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The last thing Edwin Trevor-Roberts expected to encounter during the Legend Expedition Adventure Race in Adelaide was a giant koala.

But when you’re tackling a 500k+ race involving running, cycling and kayaking legs with the added challenge of navigation via map and compass, it’s probably best to expect the unexpected. Especially when you’re massively sleep deprived.

This wasn’t just any koala. It wasn’t in a tree. It wasn’t a cuddly, furry mascot. Edwin locked eyes with the koala during a night-time paddling leg on the Murray River. “I was looking at the cliff. It was night, and in the reflections from the lights I saw this ginormous koala, like 40 foot tall, turn and look at me,” he says.

“And then this giant eagle just takes off and flies. Like, wow!”

The brain can play weird tricks when you’re working hard across four-and-a-half days operating on less than three hours’ sleep at a stretch.

Edwin wasn’t the only member of his four-person team who “enjoyed” hallucinations during the race. One told Edwin he could see giant letters on the cliff face. “It spells spirit or something,” he said.

Another was adamant, again during an overnight paddling leg, that he could see a bridge up ahead, with a truck rumbling across it. But there was no bridge and no truck.

These delusional episodes were among the more entertaining trials that Edwin and his team-mates Arran Brown, Joel Feros and his niece Justine Grohs, who together make up the team Out There Wandering, endured during the race, part of Wild & Co’s adventure racing calendar.

In short, adventure racing is a hybrid of orienteering, cycling, running and kayaking (and often other similar outdoor sports disciplines). Teams of two or four navigate their way around a course, checking in at checkpoints along the way.

Races are split into legs - each leg comprising a single discipline. So in Adelaide, there were running/trekking legs, cycling legs and kayaking legs. Events vary in length from a few hours to the world championships, which lasts for up to 10 days.

Edwin has tested himself in 24-hour adventure races a number of times, but Adelaide was his, and Out There Wandering’s, first crack at a multi-day event. So how did he find it? “Long!”

He’s not kidding. One 170k cycling leg took almost 24 hours to complete. There were running/trekking legs that lasted 12 hours+ and multiple long paddles of up to 16 hours. Edwin and his team-mates took four days and 12 hours to complete the course.

That put them somewhere in the middle of the pack, altough they were actually “unclassified” finishers. That’s because they lost one team member to injury about 340k into the event. And the rules of adventure racing say teams must stay together throughout the race, from start to finish.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the 170k bike leg that was his nemesis, resulting in Achilles tendonitis so severe he struggled to walk. Even so, he hobbled to the kayak and completed the next leg of the race before officially pulling out. Gutsy.

While physical injuries are among the risks associated with adventure racing, other big challenges include how and when to sleep, and the impact of the inevitable sleep deprivation.

Edwin says the team learnt a lot during the race about how to manage sleep. “We used a strategy around 90-minute sleep cycles, so we either slept for 90 minutes … or 3 hours,” he says. “I was blown away by how good a 90-minute sleep can make you feel.

“I've never done that before. The first night we had 90 minutes. Woke up at 4:30, started hiking, and felt like I’d had a beautiful sleep. It was terrific.”

There were other lessons too. “The thing that did surprise me was you've also got to pay attention to your normal circadian rhythms. So trying to sleep in the late afternoon just doesn't work because you're always awake at that time,” he says.

“And also how difficult the early hours of the morning truly are once you get past midnight. By the third night, it was just brutal to try to stay awake between 3am and 6am. So difficult to stay awake. So there's something there around sleep strategy in the future.”

The effects of sleep deprivation are real. It slows you down. You forget to eat, which impacts on your performance. It complicates decision-making. Above all, it makes navigation more difficult.

And Edwin says navigation is pivotal. It’s not enough to be the fittest or fastest team. Fittest and fastest with good navigation is the recipe for success, he says.

The navigation in Adelaide wasn’t straightforward to begin with. Because the distances were so vast, there were 20 maps required. The team only receives the maps the day before the race, and they are given two hours to strategise how they will attack the course.

Always on

Once the race starts, there are few opportunities to slip into auto-pilot, because along each leg the team has to locate and check-in at checkpoints. Edwin says even the kayaking legs in Adelaide, which took teams down the Murray, required concentration.

“I find the kayaking legs some of the more challenging because you’re going hours before the next checkpoint. So you need to know which left-hand curve of the river you’re on, because they all look the same!

“As soon as you lose ‘I’m on this curve of the river,’ you’re in a whole world of pain. That is really, really difficult. So I find on the river legs I’m actually much more switched on.”

This means constantly referencing the map, comparing it with the meanderings of the river and cross-checking by triangulating with distance covered and estimated speed. Try doing that in the dark, when you’re exhausted 14 hours into a 16-hour paddle!

As funny as it sounds though, this challenge was among the highlights for Edwin during the race - partly because the night-sky on the Murray, which is a UNESCO dark zone, was spectacular!

“You’re going along on the river and on one side you’ve got these enormous cliff faces. They’re 35-40 metres up on one side. So that big blackness means you know where you are.

“And then you’re looking up and the Milky Way was just unbelievable. It was super-cool navigating by the stars. The Southern Cross was up and once the moon went down … It had a very primal sort of feeling to it, when you’re doing something like Magellan would have when he was crossing the ocean,” he says wistfully.

“It was that feeling of ‘Wow, I’m really adventuring at this point. This is really something that’s out of the ordinary.’”

Eat when you can

Nutrition is another challenge for adventure racers, and this was made even more complex by the sheer duration of the race in Adelaide. But Edwin says this is one area that worked really well for the team.

Following a tip they picked up from a podcast, they each created “12-hour bags”. These bags each contained two “substantial” meals and 10 snacks. The team made sure they ate something substantial - often a freeze-dried meal - around midnight and again around 6am.

Every other hour, they had a snack. And, of course, anytime they saw a bakery they put some money into the register. Carrot cake, toasted sandwiches, pies and hot coffee. And the often bewildered looks of the shopkeepers. “Are you guys crazy?”

It must have been hard to do anything other than agree!

Clearly, running, riding and paddling for more than four days with only minimal breaks takes a toll on the body. But Edwin says the sport is more mentally than physically draining.

Afterwards, he was in a “mental fog” for about a week. He also felt flat. This race was an ambition 20 years in the making, so after such a build up, it’s understandable there would be a mental comedown.

But on the physical side, there was a happy dividend. When Edwin started training again, he thought his Garmin was playing up, not measuring his heartrate accurately. But no, it just turns out adventure racing for the best part of five days is really, really good for your fitness.

Which should augur well for Edwin’s next adventure race - the 24-hour Hells Bells which he and his 18-year-old daughter are taking on next month in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

He says he’ll “definitely” do another multi-day race, but maybe not for a bit. After all, it’s a big, big commitment.

Upcoming Events

There are way too many events for me to list everything that’s happening around the country, but here is a selection of upcoming races (with a bias towards South East Queensland).

The Running Calendar website is a great source if you want a comprehensive understanding of what’s available around the country.