by Teri Smith

If you're thinking about competing in an adventure race, keep in mind the teamwork skills involved, accept any failures as learning experiences and talk to family and friends about your reasons for competing in such an event.

The teamwork aspect is what really drew me to the sport of adventure racing and it's what I still find attractive about it. It's the biggest challenge in the sport because you never know, from team to team and race to race, how your team dynamics will come into play. I think 98% of your success or failure within a race is dependent on your teamwork-whether it goes well or bad and how you deal with situations that come up because in every race something will crop up. But that's also the challenging fun part of the sport because if you do have really good teamwork and it's really strong, you can be super competitive and do really well.

Everyone has failures in training and racing. They're funny now when you look back. At the beginning they are just a disaster. I think that the biggest challenge was just dealing with situations where either I felt weak or was sick. I had hypothermia in a race which was my first experience with failure in an adventure race. I'm really glad I went through that because it was important for me to know that I didn't prepare my body for being lost. Our navigator got us lost for a couple hours in high mountain desert in Arizona and it gets very cold there. I wasn't prepared for that. I had all the necessary clothing but I didn't bring enough food and I didn't hydrate properly in that race. Being out on the course and having teammates sick or yourself not feeling well really challenges a team. That was early on in my race experience and looking back I think I really could have pushed through it. If we had done some things to take care of me early on in that experience, then it would have come out OK. That really taught me a strong lesson about preparation and I think we all need to go through some failure in our racing experience to make us understand what our weaknesses are.

I was participating in another race in Phoenix, Arizona and we had three teammates in this race, two guys and me. Each of us at some point in the race felt really, really bad. One of my teammates at one point said, "I just want to quit." And I said, "No you don't want to quit, we're going to continue, and what do you need." You pull together and work together as a team and the more experience you have a team and also as an individual in the sport racing with the same team or other individuals, you learn ways to cope. Through race experience you learn ways to help one another through situations and through experiences that , although not ideal, will in the end make you a better, stronger and faster team when you pull together.

For someone interested in getting involved in the sport of AR, I would say that if it's your passion and you think that you really want to do this, then go try it. Talk to your partner and make sure they are on board with what you want to do and they understand the reasons why you want to do. And maybe you don't even know yourself, maybe you just think it will be fun to go out and do a race. GO do it! Get some friends together and make it a fun experience and learn from it and learn about yourself. For me, ever since I began, it has been about the journey. It's been about the discovery of who I am, what I believe in, what I want out of life and then going after it. Go for that first race, and then if you're interested in moving on to the other events, then go for it. Have fun with life, live every day to its fullest. Just make sure all of your friends and family understand what you are doing and why, because you need their support to really succeed at the sport.

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Teri Smith is the mother of two boys, an adventure racer, an adventure race training instructor and spokesperson, and an Atlas Snowshoe racing team member. Teri competed in triathlons and road running events for several years. In 1998, her focus moved towards off-road events such as mountain bike racing, off-road triathlons, and orienteering events. Those experiences served Teri well in her transition into adventure racing. In order to share her love of the sport with other women, she became an instructor with Adventure Training Consultants (ATC) and Odyssey Adventure Racing Academy.