Race Report: 2011 Baise Outdoor Quest (China) - Racing in China (1/4).

Well, what an adventure...

As seems to be the norm with Chinese Adventure Races I got an email in mid February asking if I was interested in joining a team competing in the Baise Outdoor Quest to be held in China during late April.  After a reasonable season of racing in Australia I was keen to step up and give an international adventure race a go and opportunities like this just don't come up every day. So what was it all about? Where was the race? Were the people friendly? Read on and find out...

The Place: LeYe, Guangxi, China
The race is based from a large rural town called LeYe (pronounced Loy-Yeah) in the Guangxi Province of southern China.  To give you some impression, I would describe the town to be somewhat similar in size to a town like Colac or Morwell. The city itself is a six hour bus trip (at breakneck speed with lots of horn beeping) from the nearest airport (Nanning) that is itself a hour and a half flight from Guangzhou (Canton), the major city in the south of China.

The main street of LeYe. We would be racing down here the next day.

The region is known for its vast, and STEEP, vegetated areas of limestone karst interspersed with small rural villages and agricultural production.  I would go a step further and say that anything even remotely flat enough was under agriculture, and even some of the steepest slopes imaginable were being logged (by hand). Having grown up in a farming family I was amazed at how intensive the agriculture was; everything was done by hand.

A farming valley on the outskirts of LeYe. Note the rice that is being bundled and dried by hand.

Having arrived in LeYe a few days before the race we had the opportunity to spend time walking the streets and taking in what I like to think was the 'real' China. A friend explained on our return that this particular area of China is rarely visited by even the Chinese, let alone westerners, which partly explained why we were treated almost like celebrities by the locals.  Everyone was very friendly and apart from some kids throwing rocks at us on the first night I felt very safe just wandering the streets.

The team with the local kids, who would stand out the front of shops we were in  and wait for us to come out.

The food involved rice, rice, and more rice usually served with a variety of stir-fried dishes based on chicken, duck, beef or pork. We found in the more rural regions 'meat' usually meant ribs or fat and it was very rare to see actual meat in dishes. This wasn't too much of a problem for carb loading but meant that getting in adequate protein to recover muscles between days was quite difficult.  Next time I'll definitely be taking a box of cereal or oats, if only to break up the rice...

The Race: Baise Outdoor Quest
The Baise Outdoor Quest is now in is 4th year and is organised by the Chinese Mountaineering Association on behalf of the Chinese General Administration for Sport. 20 teams from across the world are invited to compete in the event, that is contested over three days for a prize pool of about $US40,000.

Each year the course changes, but generally takes in many similar legs, particularly for the abseiling etc. This years course was as follows:

Day 1. 43k MTB, 23k Run, Abseil (~6hrs)

Day 2. 53k MTB, 9k Run, 20k Kayak (~9hrs)

Day 3. 9k Kayak, 20k MTB, 3k Orienteering, Ropes, 20k MTBO, 23k Run (~8hrs)

The terrain is insanely steep and each year's course seems to include at least 6000m of climb over the full distance. Where these organisers are concerned ‘run’ legs are known to include things like caves or endless stairs and MTB legs have included 3hr uphill sections etc. In general, they organise events not for the feint hearted.

Part of a run leg at last years BOQ. Can you see the red race bibs? (www.cnoutdoor.com)

The Team: #10 www.adventurejunkie.com.au

I was fortunate enough to have been invited to race with the experienced team previously known as 'Team Russia'. Sergey Kurov is the team captain and between himself and his wife Maria they have competed in many (if not most) of the different expedition and multi-stage adventure races across Europe. Maria has also previously captained the all female team 'Arena' and had high finishes in a number of expedition length races. Pavel is a highly experienced rogainer, having competed at numerous world championships competing more recently in expedition AR races.  I brought sprint AR experience, and bad jokes to the team, but the latter didn't help too much when Pavel and I were paddling together, as he doesn't speak any English.

The team (L to R): Pavel Syseov, Sergey Kurov, Maria Plyashechko, Aaron Dodd (me) and Jocelin.

Each team was also assigned a volunteer interpreter from the nearby Baise University to translate for us and ours was a lovely girl named 'Jocelin' or 'Lee Ching' in Cantonese. Her English was fantastic and she was always very enthusiastic to help us out. Having someone to run around each day and do small things for you makes a huge difference when you're backing up to race day after day and we are very appreciative of Jocelin for her help.

The road west from Leye. We raced through the tops of these hills on day 3.

The Opening Ceremony: Huge.
On the morning of the first day we had a 'grandly opening ceremony' in the main town square. It was at this point that it became apparent how big a deal this race was to the Chinese. I'm talking Chinese dragon dancers, swathes of Chinese media, traditional music, hot dog vans, lots of local dignitaries and the vice president of the Chinese Olympic Committee. It was quite a humbling experience actually and definitely pumped the nerves up a bit.  After a number of official speeches, Mark Thirwall from Chiru Endurance took an oath of fair play on behalf of the athletes and wowed the crowd with his Chinese. With that, the race was officially opened, fireworks launched, and we were straight into transition with 20 minutes to race start.

Us standing at the opening ceremony between Team Chiru Pro and Team Adidas TERREX (www.8264.net).

So, now that the formalities are out of the way, lets race!