The G-Rant : Grant's Rants on Adventure Racing

April 2007 - Posts

• Breaking news . . .

  There's a lot of cats hiding in bags around here lately, but this is one piece of adventure racing news that I can make public right now: http://www.UntamedVA.com/PressRelease4-30-2007.pdf.  Endurance sports legend, competitor in every eco-challenge and "force of nature" according to Outside magazine, Marshall Ulrich is drinking the Untamed kool-aid and will help us take our events to the next level.  He's coming on board as a "Technical Advisor" and we are very excited about it. Marshall Ulrich will be doing a talk at the pre-race dinner on June 8th before the Untamed VA race; it's an optional dinner for teams and staff, but a great chance to do some socializing prior to a weekend of lactic acid and long orienteering legs.  The dinner will be at the Blue Ridge Mountain Sports in Charlottesville -- that's right -- the retail store will be rearranging their floor plan to accomodate our pre-race meal and providing a great environment for the evening.  It also makes it convenient to pick up that bit of gear you forgot! For the race itself, we're looking to embed Marshall with a few teams so he can put his digital video and photography skills to good use and experience the event from the inside-out.  If you'd be interested in having Marshall join you for part of the event (note: he won't help you navigate) let me know and we'll see what we can do.  Bare in mind that the next weekend he's off to race the Gobi March race in central Asia and isn't looking to blow things out too much June 9th weekend. Posted Apr 29 2007, 09:16 PM by gkillian with 5 comment(s)

• Tidewater Traverse: Adventure Racing Can Be Like Spicy Food

  When I started HRAdventure, the race I always had the most fun in planning was the Tidewater Traverse; now the 2007 edition of the TT -- run by Pike and Morgan -- is only about 24 hours away.  For Hampton Roads, the Tidewater peninsula has the most variety to offer . . . flat and moving water to paddle on, biking of all flavors including great singletrack, and plenty of orienteering options.  From the parts of the 2007 TT course that I've seen, it looks to be another great race and I'm bummed I can't be out there.  Racing it, this year, would've been a treat! Instead of racing, however, I've got an appointment with a moving truck and a storage unit.  We close the sale of our house in about 6 hours and there's lots of things that follow from it.  I tried to get the 2007 TT to include a very special "move a piece of Grant's furniture to the storage unit" challenge -- a surprise test of mental and physical endurance -- but Pike wasn't going for it.  Most special challenges stink, anyway, but at lesat this one would've helped us get a head start on our move! Good luck to all the TT racers tomorrow and I should warn you: adventure racing can be like spicy food.  Once you race one long event (the TT is 15 hours), you may become accomstumed to that fire . . . to that duration . . . and crave races that are even longer.  The same goes for spicy food, once you develop a taste for the spice all other foods can taste a bit bland.  That doesn't mean short races are bad, but just not as spicy as a longer race.  Here's to a spicy Saturday/Sunday to you all! Posted Apr 27 2007, 07:49 AM by gkillian with no comments

