Books

World’s Toughest Sport

by Dan Schaefer

Written for the aspiring adventure racer, World’s Toughest Sport guides the reader into the basics of adventure racing with explanations on how to prepare for a race, equipment suggestions along with basic strategy and race tips.

Author: Dan Schaefer
Published: September 2020
Pages: 32
Language: English

Squiggly Lines: Map and compass navigation with a focus on Adventure Racing and Rogaining

by Mark Lattanzi

Want to learn how to hike in the woods and not get lost? Or perhaps you want to compete in a local orienteering event? Maybe you aspire to do the 10-day Eco-Challenge race? Squiggly Lines is a full-color book about map and compass navigation with a focus on adventure racing. The book is almost 300 pages and has over 150 example maps and figures and almost 100 navigation exercises.

You will learn:

• to read and understand topo(graphic) and other maps
• to use a compass to locate yourself in the wild
• to take and follow a compass bearing to a particular destination

Plus, Squiggly Lines has some great adventure race stories from around the globe by its author. Reading Squiggly Lines may not prevent you from getting lost, but it will certainly help you find yourself!

Author: Mark Lattanzi
Published: September 2020
Pages: 288
Language: English
Available through tanznavigation.org

Arthur: The dog who crossed the jungle to find a home

by Mikael Lindnord

When you’re racing 435 miles through the jungles and mountains of South America, the last thing you need is a stray dog tagging along. But that’s exactly what happened to Mikael Lindnord, captain of a Swedish adventure racing team, when he threw a scruffy but dignified mongrel a meatball one afternoon.

When the team left the next day, the dog followed. Try as they might, they couldn’t lose him—and soon Mikael realized that he didn’t want to. Crossing rivers, battling illness and injury, and struggling through some of the toughest terrain on the planet, the team and the dog walked, kayaked, cycled, and climbed together toward the finish line, where Mikael decided he would save the dog, now named Arthur, and bring him back to his family in Sweden, whatever it took. Illustrated with candid photographs, Arthur provides a testament to the amazing bond between dogs and people.

The epic true story of an extreme athlete, a stray dog, and how they found each other—now a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Mark Walhberg and Simu Liu.

Author: Mikael Lindnord
Published: September 2018
Pages: 288
Language: Available in many languages

Website: lindnord.se

Bump, Bike & Baby

by Moire O’Sullivan

In Bump, Bike & Baby, Moire O’Sullivan charts her journey from happy, carefree mountain runner to reluctant, stay-at-home mother of two. With her sights set on winning Ireland’s National Adventure Racing Series, she manages to maintain her post-natal sanity, and slowly learns to become a loving and occasionally functioning mum.

Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year

Author: Moire O’Sullivan
Published: March 2018
Pages: 306
Language: English

Corrida de Aventura: A natureza é nosso desafio

by Caco Fonseca

Um atleta sempre tenta vencer seus próprios limites em competições. São necessários treinos exaustivos, perseverança e foco para qualquer modalidade praticada. Mas para as conhecidas corridas de aventura, a equipe precisa de muito mais, não apenas para vencer, mas para sobreviver. Organização, tolerância, ajuda mútua, resistência física e mental, tudo para vencer os desafios que o corpo e a natureza impõem. Caco Fonseca, com sua longa experiência em corridas de aventura, conta nesta obra as dificuldades e alegrias de 12 das diversas provas que já participou. Com relatos sobre os diversos obstáculos superados nas modalidades de canoagem, escalada, corrida e mountain bike, o livro Corrida de aventura – A natureza é nosso desafio vai tirar seu fôlego!

An athlete always tries to overcome their own limits in competitions. Exhaustive training, perseverance and focus are required for any discipline practiced. But, for the well-known adventure races, the team needs much more, not just to win, but to survive. Organisation, tolerance, mutual help, physical and mental resistance, everything to overcome the challenges that the body and nature impose. Caco Fonseca, with his long experience in adventure racing, tells in this book of the difficulties and joys of 12 of the different races he has participated in. With stories about the various challenges he and his team have overcome in canoeing, climbing, running and mountain biking, the book ‘Adventure Racing – Nature is our challenge’ will take your breath away!

Author: Caco Fonseca
Published: April 2017
Pages: 216
Language: Portuguese
Published by Editora Labrador (with links for purchase sites)

Checkpoint 25

by Jim Robinson

Adventure racing was born in New Zealand just over 25 years ago. This book spans the full journey, starting with the influence of the iconic Alpine Iron Man and the mighty Coast to Coast. All the great adventure races are here: Grand Traverse, Raid Gauloises, Southern Traverse, Eco-Challenge, Adventure Racing World Championships, Primal Quest, GODZone and many more. So are the leading names, and there’s exploration into the fun and importance of New Zealand’s local races. So leap in.

