Articles
Adventure Racing World Championship comes to South Africa in October 2023
This year, South Africa's Expedition Africa, an expedition-length adventure race, is host of the 2023 Adventure Racing World Championship. To celeb...
Dealing with calluses
Defending against trail grit and grass seeds by using AR Gaiters is good practice. Preparing your feet pre-event and keeping them in good condition...
Foot care for adventure racing, trail running and hiking
You’ve put in weeks of training and preparation ensuring that your legs will hold up to hour after hour on the bike and trekking up hills. You’ve worked your upper body, ensuring that you’ll have the strength for climbing, rope ascents and paddling. But now, 3hrs into the race, you’ve developed developed a niggling blister on your little toe and heel.
Our desert and ultra-running tips
We’ve compiled a bunch of tips to guide you in preparing for your first desert race or ultra.
Friction - avoiding chafing
Inner thighs. Butt. Nipples. Underarms. These are the common sites for the nastiest of nasty sporting afflictions – chafing. It results from the repetitive rub-rub-rubbing of skin against skin or skin against fabric and if you don’t deal with it when you first feel stinging then you’ll end up with a red and raw wound that will not only make every movement an excruciating experience but could end your race.
Pack it up - packing your backpack
Adventure racers are notorious for scrabbling in their backpacks as they pull everything out to locate a single item of gear – and commenting, “I’m sure it is in here somewhere!” What they haven’t realised is that their backpack is not a haystack and equipment need not be a needle.
Buying a backpack
We’ve learned a few lessons along the way from our own adventure racing and multi-day staged running adventures. As many of our AR Desert Gaiter customers participate in staged races; and the AR Adventure Gaiters wearers are into multi-day adventure races, we’ve compiled some backpack-buying advice for you.
Consequences of maceration
“Having severely macerated feet is not a badge of courage. It’s a sign that you could have made better earlier choices in foot care,” says foot-care guru, John Vonhof, author of ‘Fixing Your Feet’.
Buying trail shoes
Years ago, Lisa took her mom Liz to buy her first pair of trail shoes. Shortly there after, Lisa wrote this article around the most frequent questions that she gets asked about buying trail shoes like "Is there a ‘best shoe’?" and "What features should I look for?".
Dealing with maceration
Foot guru and author of ‘Fixing your Feet‘, John Vonhof, has worked on feet at the 55-mile aid station and the finish line at many a Western States 100 (and many others). He has seen many cases of foot maceration.