At OAR, we trained thousands of athletes and helped grow the sport of extreme ultra-distance racing. By the year 2000 OAR had become a burgeoning business, and adventure racing was starting to gain mainstream appeal in the United States.
But we had a competitor in Hollywood producer Mark Burnett (who went on to fame and riches with the TV show Survivor and many others). Mark saw money to be made in the burgeoning sport of adventure racing and organized a televised race called the Eco-Challenge. But many of the serious competitors considered the Eco-Challenge to be a camping trip compared to the Beast of the East.
Mark started calling me all the time. He said, “Don, you’re the hamburger stand down the street that everybody likes going to, but let’s face it, I’m the McDonald’s. Let’s join forces. If anybody wants to do an Eco-Challenge they’ll have to qualify by doing the Beast first.”
The idea appealed to me, but there were two problems. One, I was in it for the love of the sport, and he was in it to make money. And two, he wanted a big cut in my sponsorship money and race fees, which meant that I would lose control of my own events.
Meanwhile, Odyssey Adventure Racing was planning the first world championship, Beast Alaska. Soon, I started getting phone calls from some of the world’s greatest adventure racers. It turned out that Mark had contacted many of the athletes who had registered for the Beast Alaska and were listed on OAR’s Web site and offered them free airfare and sponsorship if they did the Eco-Challenge instead.
One of the most accomplished women in the sport, Jane Hall, called me from New Zealand in tears. She said, “Don, I’m so sorry, but I’m just a poor athlete and had to accept Mark’s offer.”
My next call was from world-champion adventure racer Ian Adamson. He also told me he had received a call from Mark and was dropping out of the Beast Alaska to race in the Eco-Challenge.
Over the next couple of weeks, we lost many of our competitors and a potential broadcast deal with the USA Network. They signed with Mark Burnett instead.
In 1998, I received a call from the U.S. Navy Recruiting Command. They said, “Hey, Don, the Marines have the Marine Corps Marathon. The Army has the Army Ten-Miler. Do you have any ideas for the Navy? We need a way to recruit SEALs.”
I said, “I train guys who want to become SEALs all the time. I put them through two-day-hell weekend training. ”
A few weeks later, I sat down with the people from NRC, a group of lawyers, and some Hollywood producers and presented my plans for a televised forty-eight-hour event called the SEAL Adventure Challenge that would include running through mud and sand, PT drills, diving, and shooting.
They loved it.
I said, “Whatever you do, be careful. Because if Mark Burnett hears about this idea, he’ll steal it.”
Months later, Mark Burnett announced that he was developing a new TV show called Combat Missions, which was very similar to SEAL Adventure Challenge. Combat Missions ran for one season and disappeared.
Despite the challenges I faced in the business end of the sport, my love for extreme-distance adventure sports only grew stronger. It helped that I was training and competing with the world’s most elite adventure athletes.
In April of 2000, I competed with Team Odyssey in the tenth Raid Gauloises, in the Himalayas. Rounding out the team this time were the Crane brothers—Adrian and Dick—Terri Schneider, and Andrew Matulionis. Back in ’83 Dick and Adrian had trekked the length of the Himalayas (3,500 kilometers) in 101 days, carrying only ten pounds of gear, including a camera, one water container, and a pair of socks and one outfit each.
The rivalry between the brothers, who are also best friends, was intense. In 1985 Dick rode a bicycle up Mount Kilimanjaro (19,500 feet), thereby setting the world record for the highest altitude cycled. Adrian broke that record two years later when he bicycled up Chimborazo in Ecuador, approximately 20,500 feet.
Both Terri and Andrew were elite adventure racers. Terri was an Ironman champion, while Andrew was the Iditasport one-hundred-mile champion.
Sixty-nine teams took part in the tenth Raid Gauloises. After two days of acclimatizing to the high altitude of the Tibetan Plateau (average elevation: 14,800 feet), we started on foot with Mount Everest at our side, then completed 800 kilometers of horseback riding, mountain biking, and more trekking. By this point all of us in Team Odyssey were suffering from altitude sickness.
We’d also been warned before the race about possibly running into Maoist rebels who were fighting to overthrow the government of Nepal. During a fifty-mile trek/run section of the course that ended at the Nepalese border, I had to take a bathroom break and told my teammates to continue without me. So I set down my Kelty pack and trekking poles and ducked behind a tree.