Jim Robinson is a journalist and has reported widely on cycling, multisport, trail running and many other topics, gaining a Canon Media Award in 2011 and a Qantas Media Award in 2008.  Robinson’s own sport has seen more than 30 years of enthusiasm for running, road cycling and mountain biking. In the mid-2000s, he learned how to paddle, took up multisport and still races.

Author: Jim Robinson
Published: 2016
Pages: 167
Language: English

Nathan Fa’ave: Adventurer at heart

by Nathan Fa’ave

New Zealander Nathan Fa’avae is a world champion adventure racer, considered by many to be the best in the history of the sport. In Adventurer at Heart he shares his life story, and provides a compelling and unique insight into this remarkable pursuit.

It takes a Tour de France cyclist about 90 hours of cycling, spread over three weeks with rest days, to complete the race. An adventure race, however, can take up to 160 hours of non-stop racing over as much as six days, with virtually no sleep or rest. To excel at this sport requires an elite level of skill in mountain running, mountain biking, kayaking, rafting and navigation but, above all, an almost superhuman capacity to endure suffering and pain.

Part-Samoan, Nathan was raised in Nelson, and it was as a wayward adolescent that he discovered outdoor adventure. Since then he has never looked back, and has been a full-time adventurer working as an outdoor educator, the owner of multiple adventure-based businesses, and a professional athlete. Nathan’s career has taken him all over the world, and he has raced in the deserts of Africa, Mexico and the Emirates, the plains of Tibet and China, and the peaks and valleys of Nepal, Ecuador, Brazil, Patagonia, Russia, the European Alps, and New Zealand.

Adventurer at Heart is a story of courage and perseverance, and of overcoming tremendous challenges. Nathan Fa’avae is an outstanding New Zealander, and this book is an inspiring account of what it takes to become a world champion.

Author: Nathan Fa’ave
Published: November 2015
Pages: 445
Language: English

Website: www.nathanfaave.nz

Rusch to Glory: Adventure, Risk & Triumph on the Path Less Traveled

by Rebecca Rusch

Rebecca Rusch is one of the great endurance athletes of our time. Known today as the Queen of Pain for her perseverance as a relentlessly fast runner, paddler, and mountain bike racer, Rusch was a normal kid from Chicago who abandoned a predictable life for one of adventure. In her new book Rusch to Glory: Adventure, Risk & Triumph on the Path Less Traveled, Rusch weaves her fascinating life’s story among the exotic locales and extreme conditions that forged an extraordinary athlete from ordinary roots.

Rusch has run the gauntlet of endurance sports over her career as a professional athlete– climbing, adventure racing, whitewater rafting, cross-country skiing, and mountain biking–racking up world championships along the way. But while she might seem like just another superhuman playing out a fistful of aces, her empowering story proves that anyone can rise above self-doubt and find their true potential.

First turning heads with her rock climbing and paddling skills, Rusch soon found herself spearheading adventure racing teams like Mark Burnett’s Eco-Challenge series. As she fought her way through the jungles of Borneo, raced camels across Morocco, threaded the rugged Tian Shan mountains, and river-boarded the Grand Canyon in the dead of winter, she was forced to stare down her own demons. Through it all, Rusch continually redefined her limits, pushing deep into the pain cave and emerging ready for the next great challenge.

At age 38, Rusch faced a tough decision: retire or reinvent herself yet again. Determined to go for broke, she shifted her focus to endurance mountain bike racing and rode straight into the record books at a moment when most athletes walk away. Rusch to Glory is more than an epic story of adventure; it is a testament to the rewards of hard work, determination, and resilience on the long road to personal and professional triumph.

Author: Rebecca Rusch with Selene Yeager
Published: October 2014
Pages: 256
Language: English

Website: rebeccarusch.com

Lucky Legs. What I’ve learned about winning and losing

by Steve Gurney

Winning a record-setting nine Coast to Coasts: running, kayaking and biking the length of New Zealand,; competing in the world mountain bike champs; adventure tacing in far-flung coungries, through jungles, up mountains and across deserts- you’d think Steve Gurney was a naturally gifted athlete. But in fact he was always last in school races.
So how did he become the winningest man in NZ multisport? What drove a boy with lucky legs-“so scrawny, lucky they dn’t snap off and poke up my bum!”- to perform so highly, at the limits of endurance, for all those years? And how did he become so innovative, survive a near-death experience after getting leptospirosis, deal with depression, reinvent himself and come to terms with who he is today?

Full of great yarns, “Lucky Legs” is also a brilliant guide to winning -and sometimes losing. Steve is so determined to win that he’s searched everywhere for advantages, learnt new techniques, trained harder and more thoroughly invented new equipment, and cunningly outmanoevred the competition on race days. Here he generously shares his strategies for success that can be used by anyone, in any field-be it sport or business.

