“I've put together about 35,000 calories, enough for seven days of food for me,” explains Kit Vreeland, exercise science professor and UVM’s Initiative for Rural Emergency Medical Services director. “It's a little under 30 pounds. Hopefully, I only have to carry five pounds of food at a time. There are gear bins at most transitions so that we can store food. We usually don't have to bring it all with us, but we also don’t know until we get there, so we'll see.”

Vreeland isn’t prepping for an emergency. She’s packing for the 2023 Adventure Racing World Championship. She and her four-person team, “Strong Machine,” are currently ranked 19th in the world, and they’re ready to take on the multi-day trekking, mountain biking, and kayaking challenge on South Africa’s Eastern Cape next week.

“They’ve told us they won't put us in the ocean,” says Vreeland - which eliminates the danger posed by great white sharks - leaving lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos and Cape buffalo on land. She’s also read up on the behavior of the ringhal, or spitting cobra, which can shoot venom in its victim's eyes from two meters away. “Safety is a significant concern for this race,” she says. But for Vreeland, it’s all part of the adventure.

“We're on foot. We're on a bike, on some kind of watercraft, and travel in the wilderness by map and compass. And as we're moving across these different modes of transportation, it's all terrains, weathers, temperatures, varied conditions,” she says. “Usually, the first night, we don't sleep at all. We push right through and then start trying to get two to three hours of sleep from there on.”

‘Adventure racing is my sport’

Vreeland got her start in the sport through the Green Mountain Adventure Racing Association’s 12-hour competition known as “The Bitter Pill.”

“I did it the first time, and it was the best day of my life,” says Vreeland. “For years, I was looking forward to this one day, this one race.” Then, she discovered the nationwide racing circuit and a crew of like-minded athletes. In September, Vreeland and her team took the women’s title at the 2023 U.S. Adventure Racing Association (USARA) National Championship held in Smugglers’ Notch, Vermont.

For Vreeland, adventure racing offers a unique opportunity to combine her exercise science, fitness training, and emergency response skills with the passion to push her limits. “It's just me, nature, and these people; our goal is perseverance. And there is also this internal drive to continue to push my perceived limits. I've had that my whole life,” she says.

This, too, shall pass

Gesturing with her hands as though wearing blinders, Vreeland describes one such limit: the pain cave. “We have to push through the pain cave - a very, very real place that is hard to be in,” she says. “It's this perceived limit - can I push through it?” Together, the team supports each other in these moments, reminding one another of the goal ahead, a particular strength of Strong Machine.

“We aim to do as best as possible while continuing to be friends and have fun because that's hard - you know you can get into some lows, but the highs and the lows, as in life, are temporary,” said Vreeland. “We have to be friends and continue to move forward.”

The scientist-athlete

As an exercise scientist and athletic trainer, Vreeland understands the biomechanics of endurance racing – from the cumulative effect of stress and forces on the body to the role of energy management, which helps her team to fine-tune performance continuously.

“The demands on the body are outrageous,” she says. “If you tank your glycogen stores, you're out of luck. If people aren’t fueling appropriately, and caring for their bodies, they will have injuries.” The team manages their calorie input in 30-minute intervals and mitigates cardiovascular stress by monitoring their heart rates and managing their energy systems in the aerobic threshold.

As the team’s first responder, Vreeland has dealt with hypothermia, severe dehydration, heat stress - and many nose bleeds. “We've had a lot of bike crashes. We did have somebody with a broken rib,” she recalls. “But we could continue.” That, in essence, is the strategy of team Strong Machine – the capacity to continue, push forward, and endure.

“I know that once I get to the other side of the finish line, I will be so proud of myself and the team," says Vreeland. "I am present in my body and grateful for the things it can do for me - I get this spiritual high of having moved through and with the pain and discomfort rather than quitting, stopping, or slowing down."

"It gets me excited for the next race.”