What's Your Adventure Personality Type? Artisan, Rational, Guardian, or Idealist?

By Steve Graepel; Photographs from top courtesy Steve Graepel, Andrew Skurka, Rebecca Rusch, Michael Tobin

The zodiac, your horoscope, tea leaves...people have been trying to make sense of human attributes since the dawn of dirt. Corporations pay big money to navigate these muddied waters and will train employees to better understand personality types to harness them for productivity. I recently revisited one such matrix, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which hypothesizes that it’s possible to distill human characteristics into 16 personality types. David Keirsey later mapped these types into four general temperaments: the Artisan, Rational, Guardian and Idealist.

I jokingly wondered if these metrics have ever been applied to an expedition setting; exhaustion, hunger, and cold, wet conditions can quickly strip insulate layers of city life, exposing our reptilian ids. What may seems like "character" over coffee can reveal itself in spades below the crux. I began to contemplate my past adventures and consider what I could glean from temperament theory to apply toward my own trips. Here’s what I found. Keep reading for discussions with ultrahiker Andrew Skurka, mountain biker Rebecca Rusch, and veteran adventure racer Michael Tobin about their "types."

Running: What the Fell? An Introduction to Hill Running

Ready for a lung buster? The southern Idaho foothills make perfect fell running terrain for our author. Text and photos by Steve Graepel

I had just moved to Boise and was training to climb Mount Fairweather in Alaska’s notorious Fairweather Range. Hardened legs and deep lungs are de rigueur for alpine climbing; the rolling Idaho foothills were the perfect crucible to prepare for the 15,000-foot giant. So each weekend I would shoulder a weighted pack and hump loads up and down our steep foothills. I’d climb for three to four hours, accumulating thousands of feet of elevation.

Fairweather was a bust—there’s not much you can do to train for chest-deep confectionery snow—but I knew I had tapped a new power supply with my off-piste training cirque. My legs and ankles were stronger, I had less knee pain, and my aerobic capacity was boosted. The following year I swapped the boots and pack for my running shoes and began to run my off-trail route.

What I didn’t know was that running hills was a tried and true sport. It's called fell running. The British have been doing this sort of thing for centuries (no surprise there, hey have a knack of wringing good sport out of hard efforts: Everest, the South Pole (Shackleton!), a 20-year Scotch...). What started nearly 1,000 years ago in an effort to find a royal messenger kicked off the Highland Games and eventually matriculated into a sanctioned culture of mountain runners, weaving a bit of trail running, orienteering, cross country and sometimes, grueling overnighters. The goal? To run the steepest hills as fast as you can!

Running is a simple sport and its best appreciated that way. But taking it to the highlands requires some slight modifications to your strategy. Here are some tips to help ease into it.