Adventure Race World Championships Kick-off Tomorrow!

The Adventure Race World Championship officially gets underway on Saturday in in the Lochaber region of Scotland, a remote area along the countries West Coast. The race will run through June 2nd, as co-ed teams of four will run, bike, paddle, and climb their way through forests and valleys, over ridges and down rivers for the right to proclaim themselves World Champs.

You can get a full list of teams here. You’ll see it’s full of the usual suspects, with tops teams from all over the World showing up to compete. There are a few interesting storylines that will be fun to watch. For instance, Team Nike’s shadow has fallen across the AR landscape for a number of years, but with Ian Adamson retiring, and Richard Ussher forming his own new team, it’ll be interesting to see if Nike can maintain it’s dominance. Team Captain Mike Kloser is tough to beat though, and he’ll have his team ready to go. Speaking of Ussher, he’s put together a great team to compete as well, with AR legend Nathan Fa’avae returning to action. That was a short retirement Nathan! Richard himself is seen as one of the strongest young racers to come along in years, and his Balance Vector team will be one to watch.

Of course, there will be others to reckon with as well. Team Merrell/Wigwam, captained by Robyn Benincasa are always a threat. As are Salomon/Crested Butte, Team Feed the Machine, and wilsa hellyhansen.

With Primal Quest on the shelf for the year, and The Raid changing formats, this will be THE big race of the year. I can’t wait to see how it plays out, as the future of several teams will be on display over the coming week. I’ll bring updates once the race gets underway and we can get word on what’s happening on the course.

In the mean time gear heads can check out the equipment list here and learn more about the region of Scotland here.

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Kraig Becker

Kraig is an outdoor and adventure travel writer based in Nashville, TN. Over the course of his career, he has contributed to numerous online and print outlets, including Popular Mechanics, Gear Junkie, Outside Online, National Geographic, Digital Trends, Business Insider, TripSavvy, about.com, and of course The Adventure Blog.