25 Aug 2012 Extreme sports offer fun and challenges
by Donna Lampkin Stephens
Triathlons, trail runs, marathons, warrior runs — what exactly is the 501’s fascination with such extreme sporting events?
- Amy and Josh Routt of Conway were among the estimated 6,000 people who converged on Amity (Clark County) in May for Arkansas’s inaugural Warrior Dash — a 3.41-mile course featuring 12 obstacles “from hell.” They said there was a huge Conway showing for the event.
- Amy and a group of Conway women also recently completed a triathlon in Forrest City.
- Shannon Milam, race director for the Conway Kids Triathlon, also participated in the Warrior Dash and vowed it wouldn’t be her last such event. Now in its 15th year, the Conway Kids Triathlon has grown from 75 participants in its first year to a cap of 400.
- Wanda Eason of Conway was the race director for the inaugural Hoof it for Heifer 20K trail run atop Petit Jean Mountain in April, where 48 people, ranging in age from 24-71, ran the 12.4-mile race, which included 12 miles on the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Boy Scouts Trail. The course was described as “moderately difficult.”
“Trail running is different from road racing,” she said. “It is a challenging trail — rocks, boulders, whatever the trail is. Everybody finished, and that’s a little unusual.”
Eason, whose son, Greg, has participated in various extreme sports, said the attraction to such events is both mental and physical.
“They’re challenging themselves to see just exactly how much their body and mind can do,” she said. “It is most definitely an exercise in mental fortitude. It’s not just mindlessly running. On a trail run, they’re not sprinting the whole way — you have to do some walking along the way. They pace themselves.”
Shane Poland of Vilonia was the overall winner in 1:51.34 — “a superb time,” Eason said. Candace Fletcher of Conway was the first female in 2:20.18.
“Many of the runners loved the course and said they’d be back next year,” Eason said, adding that the 2013 event will be Saturday, April 13.
Milam said she thought the draw for such events as the Warrior Dash was the thrill of the unknown.
“It’s hard to do one of those races for time,” she said. “The challenge was just to get through one obstacle at a time.
“You don’t know what you’re about to face.”
Amy Routt agreed. There’s not a set lineup of obstacles for the Warrior Dash — they can differ with the race. The Amity race included a couple of walls to climb, a pond, a flame jump, a crawl under barbed wire and another over a big cargo net.
“[Amity] is kind of like the baby of the crazier ones,” Routt said. “You have an idea of what obstacles they have, but you don’t really know until you do it.
“Some people race it, but my husband and I just had fun with it. We walked and met people, and he helped me through the obstacles.”
Routt, 39, said although she is a runner, her husband, 40, is a mountain biker. She said they pretty much walked and jogged between the obstacles and didn’t worry about their time.
“It was like a date for us,” she said.
One thing they enjoyed, she said, was the variety of fitness levels represented. Participants can opt out and walk around the obstacle if they’re not racing for time.
Milam, 32, a member of the Conway Running Club, has done “every kind of race” — marathons, 100-mile bike rides, and she has signed up for her first triathlon this fall.
She said she started running only to combat the Freshman 15 when she enrolled at the University of Central Arkansas.
“I didn’t know anything about running,” she said. “Then in 2002 my best friend passed away from leukemia, and I came upon a run for charity, so I went from casually running to signing up for a marathon to raise money.”
This will be her fourth year as director of the Conway Kids Triathlon, which includes a swim, bike ride and run. The event has grown from 75 participants the first year to 348 in 2010. Last summer’s heat kept the numbers down from there, and at press time she said there were about 200 entered for 2012.
Over the years, she’s seen several families whose kids &ld
quo;thought it would be cool to do,” but they wound up enjoying the experience so much they now travel around the state competing in other kids triathlons.
“That’s our mission,” Milam said. “We hope to get kids involved in being physically active and make it a lifestyle change, to show it can be fun. A couple of our goals are to build self-esteem and self-confidence when they achieve a goal they didn’t think was possible.
“To watch their faces and see the determination and persistence is so awesome.”
The Routts have done adventure racing together, which, according to ozarkextreme.com, requires co-ed teams to navigate a variety of terrain — mountains, deserts, bogs, lakes, plains, oceans — by a variety of disciplines — running, biking, paddling, climbing, swimming, hiking.
“We did it for 18 hours one day,” Amy said.
She said they want to do longer events similar to the Warrior Dash, such as the Spartan Race, which can include more than 25 obstacles over 12-plus miles, and the Tough Mudder, 10-12-mile obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces.
“Some are 13 miles long, and they are tough,” she said.
The big question, it would seem, is why do such a thing?
“I think people are just looking for something new and fresh to do in their lives,” Routt said. “You get stuck in your routine, and it’s just fun to have something new to do, something new to challenge yourself, to take you to a different place.
“It’s always fun to challenge yourself in different ways.”
In fact, she said her husband wants to do a Zombie Run, where participants wear belts with flags, and zombies chase them over the course to try to steal the flags.
According to runforyourlives.com, “(T)his is one race where your legs giving out are the least of your problems.” It’s “one part 5K, one part obstacle course, one part escaping the clutches of zombies — and all parts awesome.”
Extreme, indeed.
