With nothing but a compass and a map, these St. Louis adventure racers navigate foreign terrain the old-fashioned way

Does it make you feel like an Amazon afterward?” asked Aubrey Byron.

The other woman cocked her head. “Yeah.”

Byron, a freelance writer who grew up canoeing on the Black River, smiled. “That’s what I want.”

Adventure racing is more than canoeing. More than running in the woods. More than mountain biking. It’s a day of all three (and some races add whitewater rafting, high ropes, or rappelling off a water tower), plus the added challenge of navigating without GPS. Shortly before the race, you’re given a paper “topo map” of the terrain and the checkpoints you’ll have to find, using an old-fashioned compass and your brain.

Byron arm-twisted a friend, Olivia Cooper, to join her this past December, and they entered their team, The Monthly Cycle, in the Castlewood 8-Hour Adventure Race, run every year by the Alpine Shop. Race director Emily Korsch offered prep advice: “Because the sport is based on performing well in unpredictable terrain, literally anything can be molded into AR training: Carrying heavy grocery bags to the far end of a parking lot. Carrying your kids in a backpack for a hike.” Granted, they’d also have to practice “the nitty-gritty of AR: climbing hills, running in wet shoes, carrying your bike over obstacles.” 

Korsch says “either running or biking to work is a great way to sneak extra training time into a weekday.” If you just groaned at the thought, she suggests leaving your car at work one evening, biking home, biking in the next day, driving home. “Plus you have to carry a pack with your work clothes, shower supplies, and computer, so you are naturally training for carrying a pack with mandatory AR gear”—which includes first-aid supplies, a headlamp, whistle, emergency blanket, puffer jacket, and so on. 

“Most of it’s for your safety,” Byron concedes, “but you get dropped points if you don’t have these things.” You also have to schlep your mountain bike in your canoe, she adds, which is “awkward, and there are balance considerations.” Forget fancy rope knots; she and Cooper used zip ties and carried a pocketknife.

Unlike the veterans who ran at top speed straight into dense woods, The Monthly Cycle duo were hiking and laughing—but Byron does wish they’d trained a little harder, especially for steep hills. Her most useful tip? “Having snacks, honestly. I thought maybe there’d be a pause between disciplines. We ended up eating in the canoe, stuffing in granola bars.” 

She felt good about the biggest challenge, though: orienteering. “We went to Greensfelder ahead of time and just tried to know where we were on the trail. Then we said, ‘Let’s see if we can get to this creek.’” Then they learned that the St. Louis Orienteering Club offers more structured practice sessions and lessons, plus maps to permanent courses at Carondelet Park and Rockwoods Reservation.

Now, Byron and Cooper are hooked.

“It’s like a triathlon in the woods,”Byron says, “and I just always want to be in the woods. Plus it’s five straight hours of activity—with a lot of teamwork, especially three hours in when you haven’t eaten—and you’re navigating, self-reliant. It just feels good.”

Kind of…Amazonian.

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