• E-fix quick update

  Just got back from the Endorphin Fix race (E-Fix); I can't begin to do justice to our 41 hours of non-stop racing through some gorgeous terrain.  I know race organizers are sorting through the results, and trying to figure out where to place our effort into the mix.  In a nut shell, we raced our hearts out through some beautiful country, overcoming lots of obstacles along the way.  Things started getting bad for me, personally, as I hobbled my way through miles of orienteering and the Dolly Sods wilderness and began feeling an intense pain building up in my feet.  We started jogging the final few miles to the finish line (yes, I said jogging: my teammates were really tough!) and I could feel the pads of my feet sliding and shifting independently from the rest of my foot.  After a mile or two of running, my feet were excruciatingly painful and each step was agony.  This wasn't blisters, this was trench foot caused by the long hours of soaking wet feet and I had never encountered it before; my feet were splitting apart!  Each step was worse than the previous and by the end my teammates were alternating between carrying me, having me struggle independently with my trekking poles, and even me crawling across the ground so the bottoms of my feet wouldn't feel any impact.  So, yes, I was literally crawling on hands and knees to the race finish line.  This struggle went on for quite some time before teammate Russ, determining that he could drive his car up to the ski slope that I was currently crawling across, went and got his car to alleviate the suffering (and yes, it wasn't just pain but suffering).  I ended up getting a lift for the final 1/4 of a mile of the race, and we called it a day.  This isn't quite the whole story of our race ended, and I'm too tired to relate the full scoop, so I'll leave it there for now.  The key take away should be, however, that my teammates Russ, Sherry, and Joel did awesome and -- especially for Joel and Sherry who had never raced more than 12 hours before -- they really rose to the occasion. I brought a camera with me for the race and I'll be doing a "Trail Talk" at BRMS on Tuesday May 1 about my E-Fix experience with lots of photos and details.  Joel and Sherry might also be joining me for the talk.  Honestly, a face-to-face recount will do much more than anything I can type here in my blurry-eyed state.  Let me at least offer some photos, and remember if you want more to get out to Richmond on May 1st! The Untamed Adventure E-fix team: About the only dry river crossings on this race course: This is me before crossing the suspension bridge at the ropes section (ascent and rappel), just amazing: This is the view from the top of the 300' rappel, the rappel was off a cliff just like the one shown in the foreground: And, because some of you are morbidly curious, here is a photo of my left foot taken by the medic at the race finish line: Posted Apr 23 2007, 10:21 PM by gkillian with 14 comment(s)

• West Virginia Or Bust

  I had a nice evening in Richmond last night, talking to a few teams about the Untamed Virginia race at Blue Ridge.  There's never enough time to just hang out and talk; we're always too busy rushing through a transition area or something equally pressing so it was nice to have some conversations with some of the regulars I've seen at a lot of our other events.  Very nice. In other news, the stage is set for this weekend in West Virginia at the 48-hour Endorphin Fix adventure race.  You can track us online via the race website, as UntamedAdventure.com, and post "shout outs" to the site that the race may even relay to us on the course during the event -- very cool.  We're taking bets on how often somebody posts "Remember Untamed Adventure: Pain isn't Suffering!" to the race site.  We'll see.  We've got similar technology wired up for the Untamed Virginia race, but we also have some innovations in online tracking for our race that will make for a lot of fun in June! Two of my teammates for this weekend, Sherry and Joel, have raced in every race I've ever directed.  Amazing to think about.  This will be our first race competing together, and their first race more than 18 hours in duration . . . but they're wicked tough so I know they're going to do great.  Our fourth teammate is Russell from Philadelphia, PA and we raced this past January out at Natural Bridge, VA together.  He's strong as an ox and I'm secretly planning to make him carry all our race gear and, possibly, myself if the going gets really tough.  We're going out to have a good time, race the full course, and see some beautiful terrain in the process; we don't have visions of grandeur to win the event, but we'd really like to finish the full pro course.  We'll see . . . and you can see too by tracking the race online.  Wish us luck! One final thing, I'll be bringing my digital camera along for this race and trying to capture as much of the event as I can from the perspective of a competitor.  I'll be doing a presentation on May 1 up at the Richmond Blue Ridge about adventure racing (geared towards a more casual audience than the talks I've done in April).  I figure what better way than with a photo diary of the Efix to introduce people to what adventure racing is all about!  Posted Apr 18 2007, 09:16 AM by gkillian with 3 comment(s)

