By guest columnist, Elise Churchill, founder of Great Sport 

 

“You’ve also got to remember that we’re doing this day and night. Non-stop. If you want to rest or sleep, it’s in race time. There is no off-the-clock.”

2025 saw the growth of hybrid fitness, with the HYROX boom dominating local gyms and fitness conversations.

In 2026, a very different sport is growing:  Adventure Racing. Expanding in Wales and across the globe, Adventure Racing brings discovery, duration and tactical depth, testing elements that modern sport often leaves out.

Adventure Racing is a hybrid team sport involving navigation over an unmarked wilderness course, with races extending anywhere from two hours up to ten days in length.

Teams of four, including at least one female athlete, move via three modes of transport, typically trail running, mountain biking and kayaking or rafting. Athletes must be multi-skilled, using strategy, fitness and survival skills to cross the finish line.

Events conceal the race location until 24 hours before the start, giving teams limited time to plan. A five-day race itinerary, route options and sleep schedule are drafted in advance. Most elite teams sleep around two hours per night. The race becomes not just a test of endurance, but of judgement, planning and resilience.

From Mid-Wales to World Championships

Gary Davis, a 48-year-old adventure racer from a farm in Mid Wales, now in Cardiff, races internationally and aims to grow Adventure Racing’s grassroots programme.

“At the highest level, you’ve got to navigate yourself as a unit from checkpoint to checkpoint until you find them all,” Davis explains.

“And the fastest team wins. And all that is done generally in the wilderness.”

Davis grew up on a farm in Mid-West Wales until he was 18. As the first person in his family to attend university, he moved to Cardiff to study engineering. Rugby and football shaped his early sporting life, and he played for Llandaff North rugby into his mid-twenties before a knee injury led him to look elsewhere.

In 2006, he entered a British Heart Foundation charity challenge advertised through his company. After the race, Davis and his teammates wanted to repeat that style of event.

A few months later, Davis and a colleague entered their first eight-hour adventure race in the Wye Valley and placed fifth. This race had a competitive field with teams using the event to train for the Adventure Racing World Championships in Scotland.

Training for adventure racing requires planning and prioritisation. Davis now trains across multiple disciplines each week to prepare for whatever a race may demand.

He has joined mountain biking, orienteering, fell running and kayaking clubs across Cardiff. Athletes often move between disciplines, becoming a thread connecting Cardiff and South Wales’ sporting landscape.

With training across multiple clubs and disciplines, Davis and his team – Team Wilderness UK – qualified for the 2025 Adventure Racing World Championship in British Columbia, Canada. The race featured 56 teams from 24 nations and extended over nearly a week of continuous racing, covering more than 800 km.

World Championship Demands

Whilst moving for hundreds of hours presents a physical challenge, Davis explains that sleep strategy can determine the outcome of a race.

In Canada, sleep was scarce. Team Wilderness UK planned for no sleep on the first night, followed by two or three hours on subsequent nights, allowing flexibility across the projected 116-hour race.

However, designated ‘dark zones’ – periods when teams were unable to travel at night due to safety restrictions – disrupted their schedule. An unscheduled transition forced them to abandon their structured sleep plan and rest only when absolutely necessary.

The effects snowballed. Fatigue slowed navigation and reduced decision-making sharpness. Gary recalls one moment of disorientation:

“I remember waking up on the bike thinking, where the hell are my teammates?” says Davis.

“I could see lights in the far distance. I thought, what am I doing? Which race am I in? Who am I racing with?

“There’s a level of sleep deprivation that has a massive impact on your state of mind.”

Despite the mental and physical testing, Adventure Racing courses provide a deep immersion into natural spaces. Competitors are screen-free, within the depths of history and nature. Known for their remoteness from civilisation, athletes are also adventurers and survivors in places that many do not see.

“You’re really seeing the world from a perspective where nobody does that… in another event in Costa Rica, we traversed the country north-south full length and east-west full length. And we touched the borders, the north and the south. We got to see tribal lands that the public doesn’t get to see.”

The Future of Adventure Racing

Currently, Adventure Racing does not have an established national governing body in the UK, in contrast to New Zealand athletes where the sport is embedded in the school system.

This is a work in progress for Davis, the non-executive director of the Adventure Racing World Series, and the committee who are aiming to create an association, with clearer pathways and greater exposure to the sport.

Wales already has the club networks, terrain and outdoor culture required to support the sport’s development at grassroots level. The sport has grown in the last few years, with increasing participation and viewership.

If formal pathways are established, Wales is well positioned to become a leading hub for Adventure Racing within the UK

It brings strategic challenges, tough terrain and great discovery: a true hybrid test.

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