You’ve heard from the rest of the team about the thrills of mountain biking, the crazy world of navigation, the macho smell of testosterone that surrounds those strict training regimes – the sexy side of adventure racing. Now an article about those poor wannabee-athletes that aren’t good enough to compete but know how to drive and can navigate – well, from a Shell road atlas at least - and can change a bike pedal under a canvas sheet in a driving Scottish hailstorm. Welcome to the wacky world of those sad individuals we all need but nobody really wants to be – the team assistant.

If the above is your impression of a team assistant hopefully this article will put you right and show you that they are, for the most part, an unsung breed of heroes without whom etc...... The job (and, yes, it does sometime feel like a job if you don’t get the appreciation you should from your team) is one that can be strenuous, hard work, tiring, stressful but, at the end of the day if your team performs well due in part to your efforts, very rewarding. The following are just a few of the things that a successful team assistant needs to do both before and during the race (for ease of remembering they all end in –ation – who says that team assistants are anoraks).

Preparation – The preparation starts well before the race. It is a good idea to sit down with each team member and go through their race kit so you know what they will use for each leg, i.e. will they use the rucksacks for the biking legs or will they use bum-bags, do they want one or two spare inner tubes packed in those bum-bags, what sort of race food do they prefer on each type of stage. It’s also important that you know what each member of the team expects from you at transitions i.e. do they need help with preparing their kit or are they happy to do it themselves, do they want you pack their rucksacks, what food and drinks they want, what kit they need for the next leg?

The better you know your team the easier this will get and after a number of races you will know what each member wants without having to be told. During the race you’ll need to remember all this (it helps to write notes) and to use the time the team is out on the stage to prepare as much as you can both for the transition and the next stage. This will include looking at the maps for the next section and passing on any information you can to the team during the transition period.

Anticipation – Once you’ve got to know your team and have been with them on a number of races you will start to know what they want before they ask for it. Just think what you would want at a certain point in a race. (It’s a huge help if you’ve raced yourself!) For example, it’s six hours into the race, the sun has set and it’s starting to get dark. What about preparing some hot food or having the kettle already boiling for when the turn up and ask for a cup of tea? In the X-Adventure races there is only 15 minutes allowed for transitions so there is very little time to wait for them to say what they want and then to prepare it – much better to have it ready for them when they arrive (a large thermos flask always full of boiling water is good for this). [Ed. They’ve changed the rules now so the leading teams get longer.]