Musing and Errata on the world of Adventure Racing from the Yak
presented by MPGear.com

The Dirtworld Adventure Racing Team has been on a tear for quite some time now. These guys know how to win a race. Give a listen to the latest interview from EnduranceRadio.com with team captain Cyril and hear how it all started and how they do so well so often.

Get the vodka out of the freezer comrade...we're going racing in the Motherland. On September 21st, Salomon will kick off the second annual Salomon Pro Adventure Race in Krasnaya Polyana in the Sochi region of Russia.

Teams of 4 will race across a 230 km course over 48 hours. Disciplines include rafting, mountain biking, trekking, canyoneering and caving.

We'll be sending resident AR reporter/badass Lisa de Speville to the race so that we can bring you reports and pics right from the course. She'll be coming directly from the Raid World Championship in southern Europe which she'll also be covering for us.

My good friends at Infiterra Sports have set me straight. My wife will be thrilled to know that she is finally getting some much needed help in this effort. It is an uphill battle.

I was a tad remiss in my last post about the best deal in adventure racing today. Everything I said about the Xstream Expedition stands. It is a very high quality offering and quite a bargain. However, I completely overlooked another event that you should also take a look at...the Michigan Coast 2 Coast. In fairness this event is brand new as of this season so I think I should get a pass :-)

This race is similar in length and scope to the Xtstream Expedition, albeit set in a dramatically different landscape. The inaugural running this past June was a great success and Luke from Infiterra tells me to expect even more in 2006. The cost per racer in 2005 was $375. Look for a slight increase next year, but nothing major.

With the the Xstream Expedition in October and the Michigan Coast 2 Coast in June you've got two great opportunities to take your team beyond the 24-48 hour format and see what happens when you're really tired on day 3 :-)

Every racer dreams of finishing an expedition race like Eco Challenge or the Raid Gauloise. While those races are not likely to ever again see the light of day, we are fortunate that the likes of Dan Barger and others are still around to bring us such epic adventures as the upcoming Expedition Challenge.

So it's great that the opportunity still presents itself for those that are able, but that my friends is an even bigger problem than whether or not these events even exist. They are too expensive and in most cases, staged in such remote corners of the earth that they are not accessible to the unwashed masses (yes I mean you :-).

Ok, so for next year the planets have lined up and the US will be host to both the Expedition Challenge in Hawaii and Primal Quest somewhere out west. That helps, but the fact remains that these racers are understandably expensive and space is limited. For all intents and purposes these races are out of reach for many.

What's an aspiring racer to do? Head west young man (or chick).

Once again Gravity Play Sport Marketing is offering the Xstream Expedition. This 4 day, 300+ mile, supported race is a close as many of you will ever get to experiencing the sport in the same way the pros do. The entry fee is $600 per racer!

Pound for pound this is easily the best deal you will find for your thinning stack of entry dollars. There aren't that many promoters in the US period, let alone promoters that put on quality events longer than 24 hours. If you love the sport, spend your money wisely. Invest in those that offer a quality product for a reasonable fee.

Quit your bitchin. Jen Silverthorn has battled asthma her whole life...now she's racing and kicking ass while doing it...and you don't hear her complaining :-)

As always you can find links to the latest AR interviews from enduranceRadio.com on the homepage.

This is huge. Having the experience and expertise of John Howard on top of the talents of Donn Mann will go a long way towards ensuring this race lives up to big hopes and expectations.

www.ecoprimalquest.com

The Nevada Passage is coming soon to a TV near you. Time to sell that TV on eBay. This race/event/thing is billed on their site as follows:


The whole thing is the brainchild of the Nevada Commision on Tourism as a way to expose viewers to all that Nevada has to offer by way of outdoor adventure sports.

This kind of poser, pseudo-sport, reality-drama crap really chaps my ass. You know what...I'm not even going to get into why. I'll spare you the rant. Instead, I'll leave it to all of you to decide if this kind of race/event/thing is what you're looking for or if you agree with me.

