This story by Matt Fitzgerald first appeared in Triathlete Magazine in 1998.  Fitzgerald now edits the online magazine of the Adventure Racing Association

In May, Robert Nagle, 39, took a week's leave from his job as a researcher in molecular modeling and high-performance computing at Harvard University to visit the islands - the boggy, craggy, soggy, blustery, raw, desolate, straight-out-of-a-Sir-Walter-Scott-novel Outer Hebrides islands of   Scotland. There he passed three long days enjoying a variety of playful activities, including fell running and mountain biking over an endless series of precipitous, trackless islands and kayaking through high winds, choppy waves and confused tides in the North Atlantic Ocean - for a cumulative 150 human-powered kilometers. A couple of days later, he was back at work.

Vacations just aren't what they used to be, at least for some of us. If adventure travel is a growing trend, the trend-setters are the likes of Nagle, whose vacations always leave him needing a vacation, whether it be his 1995 trip to Utah, his 1996 voyage to New Zealand, or last year's visit to Australia, at each of which destinations he won multi-day adventure races [Eco-Challenge, Southern Traverse, and Eco-Challenge again, respectively] as captain of legendary (in certain circles) Team Eco-Internet.

Of all the crazy wilderness competitions Nagle has conquered, the Western Isles Challenge is among his favorites. He's now competed twice in its solo division, capturing second place each time. The race was created in 1994 by Ian Callaghan, a former big-deal London investment banker who orchestrated the original Chunnel financing before making a major career change and subsequently playing out the classic British escape fantasy of picking up stakes, moving to the Gaelic country, and opening a bed &
breakfast with his wife.

Inspired by the terrain, and with a mind toward creating an eccentric attraction for visitors, Callaghan developed the race concept
gradually in his mind over the period of a few years. Though "lung-power events have never been my forte," he says, and though he knew nothing about the nascent sport of adventure racing, he wound up somehow reinventing it nonetheless. "I'd always had it in my mind as a serious challenge," he says. "I didn't want it to be a glorified corporate weekend event. The idea started out as a bike race, but I quickly figured out that with a good bike and a following wind they could do the whole of the Western Isles in about five hours. So then I started to factor in running and canoeing."

The first Challenge was held in 1994. Like existing adventure races such as the Raid Gauloises, it was a multi-day team event (the solo option was incorporated in '96) involving navigation and a variety of endurance disciplines, but in other ways it was, and remains, unique. For example, whereas in the Raid, checkpoints are revealed to racers on-site just hours before the start of the competition, in Callaghan's race, Nagle explains, "The checkpoints are posted on a website a month beforehand. You get a couple of weeks to plan and post back the route that you're going to take, which means I've got to sit down at my kitchen table in Boston and figure out what the best route is. That's a hard exercise in map reading and it's quite fun to get there and see what you've put in store for yourself."

Other elements that make the Challenge unusual are its relay format, the fact that the islands are almost entirely void of trails, and the so-called Northings Rule. In the team category, a canoe expert, two fell (off-trail) runners, and a cycling specialist come together and trade legs according to their predetermined plan, while a vitally-important support crew continually races ahead to set up transitions. While it's obvious when canoeing is in order, on the islands themselves teams may transition from bike to foot or foot to bike wherever they please either between or at checkpoints, the one restriction being that at least 80 of the race's 160 Northward longitudinal kilometers must be traversed on foot. "It's really a chess game," says Nagle, "each move you make is subject to dozens of considerations about the route, the use of your resources and what your opposition are doing."

Though the solo competition involves fewer route options, superior strategy and support crewing (Nagle enjoyed the seasoned help of his wife, Kristin) are still critical to success. But it doesn't hurt to be an endurance phenom, either, and Nagle is certainly that. Equally talented as an ultra-distance cyclist, paddler, and runner, the Irish-born and -raised Nagle has twice won New Hampshire's Sea to Summit Triathlon, which involves those three disciplines, and represented Ireland at the '94 ITU World Duathlon Championships. He trained 35-40 hours a week in the relevant sports in preparation for the Challenge, his running regimen involving high-speed downhill off-trail running with his eyes closed!

Day 1 began on the Isle of Barra at 6 am following a short night of dormitory-style sleep in a high school gym. The solo division quickly became a two-man battle between Nagle and British Quadrathlon Champion, Marc Laithwaite. "For the most we were head-to-head and we could see each other running over hills, or biking along a particular section, or kayaking," says Nagle. Laithwaite finished the day in 9 hours 7 minutes, 51 minutes ahead of Nagle, then broke the race open the following day when Nagle elected to run a section he should have biked. Despite a determined effort on the final day, when he recorded the fastest split, Nagle was "bridesmaid" again when he crossed the finish line at the Butt of Lewis Lighthouse on the Island of Harris.

That night, all night, the event's 200-something participants, their retinues, the event staff, and scores of locals drank whiskey and beer, danced the Ceilidh, and "got pretty unrepressed," says Nagle with a reminiscent chortle.

The next morning, they did laundry.