‘It took me to my knees.’ California mom competes in ‘World’s Toughest Race’

When Los Osos resident Sonja Wieck heard about “the race that eats Ironman for breakfast,” she took it as a personal challenge.

“I was like, ‘That’s me. They’re calling me out, literally,’ ” said the self-described “tough chick,” who spent a decade competing in Ironman Triathalon races and training Ironman athletes.

So Wieck assembled a team for “World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji,” which premieres Friday on Amazon Prime.

Hosted by “Man vs. Wild” star Bear Grylls and produced by “Survivor” creator Mark Burnett, “World’s Toughest Race” features 66 teams from 30 countries tackling what Grylls called “some of the toughest, most rugged, most dangerous terrain in all the world.”

Competitors have just 11 days to travel nearly 417 miles, racing non-stop through mountains, rivers and dense tropical jungle.

The experience of participating in the race was “beyond anything I had ever experienced before on a physical level,” Wieck, 40, said. “It took me to my knees.”

Central Coast athlete competes in Ironman events

Wieck has been a fierce competitor since her days running track at Morro Bay High School.

Although she grew up in Tehachapi, Wieck said the Central Coast always felt like home. She lived in Los Osos between the ages of 10 and 15 while her dad went to Cal Poly.

Although Wieck eventually moved away, studying mathematics at UC San Diego and the University of Colorado Boulder, “I always felt like I lost my heart here,” she said. “I always knew, ‘Man, there’s a piece of me on the Central Coast that I’d like to get back to.’ ”

Wieck was living in Colorado with her husband of 18 years, Troy, and their daughter, Annie, when she saw the movie “Finding Dory,” set partially in a fictional Morro Bay aquarium. Sonja Wieck interpreted that as a sign.

“Two and a half weeks after we saw the movie, we were here,” Wieck recalled with a chuckle.

It was in San Luis Obispo County that the stay-at-home mom rediscovered her love of endurance sports.

“I was trying to lose the baby weight” after giving birth to Annie, now 14, Wieck explained.

In 2007, Wieck competed in her first triathlon. Two years later, she tackled her first long-distance Ironman Triathlon, which challenges racers to complete a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and a 26.2-mile marathon in a single day.

Over the years, Wieck has competed in a total of 18 Ironman championships — finishing in second place in her age group at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, in 2014 — and coached several fellow Ironman athletes. She’s also participated in multiple ultramarathons.

Considered one of the most difficult sporting events on the planet, the Ironman Triathalon “has a way of taking everything you’re willing to give,” Wieck said.

“I’ve always been very adventurous and very outdoorsy,” she added, and through Ironman, “I found a connection to my old self.”

‘World’s Toughest Race’ takes competitors through Fiji wilderness

According to Wieck, she’s constantly on the lookout for “unique adventures and things that seem exciting and fun.”

So when she heard that Burnett was rebooting “Eco-Challenge: The Expedition Race,” the groundbreaking reality show that aired on the Discovery Channel from 1995 to 2002, she jumped at the chance to apply.

While most races take place on a fixed course over a matter of minutes or hours, adventure races like the Eco-Challenge Fiji race require participants to navigate an unmarked wilderness course during a number of days.

“You have to figure out your own way to get there” using maps and compasses, Wieck explained.

Between checkpoints, racers might be required to hike, swim, sail, mountain bike, rock climb, ride horses or paddle an outrigger canoe. The Eco-Challenge Fiji race also called on competitors to build and steer a traditional Fijian bilibili raft made of bamboo poles, Wieck said.

“World’s Toughest Race” features a total of 330 competitors divided into coed teams of five. Each team has four racers, plus an assistant crew member who hauls gear and sets up camp on each leg of the journey.

For her team, Team Iron Cowboy, Wieck brought together a group of Ironman athletes from Logan, Utah — including James Lawrence, a.k.a. The Iron Cowboy, who finished 50 full-length triathlons in 50 states in 50 consecutive days. Lawrence brought aboard his friends Shaun Christian, Aaron Hopkinson and Joe Morton.

To prepare for the Eco-Challenge Fiji race, Wieck established a strict training regimen that included rock climbing, stand-up paddleboarding in Morro Bay and Avila Beach and outrigger canoeing with the local Pale Kai Outrigger club.

