Michael Maddess, 39, quit his secure and highly paid job in Vancouver nearly 15 years ago to work in Hong Kong, where he was stopping over for two days. He is now the owner, race director and course designer of the PowerBar Action Sprint Adventure Race Series
I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but it seems that most adventure racers in Asia come from Hong Kong. It might have something to do with the fast pace and high stress levels of the city that we live in, that we have to get out and do something at the weekends.
The people work very hard Monday to Friday; then come the weekends and they just want to break loose and become a weekend warrior. Hong Kong is probably the best city in Asia to train for adventure races. There's no other major city in Asia where, within a 10 or 15-minute cab ride, you can be in the middle of a mountain trail, biking or going up a river gorge. We have an ideal adventure training playground right on our doorstep.
Since I was six or seven years old, I was running cross-countries in elementary school. I probably skied more than 1,000 days in the mountains in Vancouver and Whistler between the age of six and my 20s. Every day after school I would go to the bus stop at 3.30 with my skies and ski boots and go night-skiing in Vancouver till about nine o'clock.
I went by myself because usually my friends couldn't keep up with me. I was always the guy who would jump off the cliff and ski through the trees - everyone thought I was mad.
My parents encouraged me to play sports, probably because I was born with a very high metabolic rate. And, like a lot of parents, maybe they couldn't handle their children running around the house, so they sent them out to do something to try to wear them out.