• Pain isn't Suffering coming to Virginia Beach

  I should've named this mid-Atlantic road series of sessions I'm doing the "Pain Isn't Suffering Tour," or PIST for short.  Could've been a cool t-shirt!  The good folks from the A-List beat me to it, but here's a photo from last night up in Fairfax: I'm not a "no pain, no gain" madman, but to hear the full explanation you'll have to check out Blue Ridge Mountain Sports tomorrow (Sat) at 3 PM in Virginia Beach or up in Richmond on Tuesday night at 7 PM at the Chesterfield BRMS store.  My talk is centered around 3 core "truths" that set the stage for successful adventure races . . . and I also talk some specifics about Untamed Virginia, of course. Address for Virginia Beach tomorrow: 1624 Laskin Rd Virginia Beach, VA Address for Richmond on Tuesday night: 11500 Midlothian Turnpike Richmond, VA We had a good turn out last night up in Fairfax and the talk went well; a few adventure racing luminaries were in attedance (the A-List posse of Chris Rumohr and Jamie Webster, including Brian Knight of Will Ramos Photography).  Some of us grabbed a bite to eat afterwards and I was treated to some good tales from PQ 2006, including how straight laced "rule boy" Brian Knight allegedly skinny dipped with some of the PQ lady racers . . . if that was at Red Cliffs outside of Moab, the police had a long way to drive to apprehend those evil-doers!  I also found the 3 people in the world who like candy corn: Brian, Chris, and Jamie are all into those sad little kernels of sugar. Posted Apr 13 2007, 10:25 AM by gkillian with no comments

• At Fairfax REI Tomorrow (Thursday)

  I'm looking forward to the evening at REI tomorrow, the car is packed (it's actually always crammed full with gear), my talk is ready, and the store is all set to go.  There are some details at REI's site. When I say my "talk is ready" it mostly means I'm ready to talk . . . and demo some gear and relay some good stories.  If you can't make it to the talk, just look over my blog archives and you're bound to find some overlap somewhere! After Fairfax, it's on to Virginia Beach and then Richmond.  I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be given the green light to share some hot off the presses Untamed Adventure news at one of these sessions . . . but you'll have to be present to find out!  Posted Apr 11 2007, 05:22 PM by gkillian with no comments

• Calories for a Cause

  I'll let the web page speak for itself: check out the new program we're trying out for the Untamed Virginia Adventure Race.  Man, I'd be all over this sort of thing if I was racing. Some might say, "What about the whole self-sufficiency ethic?" and they could make a case that we're going a tad easy on teams by providing an outside source of calories . . but the fact is this is an isolated part of the race and it will benefit a great environmental cause.  Since the race requires a support crew, most teams could brew up hot food at the TA anyway.  This is just facilitating things for the support crew and everybody wins.  And trust me, at 3 AM on June 10th, pizza will never taste better! Lots of other news to share regarding Untamed VA and Untamed Adventure, but it will mostly have to wait.  The cliff notes are that we're two months out and we've got a sold out race on our hands, we'll have some new groundbreaking partnerships to share in the weeks to come, and we've added some high profile staff to the organization. Now, if you're racing the Untamed VA event, go get yourself some pizza! Posted Apr 10 2007, 10:28 PM by gkillian with no comments

