This Adventure Race Definitely Isn't for the Weak

When Doug Bock Clark set out with two pals in September to take part in the Adventure Racing Association's National Championships, an overnight adventure race held in West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest, the rules seemed fairly straightforward: Travel 120 miles and find as many of the 50 checkpoints as you could, before the timer on the 30-hour race ran out. The reality for Clark and his fellow competitors turned out to be even more stressful: The already arduous race was happening right as Hurricane Helene bore down on the area, adding further complications. Clark's timeline for the New York Times details what took place over the next 30 or so hours, with sleepless racers armed only with compasses, maps, and their wits. The course came complete with falling trees; "horrid" wet and frigid weather; and "thrilling, occasionally terrifying slip-and-slide descents" on muddy trails.

Perhaps one of the most humbling aspects of the race for Clark, who'd considered himself a decent navigator before this: finding himself disoriented and unaware of where he was at times. "To be lost strips you down to just you, in a world you no longer fully understand, and makes clear how fragile your senses of self and place really are," Clark writes. Still, it's an experience he wouldn't trade for the world, and only one that others into this kind of thing would understand. "When you're navigating well, you and the map and the world merge," he writes. "It's an immersion in oneself and nature, the interior and exterior worlds—harking back to when navigation was essential to humanity's survival as hunter-gatherers. Your mind attunes itself to magnetic north almost as much as your compass does." Read more here to see what happened to Clark's team after one of his friends was forced to drop out midway. (More adventure racing stories.)