Community School graduate Michael Tobin, 43, is back on top of the world, along with his Team Nike teammates at the 2007 Adventure Racing World Championships in Scotland.
Team Nike crossed the finish line at Fort William, Scotland about 6 a.m. Friday with a time of four days, 22 hours, seven minutes and 43 seconds. It was more than eight hours ahead of second-place Wilsa Helly Hansen (5 days, 6 hours, 27 minutes and 47 seconds).
Adventure racer Rebecca Rusch of Ketchum was on the Swedish Team Bjurfors that placed fifth of the original 49 starting teams with a time of five days, 20 hours and 38:27 minutes. Bjurfors and Helly Hansen were the only two teams that ran the entire competition (prologue and ful l course race) without a penalty.
Team Nike's Tobin along with Mike Kloser, Monique Merrill and Chris Forne battled constant rain and freezing temperatures through the 10-stage course to defend their world adventure racing title.
According to Rob Howard of SleepMonsters.com, team captain Kloser said, "Trekking was the hardest but through the week each stage seemed to get harder and harder. It was one tough course." Former world mountain biking champion Kloser, 47, of Vail had suffered a compound finger dislocation during a training run before the start of the Scotland race.
Tobin said he could hardly stay awake. "My eyes feel like they are glued shut," he told SleepMonsters.com. "Mona (Monique) is a great motivator for us all. She has a great laugh." Merrill is a natural foods store operator from Breckenridge, Colo. while Forne is a New Zealand orienteering champion.
A Boise resident and San Francisco native, Tobin grew up in Ketchum and won the Baldy Hill Climb six times. He is the son of another hill climbing enthusiast, the late Jim Tobin, once an owner of the Ketchum-based Scott USA.
Tobin's adventure racing experience dates back six years. He and Kloser were members of the Team Salomon/Eco-Internet team that won Mark Burnett's Eco-Challenge 2001 in New Zealand. Tobin is in his 17th year of professional multi-sport racing.
World competition started last Sunday with a 65-kilometer kayak around the Isle of Eigg and featured the following tests: a 140k mountain bike ride; swim and kayak around Loch Ness' Urqhart Bay; Nordic walking along the south shore of Loch Ness; canyoneering, a 17k portage around Loch Ericht; 45k trek in steep terrain near Glencoe; 25k mountain bike ride and, finally, a 15k trek to the summit of Great Britain's tallest peak, the 1,344m Ben Nevis.
Making the race more difficult were 36 consecutive hours of rain that started late Tuesday and continued through the halfway point of the 10-stage race. But the competitors were helped by the time of year—nearly 20 hours a day of visible daylight in Scotland.
Continuous rain forced a route change around the Monadliath Montains with the later teams trekking around on an old military road.
Because of late and delayed flights, Rusch, 38, needed 36 hours to even get from Idaho to Stockholm, Sweden before worlds started May 27. Then she had a 12-hour drive to Denmark, a 12-hour overnight ferry ride to England and a 12-hour drive up to Fort William, Scotland. And of course her luggage was delayed.
Rusch, a professional athlete/mountain bike racer and part-time Ketchum firefighter, was joined on Team Bjurfors by Staffan Wennerstad, a Swedish firefighter; Per Vestling, a forester from Falun, Sweden; and Mats Andersson, another Swede who has been in adventure racing for 12 years.