Meet the cast of the Nevada Passage

Oops...my bad :-)

Here they are

Too bad the whole "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" thing doesn't apply to the whole state. I guess this post means I can forget about selling ad space to Paul Mitchell :-(

Anyway, if you're just dying to read up on how the race/event/thing came off, that magazine has posted a report. I guess that means they consider jet skiing and sandboarding real adventure sports.

Team Mandatorygear.com is is one of only two US teams heading to the Wilderness ARC expedition race in Scotland. The 240 mile race will begin on Monday the 22nd and wrap up on Friday the 26th. Team member Jay Pichard will once again be bringing back a report just as he did last year.

Here's a little bit of background on the team that Jay was kind enough to send my way:

You may have seen this already...I just came across the site myself. Everything you ever wanted to know about how plastic makes adventure racing possible :-)

Ok, it's kinda ridiculous, but also a good example of how a sponsor can leverage their support of adventure racing and that you need to be creative when looking for sponsors with money...'cause I'm guessing the plastics lobby has got some duckets.

Click on the text links under the heading 'PLASTICS AND ADVENTURE RACING' for a breakdown of how plastic is used in the most common AR disciplines.

Looks like a few teams have bailed and won't be making the trip to the land of sheep and Kiwis to compete for the title of world's best at the 2005 AR World Championship.

The race will be held between November 11th and 19th on the west coast of the southern alps. You'll be caving, roping, rafting, kayaking, orienteering, mtn biking and trekking over a 500 km course. Entry fee is NZ$8500. You can register here.

Thanks to the open nature of Google Maps and a little web app named GVisit, you can now see where our visitors are coming from .

Now don't go get all worked up about being tracked by Big Brother or anything. You should realize that whenever you visit any site on the web you leave behind your IP address and a timestamp.

That IP says a lot about you...including your approximate location. GVisit simply takes the IP addresses of visitors to checkpointzero.com, looks up the locale of each, passes those locales to Google and displays the resulting map.

The timestamps are in left coast time and there is some delay between a visit and that visit showing on the map.

Enjoy the view :-)

I've gotten a ton of emails over the last few months asking for the URL's to our XML feeds for use with various RSS news readers and aggregators (intro to RSS). In light of the effort we've put into making it easy as pie to syndicate the AR Newswire on your homepage, this is no brainer.

Call me brain dead...I should have made the time to get this pulled together a long time ago. Well it's done now.

I've added links on the site under the skyscraper ad(s) for My Yahoo, Bloglines, News Gator and one to the raw XML...for your pleasure.

AR Newswire:









Yak Blog:

While I can't offer confirmation that this news is 100% official, it looks like Raceday has decided to bring NGAR back after all. Expect an announcement in the coming days.

The race is tentatively slated for March 24th-26th. The schedule will be more or less the same, but the course will be a bit shorter...around 85-90 miles.

With that and what should be more mild weather than Mr. Freeze (read Tony) has delivered in the past, this may be the NGAR that will finally let you put that overdue notch in your bedpost...er...tent pole.

In the latest edition of the Checkpoint News for the week of August 3, 2005 (sent out earlier this afternoon) there was an error in the post entitled 'Primal Quest Registration Details'. The teaser text below the hyperlinked title belonged to another article about DART. What you should have seen was a teaser to the full post about PQ Registration.

I've identified the problem in the code that generates the content for the newsletter and have corrected it. This problem should not recur in future editions.

Lets all do PQ a solid and visit their site to make up for my gaff :-)

Primal Quest has posted registration details on their site and will be issuing a press release shortly.

Attendance will be capped at 70 teams with 15 reserved for the top finishers in 2004 and another 15 held for international teams. The remaining 40 slots will be filled by way of lottery as in years past. The cost for each team will be $8,000 paid in three installments between September 2005 and February 2006. You get quite a lot for that $8k including all travel and lodging for the duration of the event and gear transport from start to finish.

Registration for the Open Lottery (40 slots) will run from September 14th at 5:00 pm GMT until September 20th. International teams must register during the same time period to be considered. Top 15 teams from 2004 will receive invitations in August.

The race is unsupported, but a Friends and Family program is in the offing if you're planning to bring along some cheerleaders.