I’ve been impressed with the quality of races that Trioba puts on here in Washington state, and was looking forward to Trioba’s 33 hour “midnight start” adventure race that would take place in Chelan this fall. I attended as part of Team Mergeo: our team was Miles Ohlrich (me), Roger Michel, Andrew Feucht, and Beth Brewster.

It’s high time I conclude this series of posts looking into the 2010 Untamed New England.  There’s tons of other stuff going on in the world of the Adventure Racing World Series and I need to make room for that material — Costa Rica, France, and the UK recently wrapped up their World Championship qualifying events, too.

Team nuun-SportMulti at the 2010 Trioba 24 hour Adventure Race, was composed of racersMatt Hayes, Mari Chandler, Sean Clancy and guest-racer Jeremy Rodgers. Mari and Sean went into TRIOBA with an 5-race winning streak together. For most of those races, their 3rd teammate was ace-navigator Glenn Rogers. This time around, Glenn was the race DIRECTOR, and teammate Matt Hayes would step into the navigator role. Could they keep the magical streak alive? Glenn and co-director Ryan Van Gorder promised to throw some curve-balls to prevent ANY team from having an easy go of it. By the time teams reached the finish line, the 2010 TRIOBA 24 would go down as a classic and one of the harder-but most rewarding-events in memory…

In case you’ve missed them, installment 1, 2, and 3 are also here on Adventure World.

Tonight at 8:05pm our first team crossed the finish line, the Swedish team #17, Explore. After 84 hours of racing, including 185km of mountain biking that ended just a few kilometers before the end, they entered Playa Samara where a big crowd of staff, media and other competitors who are no longer in the race greeted them with cheers, flashes and applause. Everybody wanted to witness the last steps of a team that set the race pace since the beginning and remained strong through it all, even despite Per Vestling’s very bad knee. At some point the paramedics recommended him to stop, but he inspired so many by walking through that finished line, doing what he did best, smiling big!

We have already shown a few clips from Randy Ericksen as he filmed Team Adventure World Magazine at Untamed New England. Here is an unedited clip as he followed Team GOALS ARA at night bushwhacking off of Magalloway Mt. The team was comprised of Mark Lattanzi, Masha Glanville, Jonathon Neely and Jeremy Kuhler. Stay tuned for more race clips in the coming weeks.

Hot!!! Everybody agreed, as they ended their mountain bike task, in stage 6 at Pedacito de Cielo in San Carlos. A remote place surrounded by mountains, and very hot. At some points, the bikes had to be carried over the mud and the swamped trails. Exhaustion is starting to set in. The teams took between 30 minutes and an hour to complete this stage.

After a long and hard first day, already the teams are setting the pace differences between them. Although during the rafting section, of the first stage, the teams were quite even, it was not until the biking task that timing became an import issue. Once they came out of the river, the teams were struck by the heat and navigation dilemmas started to arise.

The race tonight has developed in unexpected ways.

Finland Multisport.fi, team #2 that had remained at the front all day, and while in the 3rd position, decided to not risk the canyoning section at the Laguna de Hule checkpoint and has advanced directly to the mountain bike at 9:45pm. This has changed their time from being just 30 minutes away from the lead to falling back to last place.

Equipo Explore (SUECIA) heading since today’s second stage

Colombian BOSI Zoom Radio Team is just 30 minutes behind the leader, crossing Hule lagoon canyon.

Sweden´s Explore team (17) is heading the race followed 30 minutes behind by Costa Rica´s Bosi Zom Radio team, and barely a minute behind, is the Finnish team Multisport.fi., (team 2).

Czech Adventure Race 2010 ended with longest stage of all: 190 km on bikes. However, it was mainly on tarmac roads, so that it was fast. But organizers did not make it that easy. Only hour or two into the stage there was special task that was most unpleasant this year. Orienteering itself would not be unpleasant, but seven of ten CPs were located in a fashion it was necessary to swim to them.

The long awaited moment has arrived, Costa Rica Adventure 2010 is about to start!

At 7.30.a.m. the 18 teams, a great number of members of the press and all the staff from ARCR were ready at La Virgen of Sarapiqui. Last minute preparations and details were being taken care off, instants before the race was due to begin.

Team Adventure World Magazine just returned from competing in the Untamed New England Adventure Race. The team was an all women’s team and consisted of Paulette Kirby, Katie Ferrington and Marghi Geary. Randy Ericksen, who created the Primal Quest Badlands DVD, followed the team and here is Video #3.

To catch you up, I’m examining each leg of the 2010 Untamed New England.  Legs 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

During the first evening and night Czech Adventure Race continued with inline-trekking stage. As there were many tarmac roads in the area, organizers decided they will allow teams to choose whether they want to skate or walk. Running on tarmac is just plain boring and damages knees. All CPs of the inline-trekking stage were located on tops of hills in a fashion that ensured it will not be an easy decision. Many roads were also broken with bad tarmac, so skating on them was not that simple.

Team Adventure World Magazine just returned from competing in the Untamed New England Adventure Race. The team was an all women’s team and consisted of Paulette Kirby, Katie Ferrington and Marghi Geary. Randy Ericksen, who created the Primal Quest Badlands DVD, followed the team and here is Video #2.

Team Tecnu Extreme competed at the Untamed New England Adventure Race last week. 41 teams from the US and Canada as well as Ecuador and Denmark all came to Dixville Notch, New Hampshire to compete in the 3 day race and hope for a chance at qualifying for a spot at the World Adventure Race Championships that will be held in Spain in October.

Team Adventure World Magazine just returned from competing in the Untamed New England Adventure Race. The team was an all women’s team and consisted of Paulette Kirby, Katie Ferrington and Marghi Geary. Randy Ericksen, who created the Primal Quest Badlands DVD, followed the team and here is the first of 3 video clips he shot of the team.

Moving on to Leg 2 of the race (after Leg 1 where I began this series), what looked like at first glance to be a straight-forward “connector” leg between the paddle and the 3 Summit Trek had a bit of challenge lurking beneath the surface. As a race planner, I like the challenges that nobody sees coming.

Czech Adventure Race started with a prologue in Ledec nad Sazavou. This stage was designed as a city orienteering, but reached hills around the town. Part of the prologue was a castle orienteering. There were several CPs located in a local castle. As most of the rooms are not repaired in was sometimes bit creepy. Unrepaired rooms, creeky planks or just soil on the floor and rope descent inside a dark tower made it interesting.

Over 30 teams of 4 people have entered the adidas TERREX Adventure race over the bank holiday weekend this month. Race planners have managed to keep the 400km long route a secret from athletes for a whole year and are excited about racers actually getting out there and testing it out!

Things were not looking good a few months before this… our most important race this summer. Two of our teammates John and Denise, could not race with James and I (Harper). With a very stacked field and time running out, we had some serious shoes to fill in our recruitment process in the few weeks before race start. Luckily, we were able to nab veteran Ontario racers Jayme Frank – who has countless expedition victories under his belt and Barb Campbell – a well respected navigator who captains the successful Tree Huggers adventure racing team.