Wieck also went mountain biking at Montana de Oro State Park near Los Osos and Cuesta Ridge Botanical Area north of San Luis Obispo.

In addition, Wieck and her teammates got show-sponsored certifications in everything from whitewater rafting to wilderness first aid.

“If you’re hurt, you’re on your own out there,” Wieck explained, although the racers were issued walkie-talkies to use in emergency situations.

Challenges include boating, mountain biking through mud

Filming for “World’s Toughest Race” took place in September 2019 in Fiji, an island nation in the South Pacific where the temperatures can soar to 90 degrees on the coast and dip into the low 40s in the highlands.

In addition to challenging conditions ranging from raging rivers to knee-deep mud, Wieck said she and her teammates constantly battled injuries, infection and exhaustion.

“The clock never stops on this race,” Wieck said. “You sleep when you can’t stay awake anymore, and you race until you can’t stay awake.”

Wieck served as Team Iron Cowboy’s sole navigator so “a big pressure on me was not getting us lost,” she said. “I didn’t have a break with that job. That was hard on me emotionally to always stay found, stay found, stay found.”

One night, she said, she and her teammates got lost on Monasavu Lake in the highlands of Fiji. Their boat bumped a snag, and Wieck fell in the chilly water — while wearing all of her warmest clothes.

“I slept that night in a sports bra and an emergency blanket, nothing else,” Wieck recalled.

During another leg of the Eco-Challenge Fiji race, Wieck and her teammates carried out mountain bikes through mud for about five miles.

“Physically, it was the hardest section of the race for me,” Wieck wrote in an email, and she had to fight to keep her mind in the game. “There were wild orchids on the side of the trail and I would pick them off and stick them in my hair, my muddy hair. I tried to find the beauty in the mud.”

Since Ironman athletes usually compete as individuals, Wieck said another challenge involved learning to work as a team.

“I was not prepared for the responsibility aspect of being a team player,” she acknowledged. “That was totally new for me.”

Although “we raced 100% unencumbered” with no script and no direction from show producers, Wieck said Grylls was with the competitors every step of the way.

“He was like the papa bear for all of us racers,” Wieck said of Grylls, always ready with supportive words and high fives. “He’d sometimes be out there on the course yelling from the helicopter, ‘Good job!’ ”

In addition to the hardships they faced, Wieck said she and the other Eco-Challenge Fiji racers encountered plenty of awe-inspiring moments.

She remembered rafting down the fast-flowing Navua River past sheer cliffs covered with vines and flowers.

“We felt like we were in not this Earth,” Wieck recalled. “We took every sight in that we could. We ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ our way through the race.”

“The No. 1 most amazing thing about the entire experience was the people of Fiji,” Wieck added. “The country is beautiful and the people are 50 times more beautiful.”

Once, when Wieck and her team entered a town after finishing “a very gnarly section” of the race, a woman popped a round doughnut in her mouth. “I could have kissed her,” Wieck recalled with a chuckle.

Wieck said one of the toughest aspects of shooting “World’s Toughest Race” was “not having a single photo of this entire ... life-changing experience.” Participants weren’t allowed to bring along smartphones, GoPro cameras or other technology, she said.

“You only have your memory of the event,” she said. “It almost feels like a dream.”

That’s why she’s so eager to watch “World’s Toughest Race” with her loved ones when it premieres on Amazon Prime. (Plans for a viewing party at San Luis Obispo’s Octagon Barn were put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.)

Wieck is also looking forward to discussing the Eco-Challenge Fiji race on her upcoming podcast, “Tales of Toughness,” which launches Tuesday, Aug. 18. On it, she’ll interview other “World’s Toughest Race” competitors about their experiences.

“I give them a chance to tell the untold stories and share the wisdom they gained out in the jungles of Fiji,” Wieck wrote in an email.

For her part, she said, “I really pushed myself in different avenues like leadership and navigation ... areas that I wasn’t comfortable in.”

“I feel really proud of myself,” Wieck said.

Watch ‘World’s Toughest Race’

“World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji” premieres on Amazon Prime on Friday.