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

Ok, so that's a quote from an Eminem ditty and it has nothing more to do with this post than the word gravity...I'm tired :-)

Registration opens tomorrow for all 2006 Gravity Play events. New for next season are two sprint races (3-5 hours) for the noobs among us, an intensive weekend AR camp called Camp Xstream and a few tweaks to the Xstream Expedition...the next edition will be a bit shorter (3 days and 250 miles) and CHEAPER...just $375 per racer.

Gravity Play offers gift certificates and multi-race discounts for the racers on your Christmas list.

You've got 10 days left to register for the Texas Dare Adventure Race. So far 22 teams have signed up. The fee for a 4-man team to enter the 12-hour format is only $360 and they are offering $1500 to first place.

From the Infiterra Sports website: Slight date change for the 2006 Michigan Coast to Coast. To help accommodate team travel needs, the 2006 C2C race will now run from Tuesday May 30th through Saturday June 3rd. The big difference is that all teams will need to arrive by Monday afternoon May 29th for all pre-race activities However, this will now give teams Sunday, June 4th as a travel day after the race.

They entered like two garden gnomes left out in the snow too long. Their pointed hats were ice encrusted, tools hung haphazardly from their bulky, padded clothes.

Nice little article on the Big Blue Winter Adventure Race in Tahoe with some background on the sport thrown in for the less informed reader. My favorite line:

With names like Beast of the East and Primal Quest, these races evoke the ultimate in type A, survival-of-the-fittest mentality.

That's you :-)

It appears not everyone was happy with the course at the ARWC. Most of the time when you hear racers complaining it's just that...complaining. This time around most of the attendees I've heard from so far tend to agree with Kevin's general take.

Odyssey Adventure Racing is bringing a 30 hour race to Georgia in mid-January called the One Day Extreme. They've certainly got the name right.

Those of you that have ever attempted Raceday's North Georgia Adventure Race in years past know what you're in for. Cold in the mountains of north Georgia in January isn't just cold...it's COLD.

Here's your chance to go up against mother nature one more time to see if you've got what it takes to pull out a finish despite the frozen brain cells.

It was recently announced that the solo category has been eliminated and replaced with a 2-man category. Smart move...without a partner, who will cut open the Tauntaun?

Veteran AR photographer Peter Noble has graciously contributed a gallery of his spectacular photos from the USARA National's to Checkpoint Zero for your viewing pleasure. Peter's work has graced the pages of ASM on numerous occaisions. I'm thrilled to host his work and hope to do more of the same down the road.

You can see Peter's gallery here:

http://checkpointzero.smugmug.com/gallery/953221

The pics I took are here:

http://checkpointzero.smugmug.com/gallery/932306

Mine are for sale, Peter's are not.

We've got some pre-race insight from Lisa already posted. In depth coverage will begin Friday the 11th once Lisa has settled in after traveling to New Zealand from South Africa by way of Singapore. Unlike Lisa I will be working from my home office after traveling through the kitchen by way of the living room after setting out from the sunroom.

Lisa has developed quite a reputation for her tenacity and hard work while covering the world's biggest expedition races for Checkpoint Zero over the last couple of years. She typically gets less sleep than the racers and never fails to amaze with insight and stories you won't get out of most other AR reporters...the majority of whom tend to loiter at TAs before heading back to the hotel for a nitecap and clean sheets. Not Lisa.

If you went looking for her at a race you likely wouldn't find her unless you ventured out on the course late at night no matter how inclement the weather. You'd probably find her in some teams' winnie sharing hot chocolate while she picks brains and coaxes details out of tired racers.

Joining Lisa for this years ARWC is famed AR shooter Tony Di Zinno. He will be providing us with an unmatched view of the race through his remarkable photography. We couldn't have asked for a better compliment to Lisa's writing.

For the 48 hours from race start until midday Sunday, our live coverage of the USARA Nationals via Checkpoint Tracker served 73,683 pages to 4,486 unique visitors who stopped by for updates a total of 16,343 times.

As this was the first live use of the this new application we did encounter a few glitches. By and large we dealt with them and were able to provide fairly good insight into how the race was progressing from start to finish. Ideally, we would have liked to get more data more quickly and post more details about more teams. Unfortunately we were a bit understaffed.

Efforts towards improving our coverage technically and with regard to how we organize volunteers and staff are already underway to ensure even better results at our next event.

No details as of yet, but the California Sports Marketing site has been replaced with an announcement. Details coming December 1st.

http://www.csmevents.com

Keep your eye on the homepage for a snapshot of the leaders. For a detailed view check out our live coverage powered by Checkpoint Tracker.

I've continued to get emails and phone calls from racers directors and advertisers seeking information about the current status of ASM. It appears that no official effort has been made to contact clients to inform them as to what is gong on...at least not on a wide scale. Here's what I know.

The Nov/Dec issue has been cut and is being shipped. That will be the last issue. As of now the magazine is up for sale. The Atlanta and Colorado offices have been closed. You will not reach anyone at any of the published phone numbers and emails are being returned with fatal exceptions i.e. those email accounts no longer exist.

A few people have asked me how to contact either Scot or whoever is representing the magazine with regard to outstanding debts, etc. I do not have that information at this time.