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The World Championships 2nd place in Adventure Sports shares experiences and tips

The World Championships 2nd place in Adventure Sports shares experiences and tips

Sail to the top, c'est la vie

June 29, 2022 by liisi

Let’s say you’ve just completed the 23 km Tartu Marathon. Now start walking back to Otepää, but go straight through […]

Let’s say you’ve just completed the 23 km Tartu Marathon. Now start walking back to Otepää, but go straight through the forest. When you arrive, take the mountain bike and ride with it 150 km to Pärnu. Off roads and tracks, not asphalt. In the meantime, carry the bike a few times over some bogs. In Pärnu, get in a kayak and start paddling towards Kihnu. Keep a compass bearing in the dark sea and try not to fall asleep. Paddling 40 km takes 5-6 hours. When you arrive, make a walking tour of the island, get back in the kayak and follow the same route back. Sounds like quite a long journey?

That’s what an adventure sports trail looks like, with the difference that you don’t usually go back the same way, but keep on going until you reach your destination – the finish. Expedition Adventure Racing is a team-based, ultra-long endurance sport. Competitors have to navigate their way through the wilderness by following a map and passing predetermined checkpoints to reach the finish line as quickly as possible. A classic expedition is 500 to 800 km long and lasts several nights. The race consists of stages, which are covered by human-powered transport: on foot, by bike or by watercraft. You will move without stopping, day or night, carrying all the necessary equipment and deciding for yourself whether and how much to rest on the difficult journey. The team is made up of four members, one of whom must be female.

“We’ve experienced days of 43 degree sunshine in the world’s largest unpopulated wetland, Pantanal, where we also had to survive a tropical thunderstorm. We’ve felt the pain of 30m/s flying sand grains in the Ulungur desert in northern China and had to make an unscheduled sleepover (waiting for morning) in the Equador mountains at 4300m in dense fog and freezing rain.”

Timmo Tammemäe

The races in Estonia are a bit more human in length, with the 200km trek from one place to another in Estonia providing the feeling, experience and emotion. One such race is the Tactical Foodpack Expedition Estonia, which will take place for the 6th time, starting on the first Friday in July at sunset. This expedition will be organised by Estonian ACE Adventure La Sportiva, Estonia’s most experienced and strongest adventure sports team, of which the author of this post is a member. For the last 10 years we have been competing all over the world in different countries, fitting 3-4 ultra-long adventure sports competitions into one season. We’ve experienced days of 43 degree sunshine in the world’s largest unpopulated wetland, Pantanal, where we also had to survive a tropical thunderstorm. We’ve felt the pain of 30m/s flying sand grains in the Ulungur desert in northern China and had to make an unscheduled sleepover (waiting for morning) in the Equador mountains at 4300m in dense fog and freezing rain. Each place visited and the lessons learnt have been unique, and the experience gained and strong self-analysis has helped our whole team to get better year by year. We’ve learned to listen to and know our bodies better, and we’ve acquired the skills to support ourselves and each other on the long journey – the team moves as fast as the slowest member of the team moves. At the last World Championships in Spain, we finished a historic 2nd place and this year we took our first ever World Cup series win in Lesotho, South Africa (we’ve already been motivated for new adventures by six 2nd places in the past with the phrase “don’t come second this time”).

What have I learnt during all these years? From an individual perspective, successful competition, including active outdoor pursuits, consists of four main components:

All this wisdom is also relevant when simply going on a longer hike. So why do we do it? This is a question that has been asked from us the most. “Look, it’s such a competition… and what’s more, a friend invited”.

Apart from the desire to challenge oneself, to overcome oneself, adventure sport is a great way to experience the visual beauty of a region or a country. All this, of course, in a minimum of time. You will never have to follow the same route. Often you end up in places where you can’t go with any tourist package. The route to be taken is carefully chosen by the organiser for the adventurer, and in the same way, we offer a strong positive emotion through our experience with Tactical Foodpack Expedition Estonia – https://expeditionestonia.com 

Timmo Tammemäe Estonian ACE Adventure / La Sportiva