Corner Brook, Nfld. is the place to be this week for adventure racers.
The Adventure Racing World Championships 2004 will begin on Sunday (Aug. 1) and a Squamish resident will be in the field of competitors.
Chris Christie is making the trip to the international calibre adventure race with three teammates from North Vancouver: Denis Fontaine, Cheryl Beatty and Bob Faulkner. Their team is called HellyHansen/metprinters.com and Christie is getting additional local sponsorship help from Health Food Heaven and Tantalus Bike Shop.
The team is made up of experienced adventure racers. Faulkner is a poster boy for adventure racing with six major events under his belt.
At 57 years of age, Faulkner is also the oldest registered participant in the Newfoundland event. He is a veteran of the Eco-Challenge races that were put on by Mark Burnett, the mastermind behind the TV show Survivor. Faulkner participated in the first Eco-Challenge back in 1995. That event was held in Utah and the next year it moved to Sea to Sky Country. Faulkner and all the other participants in the 1996 event passed through Squamish as the route took them down the Squamish River to the mouth of Howe Sound. Faulkner's team placed 10th in the event.
Eco-Challenge is no longer and the Newfoundland event is picking up where Burnett left off after his last Eco-Challenge in Fiji in 2002.
Christie and his teammates heard about the international event about a year ago and they started making plans to attend the invitation-only competition.
"We've all done six- or seven-day races," Christie said. "This will be the first as a team."
The team's goal is to finish in the top 30 and Christie hopes to cross the finish line in five days.
Over the last year, the team has done a number of exercises to prepare for the big event.
"One of our training days we drove up to Tyax Lodge and had Tyax fly us up to a remote location and we walked out using the local trail system," Christie said. The team has also paddled the Indian Arm and Christie's own personal training included competing in the 100-km Ultra Test of Metal last month and last weekend's Gearjammer mountain bike race.
The team flew out to Newfoundland a few days early so they could get to know the area.
"It'll be a challenge for us because we live in a mountainous area that has lots of landmarks," said Christie.
"There are lots of flat and rocky landscapes there and the inland areas have lots of water courses so it was recommended that we bring a collapsible raft."
Christie is the team's navigator, so it will be his responsibility to make sure the team is going in the right direction. He expects to get only about an hour of sleep a day. The team decided to sleep each night at about 1 a.m. and start moving as the sun comes up in the morning.
"We plan to do a tortoise-style race," Christie said. The team doesn't plan to come out strong from the beginning; instead they will move steady and concentrate on staying on the course in the hopes that the faster teams lose their way.
Christie expects to do lots of trekking, a rappel, a rope-assisted climb, mountain biking and paddling in large rowboats. He said that if the race organizers allow it, they might try to build a sail for the dory that they expect to be given.
The teams entered in the expedition type race have six days to complete the course. According to Christie, some teams will not cross the finish line. He predicts that only 15 teams will finish.The first-place team will be awarded $100,000.
The event will be covered by Global Television, the Outdoor Life Network and a host of other media outlets. Global plans to produce four programs that will air in prime time.
