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.

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…

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.

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.

Planning is well underway for the return of the Atmosphere Mind Over Mountain Adventure Race (MOMAR) to Cumberland, BC, scheduled for September 25, 2010. With over a month to go before the race, local representation is strong and growing.

Over the weekend I had the great pleasure of joining my Team nuun-SportMulti teammates Cyril Jay-Rayon, Jen Segger and “Stuntman” Slater Fletcher at the Gold Rush 24 Hour Adventure Race in Long Barn, California, near Yosemite National Park. Race directors Mark Richardson and Adrian Crane put on one of the best 24 hour adventure races I have done, anywhere, and I have been adventure racing since 1997. The race managed to be very challenging physically, even without much-feareds bike-destroying manzanita bike-whacks or a gratuitously long and boring hike-a-bike.

This past weekend, the team was at it again at another national series 24 hour race in the Sierras just east of Sonora. The race was hosted by Gold Rush AR and the course took teams through a stunning landscape near Yosemite. We battled for first for over 26 hours against the Yoga Slackers but, in the end, came up short. The Slackers had a excellent race and beat us by 31 minutes. They raced a near perfect race and deserved the win. As for us, we raced well but just didn’t have the added speed and efficiency needed to win. The team was comprised of Jen Segger, Sean Clancy, Cyril Jay-Rayon, and newcomer Slater Fletcher.

One of the most magnificent natural wonders in the world — Lake Tahoe — played host to 2010 Big Blue 24-Hour adventure race on July 31.

On September 25-26, an inaugural paddle event will take place on the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri. 2DamDays Paddle Marathon will test the endurance of adventure paddlers as they traverse over 92 miles of what is essentially flat-water in a two day period. Total prize money will be $13,500.

Woo hooo! Team Merrell/Akali’s Carter Johnson, David Kelly and I swept the men’s and women’s solo divisions and the team division in the Yukon River Quest this weekend. What a thrill to see all those orange jerseys at the top of the podium. Made my little heart sing.

A head to head encounter in The North Face Peak to Peak on Saturday (July 24) saw the defending open champion team Outside Sports (Queenstown), ousted by a dynamic young side fielded by Queenstown’s Fergburger, who crossed the finish line at Coronet Peak in a record time of just over two hours.

Race Director Geoff Hunt says it was one of the most exciting races the event has seen in its 17 years. “We had a real race on our hands from the outset and it was a tribute to both teams who exhibited fantastic skills in every section.”

Challenge Roth 2010
By Richard Ussher

It’s been a scorching summer in Europe this year and when we arrived in Roth it was a balmy 36 degrees at 7 in the evening.

My build up for the race this year had been a little different to last year when I’d had a great race but had felt a bit underdone. This year I’d put in a lot more hours and the results were indicating that I should be a good step up from last year. Not only the training data was suggesting this but also how I’d been feeling at a couple of races prior.

Race Report—Ultimate XC

By Bob Miller

Day 1 – Kayak 62k (34k down-river, 28k lake)
Day 2 – Trail Run 56k
Day 3 – Mountain Bike 100k

The BC Bike Race is a 7 day mountain bike stage race which takes you through some of the most technical singletrack on the British Columbia coast. This year the racers checked in on June 26 with a prologue day in North Vancouver which was a short course to allow them to get the bugs out of their bikes and give them a feel for what was in store for the days ahead. The next morning the racers boarded the ferry and travelled from Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island to begin stage 1 with each stage of the race being held in a different community.

The 12th annual Yukon River Quest is set to start at noon tomorrow in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. At last count, there were 84 teams (188 paddlers) from all over the world slated to take part in this year’s event. Aside from Canadian and US participants, the race field will be made up of racers from Australia, Austria, Great Britain, Finland, France, and South Africa.

In keeping with the practice established over the last three years, the 2010 Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge keeps its December winter slot thanks to the warm Arabian weather found in the emirate at that time of year. This year’s event – the fourth in the series – will take place across the emirate from 10th to the 15th December, slightly later than last year. The six-day endurance race, which places the emphasis on camaraderie and culture, will again start with a triathlon-style prologue in and around the modern, cosmopolitan core of downtown Abu Dhabi City.

By any measuring stick, the 37th annual Western States 100-mile Endurance Run on Saturday, June 26 was one of the most memorable days in the history of the world’s most prestigious 100-mile trail race.

For starters, Geoff Roes, 34, of Juneau, Alaska, shattered Scott Jurek’s six-year-old course record, surging past Anton Krupicka over the final 10 miles to post a winning time of 15 hours, 7 minutes and 4 seconds. Jurek’s old course record was 15:36.