Women are an ADD-vantage

Chatting to Carine, an AR friend, at AR Club last night, I enquired about her other team-mates for the Salomon UGE 220km this weekend in Harrismith. She said that she was racing with Sam Braid and two guys. I said something like, "Great, two girls". Carine replied that a certain someone had asked her, "Why are you disadvantaging your team by having two women?"

Since I know the certain someone, I truthfully know that his comment was said tongue-in-cheek and, I imagine, with a mischievious twinkle in his eye; AR teams with two female members are not the norm and thus worthy of comment.

Still, the point I'd like to make here is that women are a bonus to any team, especially for distance events. I even wrote an article for AR.co.za on this theme a few years ago.

Aside from being more consistent in pace and stronger over longer races - benefitting from their natural endurance - women also bring balance to their teams.

There's less internal rivalry with a female team-member present as the guys have less reason to run their team-mates into the ground in an attempt to prove their physical prowess. Members of mixed gender teams are more likely to help each other and to accept help offered to them.

Women also contribute emotional balance and they improve communication within the team.

Women keep an eye on their team-mates; they're more perceptive, picking up when something is wrong. They'll also be more likely to be encouraging and emotionally supportive; they'll also help you to get your jacket out your backpack and will gladly pass food from your pack's rear pockets.

And they'll probably pack a few extra clothing items - like gloves and beanies - just incase their team-mates forgot them.

At Outdoor Quest in Borneo in Oct 2004 (5-day, staged AR), all-male teams were allowed to enter and compete for the overall win. Kiwi legend Nathan Fa'avae stood up at the prize giving to express his displeasure about this race element. For him, adventure racing is just not adventure racing without the women in his teams. Excluding women from official categories means that women would start to be excluded from the sport; competitive teams would be prepared to race as testosterone-fuelled men-only teams for the purely physical advantage. When prize money is on the cards this is the understandable outcome.

Nathan's team finished second, to an all-male Kiwi team. But, a fantastic coup for Nathan was when his team broke the all-male team's winning streak, by winning a particularly difficult stage.

I really appreciated that Nathan was prepared to speak out to keep mixed gender teams as the only official category in AR, keeping women - and emotional balance and fairplay - in our sport.

[ASIDE] Women are not always easy to find so although a mixed-gender team is your objective, if you can't find a female team-mate to compliment your team, then it would be better to race with four guys than not to race at all.