• Richmond Night Train

  I'm still feeling a bit sleep deprived, but I wanted to get this posted promptly or else I might never get around to it (I think there's still a race report from this past January race that has yet to see the light of day, for example). I went to the night training event in Richmond yesterday and did some good night training with Efix teammates Sherry Correll and Joel Jimenez (we'll be Team Untamed Adventure for that race).  Russ, our fourth teammate, couldn't make it down from Philadelphia so we had my friend Don Babb round out our 4-some for the evening.  I had raced with Don a few years ago, he used to be on the old HRAdventure "team" page, but he took a few years off after ending a race with the paramedics and supplemental oxygen in 2005. The 10 hours we spent at Pocahontas State Park showed that Don certainly is "back in the saddle" as he hung tough while we paddled, biked, and trekked around the course that Eric Cone put together for us and the other 30 people who came out.  It snowed earlier that day, and the cold was certainly a factor, but some tough CP placements really ramped up the difficulty on the evening. Our night went like this: First, we got out to the park about 3:30 PM to setup our gear.  I was going to do Q & A for the Untamed VA race at 4 PM but there really wasn't an opportunity since most people were like us -- running around staging our boats and getting ready -- I'll be at BRMS next week in Richmond, anyway, so that's a better time to talk.  At 4:45 PM we got our race instructions and maps and began the fun.  We had until 7 PM to do the optional paddle checkpoints, and as we plotted the four paddle CPs it became clear that the two hours permitted wouldn't let us get all of them.  After we were finished with plotting the 20 or so CPs, I had mentally shortened our paddle leg even further because there was one ugly CP early in the biking leg that I wanted to get before dark.  So, we completed just two of the four paddle CPs while fighting with Don's tandem kayak the entire way (Joel and Sherry were cruising in their nice solo touring kayaks).  We transitioned quickly, cognizant of the setting sun, and did a quick easter egg hunt to determine the order of the next 3 CPs.  Lucky for us, the monster CP . . . CP "A" . . . was the first one required by us after the easter egg hunt and we set our goal to obtain it before sunset. CP A was in a low, flat stretch of about 1000 meters square devoid of any mapped features but full of brambles, trees, and brush.  Our only option was biking to a trail junction and then following a heading and pace counting; so we set to it with the sun low behind us.  Having never raced together before (Don and I haved raced together, but I had never done much with Sherry or Joel before), I was impressed with our teamwork.  Don and Joel were tasked with keeping us on the right compass heading, and Sherry and I were tasked with the pace counting.  Our pace counting was perfect (which is shocking to me, since the woods were really dense and the margin for error increases for a 500+ meter pace count like we had), and Joel spotted the bag just South of us once we arrived at our pace count number.  We actually had 20 minutes of daylight to spare and got back to our bikes without headlamps!  Finding CP A in the dark would prove very hard for the teams that came after us. The other biking CPs included some hard flag placements, and CP 9 in particular took us 90+ minutes as we canvassed a gradual hillside in search of the bag.  Ultimately, we found the control after working in concert with another team and we realized that we had walked all around the area but just hadn't happened to focus our headlamps at that particular clump of trees.  We completed the rest of the biking CPs and returned to the TA around 12:30 AM -- hours after the time estimated to complete the biking leg.  We were, however, the first team back from the biking leg which meant it was proving tough for everyone out there.  We headed back out and nabbed two of the trekking CPs; we were racing with full packs (Joel and Sherry have never done a bigger race like the upcoming Efix so it was good for them to experience a full load on the shoulders) so we didn't push the pace and just walked our way through the final couple hours.  We returned around 2:30 AM and called it a night. It turns out only a couple teams even went out on the trek leg, the cold and the long biking leg having pruned the field down considerably.  Honestly, there was a ton of trekking on the bike leg since all but two CPs required bushwhacking to get the punch; a specific "trekking" leg was extra credit.  Sherry and Joel had logged some time whitewater paddling on the James River earlier in the day, so it had been a very long day for them already. We had a great team experience and we started building a rapport that will serve us well during the race in a couple weeks.  Thanks to Eric for all the time and planning that went into the night -- it's cool to have a venue permit night events like this every so often, and Eric was talking about another "diet" or "mock race" out there later in the year. My 3 teammates at a trekking CP around 1 AM (left to right: Joel, Sherry, & Don). Note the red CP punch tied to the wrecked picnic bench on the right -- another inventive CP placement! The four of us in the cabin at event HQ (left to right: Joel, Sherry, me, and Don). Don looks a little giddy here, and I know we got some interesting looks as we fumbled through the convenience store grabbing drinks and food on our way home at 3:30 AM. Eric and Don at the finish (Don, again, looks a bit drunk on lactic acid or something). Seeing the laptop there reminds me that we took advantage of this night training to test some cool new software for the Untamed VA adventure race.  Thanks again Eric! Posted Apr 08 2007, 09:30 PM by gkillian with 5 comment(s)

