Racers see action in Fulung

At nine in the morning Sunday the sun had already been baking the white cliffs of Taiwan's northeast coast for hours. Standing at the edge of a 15m precipice overlooking Longdong's roiling sea, Lin Siang (林祥) and Huang Jhih Ming (黃志銘) clipped themselves onto single black cords. Before they turned to jump, I wanted to know whether they were scared.

"No way!" Lin said. Huang, who had only laughed, was already dangling upside down over the chasm, pulling himself arm-over-arm across the 20m Tyrolean traverse.

The two 26-year-old members of team Shou-Mont Great Guy had already been racing for two hours in the 43km-long Asia Miles Action Asia Challenge adventure race, near Fulung, Taipei County. The duo were the first Taiwanese team to cross the finish line Sunday and paced fourth in the competition.

The last Action Asia adventure race to be held in Taiwan was in 2003, but sponsors have already signed to bring the race back in April next year, according to organizer Michael Maddess.

Adventure races like Sunday's combine several outdoor disciplines into a race that can last days. With eighty teams of two competitors each, the Asia Miles Action Asia Challenge is the biggest adventure race in Asia, but it's also relatively short. Competitors spend between four and nine hours running, swimming, biking, kayaking, rappelling and traversing. By all accounts, the rope sections were the strong point of Sunday's competition.

Asian adventure racing is dominated by expatriates, especially those from Hong Kong. Specifically, three expat teams continually swap the top three spots between them: Protrek, Power Bar, and New Balance Power Bar.

It was team Protrek that finally broke the ribbon in Sunday's race. Power Bar had picked up a lead during the kayaking section, but when it was time to get out of the boats and onto mountain bikes, Protrek pulled ahead.

The nail in the coffin was when Macau-based Portuguese Henrique Galvao of team Power Bar, suffering the effects of the oppressive heat while jogging through "a jungle" with his bike on his shoulder, slammed head-on into a low-hanging branch, cutting open his face.

Galvao still managed to throw his bike into an inner tube, swim across a river with it, climb a net from Fulung Beach to the famous bridge to nowhere, slide down a rope back into the river, wade to shore, and run to the finish line to come in third place.

Shortly after finishing, he nearly collapsed as he fielded questions from the press. "I just want to go lie down," he said, "and then go party."

"This was our worst performance ever," his British partner, Adrian King, said later.

There were other crises as well. Lounging in the shade after the race, Huang of Shou-Mont Great Guy described the hardest part of the race.

"The kayaking," he said, grinning. "We almost got in a fight when we were in the kayak because we didn't have a chance to practice -- ever. We tried to row like this," he said and then demonstrated his flawed technique. Sitting next to him, Lin burst out laughing. "We kept going around in circles!" Huang said.

Even without kayaking experience Shou-Mont Great Guy was the only local team to place in the top 20 percent.

This had much to do with the fact that many local teams, which made up more than half the roster, have little or no kayaking experience. While Taiwanese teams excel at running, biking, and the rope sections, sports that involve potential immersion in salt water simply haven't caught on in Taiwan.