Coree Aussem-Woltering and his teammates paddled downriver on Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu. They were one of 66 teams from 30 countries competing in last year’s World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji. On day one, the going was already difficult as teams got into their camakaus, or indigenous-style outrigger canoes. Two camakaus capsized in the river. Ahead lay an open-ocean crossing, patrolled by sharks. Yet Aussem-Woltering’s boat made it safely to their first destination, Ovalau Island.
Aussem-Woltering is an ultrarunner by training. On this day, however, he had to apply his more recently-acquired paddling knowledge, part of an expanded skill set he learned en route to competing in Eco-Challenge: Fiji. Hosted by Bear Grylls and released in the US on Amazon Prime on 14 August, the show is a reboot of the successful TV series from 1995 to 2002.
There would be a historic change this time. Aussem-Woltering was part of Team Onyx, the first all-Black team to compete in an endurance race on the global stage.
“For us to be the first five people to do this is pretty exciting,” Aussem-Woltering says in a phone interview. “We want to show the world there are people of color out there who like to be doing active sports that have been historically white-dominated.”
“The other great thing,” he says, is that there are two team members from the LGBTQ+ community, including himself. “One of my goals, as well,” he says, is to show that there are “also gay people who are extremely active, who love the outdoors, and that this is something you can do.”
Aussem-Woltering’s horizons have continuously expanded since his days growing up in Ottawa, Illinois, where he now lives with his husband, Tom. The couple both enjoys endurance sports. Tom is a skydiver, while Coree runs professionally for The North Face and has completed 50km, 50 mile and even 100-mile races. Earlier this year, he set a record for the fastest-known time on the 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin.
Although Aussem-Woltering twice qualified for the half Ironman championship round while in college, he said that as recently as six years ago, he had not run a marathon.
“I thought even a marathon was just a really long distance,” he says. “I never understood why anyone would want to run one.”
That summer, however, after graduating from university, he moved to Colorado, where he began hanging out with a group of trail runners. One of them asked if Aussem-Woltering would pace him through an ultramarathon called the Leadville Trail 100. Aussem-Woltering recalled asking what the “100” referred to.
“He said, ‘100 miles,’” Aussem-Woltering remembers. “I asked, why would anyone ever do that?”
Yet he accepted the request, with unexpected results.
“I fell in love with trail running,” Aussem-Woltering says. “Then, the direction I wanted was to kind of go longer. I did my first marathon, my first 50k, 50-miler, 100-miler. Then I ended up at Eco-Challenge.”
However, he notes, “When I said yes, I realized I did not actually know how to do many of the sports in the Eco-Challenge. I had a long road ahead of me.”
Different sections of the course required different disciplines. Teams would row across the ocean, mountaineer over rugged ridges, cycle along trails and stand-up paddleboard on the river. They needed to navigate terrain ranging from seemingly impassable jungles to gorges that quickly flooded in a storm.
Last June, Aussem-Woltering says, “I started to put running on the back burner. I started rock-climbing a lot more, I started paddling on the water, I took a first aid/CPR course. I started learning about jungle navigation, ocean navigation, all these different things I would be doing.”
Of course, he points out, practicing these activities at home is far different from doing them at all hours of the day in adverse conditions, such as paddling on the open ocean.
Later that summer, he traveled to California to meet his teammates for the first time. Team Onyx consisted of Aussem-Woltering, Clifton Lyles, Samantha Scipio, Chriss Smith and Mikayla Lyles. They trained over a three-day weekend, and would not reunite until the Eco-Challenge began in September.
For Aussem-Woltering, the reunion happened later than expected. He missed his connecting flight in San Francisco and got to Fiji a day behind his teammates. It was his first time there.
“Just getting there was hard enough,” he says. “It’s on the opposite side of the world,” a 17-hour time difference from Chicago.
Day one began on Viti Levu, with teams rowing outrigger canoes first on a river paddle, then across the open ocean to Ovalau. From there they made a circuit of a challenging mountain trail before returning to the ocean and the journey back.
Although Team Onyx fell behind on the leaderboard, its members were up for the challenge. Aussem-Woltering even made a fashion statement by wearing a Speedo, bringing one for each day of the race.
The first day reflected the pitfalls for participants. An elite squad from New Zealand was among the teams to experience a capsized canoe. Meanwhile, a top-contending American team saw one of its members become seriously ill after heat exposure. If one team member dropped out, the entire team was disqualified, and cutoff times kept the pressure on everyone.
Throughout the race, the people of Fiji encouraged the competitors, something that Aussem-Woltering remembered.
“Fijians are known for their hospitality,” Aussem-Woltering says. “I would definitely [say] that is the case. They’re some of the nicest people on the planet. Multiple times we would be up running through the mountains in the middle of the night. Villagers would be out, they’d sing and dance, cheer you on. It was a cool thing.”
“I guess you really have to be mentally prepared for it,” he says. “You need to figure out what your ‘why’ is. Why are you doing this? What’s going to keep you going when your body doesn’t really know what it’s doing any more, when your mind is tired?”
Since coming back from Fiji, Aussem-Woltering challenged his mind and body in new ways when he established the fastest-known time for a separate challenge – the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin.
The Ice Age Trail was “not something I think I would have done yet had I not done the World’s Toughest Race last year,” Aussem-Woltering says, “just because … I did not have any experience with a multiple-day event.”
With Fiji now on his resume, Aussem-Woltering says, “I got up and ran – 12-hour days, 20, 24-hour days, 20-minute naps.”
He says he is “trying to figure out what the next activity will be. Because of Covid-19, I don’t think there will be very much international travel for a while still. I’ll probably just be racing, doing stuff locally, supporting local race directors, building the local running community.”
The long-distance expert is also thinking long-term.
“It’s funny, because when I started ultrarunning, I had no idea I’d ever be racing an Eco-Challenge,” Aussem-Woltering says. “It’s extremely important for me to be inspiring younger generations to be active, try something new. Maybe there are opportunities they haven’t seen on TV before.
“The African-American community has so many physical issues,” he says. “High blood pressure, diabetes, maybe not the best diet. I want to encourage people to get out, be active. It doesn’t have to be an Eco-Challenge. If you want to run, show up at a local 5k. Go explore a trail by your home. Go out, be active, and hopefully enjoy it.”
For all audiences who tune in to Eco-Challenge: Fiji, Aussem-Woltering says, “I hope people enjoy the stories being told. In a time of a lot of political and racial unrest in our country, I think it will be a really good story to be told … They are human stories, about people who do not maybe look like you. It’s a really awesome thing. I think it will go over well. I hope it does.”