• Frozen Dead Guys vs Virginia Beach Part 2

  It's time I wrap up the thoughts I started with Part 1 about Frozen Dead Guy Days and Virginia Beach AdventureFest.  First off, however, I need to track down Pat, Morgan, and Norm and get them their commemorative FDGD t-shirts; congrats guys! The biggest difference between Frozen Dead Guy Days (FDGD) and the VB AdventureFest (VBAF) is the host city.  Nederland hosts the FDGD every year and it's the biggest weekend in the town.  There's no Rock and Roll Half Marathon in Nederland, Colorado, for example!  Virginia Beach actually has a ton of "big" activity weekends, I already mentioned Rock & Roll, but there's also Shamrock Sportsfest, the Neptune Festival, Surfing Championships, and many others listed on the VB website.  Virginia Beach is a big metropolitan area with a lot going on.  Nederland, on the other hand, is much much smaller. Because of this difference in scale, it doesn't take much to get the "entire town" of Nederland involved in FDGD; there's one coffee shop that can have a "Coffin Coffee Special" and one bookstore that can offer book signings by the authors of the Frozen Dead Guy stories such as "Grandpa is Still in the Tuff Shed."  I'm not making this up.  There is one main town square in Nederland that can have ice sculptures commemorating the weekend, and just across the street is the big beer tent.  Nederland is small, with a population of 1,000-2,000 people and just one main street and a handful of restaurants.  FDGD can capture the interest of the entire town without too much effort!  In fact, if we had held the 2006 VB AdventureFest in Nederland, Colorado the town would still be talking about it!  Unfortunately, for a city the size of Virginia Beach (with more hotel rooms than Nederland has people!), our little AdventureFest barely registers on the radar screen.  There's just so much else going on around Virginia Beach. My final point about the scale of the two host cities is this: we originally had planned on some climbing activities at the VB Rock Gym as part of 2006 VBAF.  Unfortunately, the climbing gym is a good 20 minutes away from the oceanfront and we knew that there would be no continuity between any events at the Rock Gym -- just too spread out.  So we canned the climbing and moved on. What does all this mean, and why am I bothering with this?  I've been asked by a couple people, in places far from Virginia Beach, for my impression of taking an adventure sports festival from nothing . . . to concept . . . and then through to completion.  I've also been asked why there hasn't been talk of 2007 Virginia Beach AdventureFest. My "impression" of organizing a festival like VBAF is that it is a ton of work and you need to be invested in it for years in order to really make it worthwhile.  If I would be around to spearhead the 2nd annual, and 3rd annual, and so on the VBAF might eventually get to a level of impact where a large sponsor gets involved and the participation goes through the roof.  It would take a lot of work, thousands of hours, and require bringing lots of parties under the VBAF umbrella; parties like sports fishermen, frisbee golfers, beach volleyballers, as well as the "usual suspects" of trail runners, orienteers, adventure racers, and paddlers. Even then, the VBAF will never have the same feeling as FDGD up in Nederland, Colorado -- the whole town of Nederland shuts down for the weekend and everyone feels the excitement.  That's just not realistic with a host city the size of Virginia Beach. Therefore, if I was steering the VBAdventureFest ship for 2007 and beyond, I would consider the following options: 1.  Move.  Take the AdventureFest to Gloucester or Smithfield or Cape Charles . . . someplace where you're more likely to have the weekend dominate a quaint small town and participants will feel special, not just "group #3498" sharing a hotel with a scrapbooking convention.  Cape Charles absolutely loves hosting the Storm the Eastern Shore AR, for example -- no other events I've planned have the same level of support from local people, police and businesses.  The AdventureFest would have a much easier time negotiating with hotels, media, and other businesses if it was in a smaller town.  Virginia Beach has been too successful at attracting events; each month seemingly has a giant blockbuster weekend in it that drowns out any potential for a new VBAF weekend. 2.  Merge.  There are several "sports weekends" in the region already.  AdventureFest could merge with one and both parties would benefit.  One could merge with the Shamrock "sports festival" or the Neptune Festival or even the Richmond James River Games.  This way the AdventureFest would achieve greater economies of scale with investments in live music, promotions, branded apparel, and so on.  This would also alleviate a lot of the stress on the future AdventureFest organizers, tapping into the success of an already existing sports festival.  Of course, it's not "your own" sports festival where you can call the shots and truly shape the direction, but you can't have everything! So, this brings me to why you haven't heard much talk about VBAdventureFest 2007.  It's looking less and less likely that there will be one.  Honestly, it's almost too late to truly promote a Fall festival weekend appropriately, and the hopes of any considerable sponsorship are getting slimmer every day.  By comparison, I nearly have a race course permitted and presenting sponsors lined up for a 2008 event (more about this another time).  The time for thinking about Fall 2007 was about 6 months ago. This doesn't mean Pike with HRAdventure aren't going to have a Fall race or two.  Doing things on a local scale can be done with less notice, and I know they're considering lots of options.  This doesn't mean that Encompass won't do any Fall orienteering events; they typically run several O-meets each Fall/Winter and I'm sure they could do the VB-Metro again.  This doesn't mean there won't be some sort of weekend offering an adventure race on one day and an orienteering meet on another.  This does mean, however, that the chances of there being any true "festival" VBAdventureFest weekend that builds on last November are slim for this year and beyond.  Something could come together in the next few months, but it's unlikely. It's not a doom and gloom scenario or anything; I had a blast in planning the event last year and I'll take that experience with me for my future work.  It was a big risk in trying the AdventureFest concept out and I learned a ton in the process.  Risks taken that don't work out the way you envision can still be worth taking -- and not taking the risk would've accomplished nothing at all.  Who knows, maybe I'll end up living in a town with a frozen Norwegian tucked into a Tuff Shed up the hill . . . and I'll be primed to build a spectacle weekend around it! Posted Apr 05 2007, 09:11 PM by gkillian with 3 comment(s)