Authors: Steve Gurney
Published: January 2008
Pages: 335
Language: English

Website: stevegurney.co.nz

The Thrill of Victory, The Agony of My Feet: Tales from the World of Adventure Racing

by Neil Jamison, Maureen Moslow-Benway and Nic Stover

Adventure racing is an exciting and fast-growing sport that combines nonstop, action-packed challenges such as trail running, mountain biking, orienteering, rock climbing, trekking, whitewater swimming, and paddling in some of the world’s most beautiful—and most challenging— places. Races last from just a few hours to two weeks, and are filled with passion, drama, sleep-deprivation, hallucinations, blisters, cramps, exhaustion—and inevitably great stories.  

The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of My Feet contains over thirty first-person adventure racing stories that will take you from the leech-infested jungles of Borneo to the snow-capped peaks of Tibet to races near you.  You will be entertained and inspired as you read how athletes—from beginner to expert—overcame enormous odds, physical limitations, raging storms, equipment failure, personal fears, and in one case, even the tragic death of a competitor. These stories are as close as you can get to adventure racing without getting your feet wet.

Neal Jamison is the author of Running Through the Wall. Nic Stover and Maureen Moslow-Benway are adventure-racing competitors and journalists.

Authors: Neil Jamison, Maureen Moslow-Benway and Nic Stover
Published: April 2005
Pages: 328
Language: English

Runner’s World Guide to Adventure Racing: How to become a successful racer and adventure athlete

by Ian Adamson

Why should you take a pair of sandals, a dollar bill, and a car antenna to your next adventure race? You’ll find the answer to that question and many others in Runner’s World Guide to Adventure Racing. In this authoritative guide, Ian Adamson shares his insider secrets for training, racing, team building, conflict management, injury prevention, equipment repair, sleep management, and much more. Often referred to as the Michael Jordan of adventure racing, Adamson helps you navigate any type of adventure race, from short sprint race to full-length expedition.

In this guide, you’ll find . . . – Detailed training plans for recreational and competitive athletes
– Tips for running, hiking, biking, paddling, navigating, and climbing more efficiently
– A no-nonsense guide for what you need from the sporting goods store – and what you don’t
– Insider secrets for mending equipment and injuries while in the wilderness
– Adamson’s nine favorite foods to pack in your race bag

You’ll also read Adamson’s humorous, touching, and downright chilling stories of life on the adventure trail. From sprint races to full-length expeditions, Adamson’s expert advice will get you and your equipment to the finish line in one piece.

Author: Ian Adamson
Published: April 2004
Pages: 254
Language: English

Adventure Racing

by Jacques Marais and Lisa de Speville

Take the ultimate endurance challenge! Adventure Racing is the complete guide to the skills, equipment, strategies, navigation, and nutrition used by the top adventure racers around the globe.

Start with the right gear to perform your best—even in desert, rainforest, and subzero environments. Then learn the skills for trekking, mountain biking, canoeing and kayaking, and mountaineering.

Insights on team strategy, use of support crews, map reading, and magnetic deviation will keep you on track. And the right fuel for changing conditions, medical know-how, and survival skills will keep you in the race.

Profiles and stories from the top races and adventure racers provide a taste of the exciting challenges of the sport. They’ll inspire you to test yourself time and again in the most addictive team endurance sport on the planet.

Authors: Jacques Marais and Lisa de Speville
Published: January 2004 (originally in hardcover, then later softcover)
Pages: 160
Language: English

The Complete Guide to Adventure Racing

by Don Mann and Kara Schaad

Presents advice and instructions on the sport of adventure racing covering such topics as equipment, navigational tools, maintenance and repair of bikes, canoes and kayaks, and training.

Authors: Don Mann & Kara Schaad
Published: September 2001
Pages: 264
Language: English

Adventure Racing: Guide to Survival

by Derek Paterson

The world’s first training book for adventure racers and multisporters. The book is a distillation of the knowledge and experience of some of the world’s very best adventure racers, legends like John Howard, Ian Adamson, Steve Gurney, Robert Nagle, Cathy Sassin and Viv Prince.

Whether you’re starting out or looking to sharpen your performance, you’ll gain the benefit of the accumulated knowledge of the titans of the fastest growing team sport in the world today. Avoid the pitfalls, learn simple, practical tips to better health, nutrition and the selection of gear. Discover the history of the sport and find out how a Race Director chooses his course.

Author: Derek Paterson
Published: June 1999
Pages: 152
Language: English

Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth by Martin Dugard

A sports journalist relates his experiences covering the Raid Gauloises, a days-long adventure race through the wilderness, and describes his own participation in the 1995 race held in Patagonia

Author: Martin Dugard
Published: January 1998
Pages: 234
Language: English