttime racing was a blur. We started the evening with a paddle down the Cumberland River. I was in the middle of the boat and could not see anything. I hoped we did not hit a rock. We passed one team that had flipped, and they were pulled up on the shore trying to start a fire to warm up and dry off. The paddle took us to a TA for a night trek, which was great because it helped me warm up. I was getting so cold from the water spraying on me from my teammates’ paddles. Since then, I have learned to wear a poncho to keep me a little more dry. Later that night, I think we got back into the canoes to paddle to our bikes, but honestly, I cannot remember. I know we did have a biking section at night, because I remember pushing my bike on this sandy road in the dark barely registering my surroundings. During our second trek of the night, the navigator became sleepy and slept a short while, but I could not doze off. I think my eyes got heavy during that night, and definitely my mind went hazy to the point where I was a zombie. By the time we trudged into our lodge room at 12PM on Saturday, I was so tired I curled up on the floor and fell asleep not bothering to remove anything but my pack.
Since that time, I have found it much easier to stay awake the first night of an adventure race. There have been other races where my eyes got heavy and I began to stumble, but if my teammates start a conversation with me so that I have to think, that wakes my brain up. I have lost count of the number of over-night races I have done, somewhere around 20 or 30, but I think I prefer them now. I even prefer multi-day races to 30-hour races because even though my team typically does not sleep the first night of the multi-day race, we get some lovely sleep the next few nights. After travelling for 48 hours, sleep on the side of the road is so spectacular. I have written about my sleeping spots in a previous blog post (The Best Sleeping Spots). I love sleeping in an adventure race.
