Adventure racing

After a few years without easy access to a bike, in the last few weeks we’ve been doing tons of cycling - including our first 100k ride and a few shorter (30-40k) ones. We’ve been greatly enjoying it - so today we bought our very first ‘adult life’ bikes. We chose two ‘trekking bikes’ because we want to be doing both micro-adventures in the area (and, this summer, in the Dordogne) as well as a long-ish trip in the Loire valley.

The renewed enjoyment of cycling that we are experiencing also reminded me of a discipline I heard of a few years ago, that seemed interesting at the time but a bit too difficult to access - adventure racing. I was happy to find out that there are many shorter (2-6 hours) races held in Europe, which seem far more accessible for beginners than the more popular 3-10 days ones.
The concept is interesting because it nicely ties 3 disciplines that we enjoy - hiking/running, cycling and paddling - in a fun and exciting way. We don’t really have navigation skills at the moment, as the trails in our area are pretty well marked, but it is an interesting avenue to pursue - as I found out that doing trail running races and long hikes, as nice as it is, takes away a bit of the adventure part.
So - we’ll see what the future brings! The advantage is that we enjoy doing those activities in themselves, so it doesn’t require too big of an effort to include them on a more regular basis in our routines, to perhaps be ready for a race sometime next year..