• Frozen Dead Guys vs Virginia Beach Part 1

  While I was out in Colorado last month, I was lucky enough to stumble into a weekend festival too bizarre to believe: Frozen Dead Guy Days.  This crunchy mountain town, Nederland, has a wealthy Norwegian cryogenically frozen in a Tuff Shed with a local paid to keep the dry ice replenished in the shed -- the Norwegian remains frozen there today.  I'm not making this up.  Here is a bit more verbose explanation from the town of Nederland's official site. My point in sharing is twofold: first, that's a hilarious story: Grandpa frozen dead in a tuff shed!  I'm not making this up.  Second, this presents an interesting comparison to the Virginia Beach AdventureFest that I developed last year (with lots of help from the rest of HRAdventure, Encompass, City of Virginia Beach, and others).  I have kept relatively quiet about the AdventureFest up to this point, but I think I can share a few things and maybe help others down the road. First off, Frozen Dead Guy Days (FDGD) has a gothic appeal that Virginia Beach AdventureFest can't try to emulate.  The cryogenic community has rallied to this weekend in the sleepy Colorado mountan town, and it's as much a cryogenic convention as it is a sports festival.   Nederland includes athletic events with their weekend, albeit they aren't traditional; there is a "coffin race" where teams compete carrying a coffin (with a person riding in the coffin, of course), salmon tossing, turkey bowling, ice skating, and a polar plunge.  FDGD also has a slew of side events like an auction, beer tasting, costume contest, parade, yoga, book signings and guest speakers, brain freeze contest (slurpie drinking), and more.  Download the full schedule if you're curious. Now, 2007 is the 6th year for FDGD.  The first year for any "weekend festival" is certainly the toughest and after 3 or 4 years I imagine a certain momentum taking over the planning and promotion.  FDGD is an established event and travel agents book trips to the area based solely around this weekend in the mountains!  FDGD has a lot of corporate support ranging from beer sponsors (yummy Fat Tire beer from Fort Collins, CO) to -- you guessed it -- Tuff Shed. I need to take some time to develop the rest of this analysis as there are critical lessons from FDGD for the Virginia Beach AdventureFest planners of the future.  Unfortunately, I won't be around to continue the AdventureFest cause, and from what I gather there may never be a 2nd year for the AdventureFest because of the logistics involved in pulling it off -- but come on, the first year is behind us so a second year should be easier, right?  Easy for me to say.  Regardless, any organization or locality can draw important lessons from Frozen Dead Guy Days in Nederland, CO and I'll run down those lessons in my next post. Finally, I lucked into a few extra FDGD t-shirts while I was in Nederland and I'd like to share the shirts with the loyal readers of this blog.  For the best 3 or 4 comments to this post, I'll give you a shirt; post your comment, funny or insightful, and I'll track you down and get you a shirt.  If you're feeling confident, you can include your t-shirt size in your comment!  Of course, if there are only a couple of comments here, then you're guaranteed a shirt (and I'll know that not many people read to the bottom of this blog post!). More on Frozen Dead Guys vs Virginia Beach later this week . . . Posted Apr 04 2007, 08:28 AM by gkillian with 11 comment(s)

