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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As promised yesterday (see my introductory post), here is a blow-by-blow look at the Untamed New England 2010 course starting with Leg 1: 40 miles of paddling, portaging, conservations projects, and an orienteering relay through the “Kingdom of Water.”

As the dust starts to settle from Untamed New England 2010, as the Race Director and all around guilty party behind the race, I was asked by Adventure World Magazine to offer a blow-by-blow look at the race from the inside out.  I jumped at the opportunity to share some insights into the race and to look at how it all went from my perspective.  We work hard to make our race a truly wilderness experience and explore some of the most remote sections of the region.  Our tagline, “more an adventure than a race” is not just a phrase, it’s something we’re thinking of the entire time we’re putting the race together.

Race at a glance: 8 out of 41 teams completed the full course. 9 teams did not finish and two teams received unofficial completion (due to dropped teammates).
GUATS, Skandia, and Team Granite have all earned spots in the Adventure Racing World Championship (ARWC) kicking off in Spain, September 30th.

We currently have eight teams still on the full course after a second set of cut-offs at Checkpoint 24-Bosebuck Camp. Teams had to finish their 3 Summit Trek and arrive at CP 24 by 8:00 a.m. The following teams are still considered to be in the Premier Division (in no particular order):

•Team 5 ( Eastern Mountain Sports/Checkpoint Zero)
•Team 11 ( BRAT)
•Team 14 (GOALS ARA 2)

Currently we have a pack of teams that have been taking turns over the course of the evening in the lead. Team 24, Team Skandia/Key Experience, a team coming from Denmark, was the first team off the water (CP10) with a lead of over 30 minutes. Teams then completed a big bike loop mostly in the dark where toward the end, critical route choices seem to have made a difference in who came out first. First teams off the bike loop (CP 14) to transition to trekking were Running Free (Team 18) and Team Granite (Team 23) separated by ONE minute!

The 2010 Untamed New England Adventure Race got underway yesterday.  This is the only race that is part of the AR World Series to be held in North America.  We will post more race pics as they become available.

Team Kinetic (#2) leads the 17 teams checked in at CP7 in Washburn Forest. Team Skandia Key Experience (#24) and GUATS Adventure (#29) round out the top three. GUATS and Kinetic were trading the lead spot on the early lakes but Kinetic has pulled ahead of Skandia by eleven minutes and GUATS is falling back to the pack trailing Kinetic by an additional 12 minutes.

Race Start: Four big yellow school buses arrive and 150 athletes loaded with gear pour onto the 2nd Connecticut Lake boat landing. The next twenty minutes are a flurry of activity. Last minute dashes to the woods and port-o-john. A roll call and confirmation of the Spot trackers. Positioning, checking, repositioning, rechecking. Race director Grant Killian holds a final captain’s call. Brian Maples from Area Goats gives his mother a hug and she gives him a few words of encouragement. Finally with the teams lined up and on the water, official race starter Harry Brown fires the cannon. 41 teams, packed to close to move jockey and strike paddles to get ahead of the pack. They will collect four checkpoints before portaging to First Connecticut race.

The 2010 race course revolves around Coos County, New Hampshire. Visitors in the late 1800′s came in droves to this North Country to experience a completely different way of life within a short train ride of Boston. Peppered across the mountainous and forested landscape were over 200 hotels, inns and boarding houses ready to welcome their visitors and offer them a change of pace for the summer months.

Tecnu Extreme/StaphAseptic adventure racing has prevailed and endured much in 2010. This team is coming off a handful of wins as of late, and we are heading into our biggest race of the season with confidence, health, and the keen can get er done attitude. We like our chances at this race. It is a format that suits our strengths, and is long enough for us to put a hurting on the other teams if we control the variables.

Quietly, an email went out last night to Untamed New England team captains with an overview of the course for North America’s AR World Championship Qualifier.

Check out the PDF version made available to Adventure World Magazine: Untamed New England Course Overview

On August 23rd, 21 international teams will be standing at the starting line at 7 A.M. ready to be a part of the first ever Costa Rica Adventure Race (ARCR 2010). Beginning in the Atlantic region, men and women in teams of 4, will race across more than 500 Km. of forest, beach, rivers, mountains and through rural communities, guided only by maps and a compass.

The adventure racing season is now in high gear for the US and Canada, and select teams are distinguishing themselves with top performances at some of the season’s early signature races. In March at the two-day “Endorfin Fix” race in West Virginia, the Eastern Mountain Sports team came out on top against a very competitive field. Things really picked up in May, and we saw the CheckpointZero team win at the Atomic AR in Georgia while Team Granite won in commanding fashion at the NYARA “Longest Day” race.

The AR World Series is officially quiet in the month of June — we have to wait several weeks until the Series resumes (in northern Sweden in July). This doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t much going on for teams hoping to reach the World Championships later this year.