• Easter Eggs Are The Gateway Drug to Orienteering Flags

  Don't forget that Richmond ASR (and one of our key personnel for the Untamed VA adventure race: Eric Cone) is hosting a night training event up in Richmond this Saturday night, Easter Eve.  The adults go out for Easter Eve and work up a sweat finding O-Flags; the next morning the kids head out for their Easter Egg Hunts.  Perfect, right?! There is still space available for the night training, but you must sign up and pay your $20 in advance.  As I understand it, there will be a variety of CPs in the park and you'll have lots of flexibility in terms of order of disciplines etc.  For example, if you really just want to focus on your land navigation, you could spend most of your time on that aspect.  It will have a central transition area where you can stage gear, recharge with food/water, and check in with Eric to make sure we don't rally a search and rescue squad for you.  Camping is an option, too, so if you sign up and want to camp be sure to get in touch with Eric to get the details.  I think the aim is for everyone to be off the course around 1 or 2 AM . . . leaving plenty of time to get back home and hide Easter eggs --we all know Easter Egg Hunts are the gateway drug to orienteering flags, so do your duty and corrupt those youth into looking for things hidden in the wilderness! I'll be up there training with two of my Team Untamed Adventure.com teammates for the upcoming Odyssey Efix, and at 4 PM I'll give a talk on "Prepping for 24+ hour adventure races" with an emphasis on the Untamed VA race.  Honestly, we'll see who the audience is for this talk and that will steer my presentation.  I have a feeling it will be more of a reunion of old friends than a formal talk, which is great by me, but I do need to get my practice in for the talks I'm doing up in DC and elsewhere.  If nothing else, I can answer questions about the Untamed Virginia race and Untamed Adventure more generally and maybe talk about some gear and race strategies (mostly mental!).  Once I learn where my talk will be conducted in Pocahontas State Park, I'll post directions and  some more information. Posted Apr 02 2007, 08:39 AM by gkillian with 7 comment(s)

• New HRAdventure Website and Some Other News

  By the time you're reading this post (sometime the week of April 2, most likely) the HRAdventure website will have been moved fully into Pam and Mike's hands.  I actually haven't  seen what the new site looks like, but I know Pike worked hard on it and it's going to be great for them moving forward.  All I did was redirect where the name servers were pointing and the rest will be handled by the internet (and Pam and Mike!). It will be interesting to observe the impact on the traffic to this weblog, as I know many people visit this blog courtesy of the "old" HRAdventure homepage links . . . soon enough, there will be plenty of traffic around the Untamed Adventure campfire but it's all very new and there's nothing I can really share publicly yet.  Exciting stuff, but it's tough to keep a lid on everything. A couple things I can share publicly are the following: -A low ropes course has been added for the Untamed VA race; low ropes doesn't mean an adrenaline-packed rappel or anything, but it does promise a reason to keep your climbing harnesses handy and will take advantage of some of the fun terrain on the course. -We've announced the Untamed Adventure Experience as our latest bit of race news; the Untamed Adventure Experience is for members of the media in advance of the June race.  This is an important opportunity to reach out to journalists and help spread the gospel of adventure racing; we're providing the boats (thanks Point 65!), the bikes (thanks Shenandoah Mountain Touring!), along with food and our expertise to create a really fun day for our media connections.  Emphasis on fun. We're drafting up the first Captain Communication for the Untamed Virginia race this week, so racers, keep an eye on your inboxes for all the details on hotels, race check-in, etc.  Besides that, cross your fingers for rain since our area has been very dry of late.  I'd hate to have the paddling leg turn into a portaging leg! Posted Apr 01 2007, 10:15 PM by gkillian with 2 comment(s)