After waiting most of the winter, we have finally received some much-needed snow in the Colorado Front Range.  Wet, heavy, and perfect for snowballs, this stuff has turned the trails to mush.  I competed in the Adventure Xstream 12-Hr at Moab last weekend-where Will and Jenny Newcomer did an excellent job with the race, as usual-and have since been spending most of my training time running and paddling.

Week in Review:

• Saturday:  I enjoyed the race in Moab, and was very happy in my first competition on the Ellsworth Evolve 29er.  If you’re thinking about a new bike this year, be sure to give a 29er a spin; the wheels really do make a difference!  Finishing the race on a surfski I borrowed from Danelle Ballengee (who also raced and is doing well, living with her son, Noah, and partner, B.C., in Moab), I was able to hang on for the win in the solo division.
• Sunday:  Amy and I made the journey home to Golden and I got in an hour of running on the trails.
• Monday:  Arriving at the Cherry Creek Reservoir after work, I initially thought it was too cold and windy to go paddling.  After a short personal debate in the car, I figured I’d give it a go.  The hour-long session provided some good technique training in the wind and good mental training as well.
• Tuesday:  Trail run with the dogs, 70 minutes.
• Wednesday:  Trail run with the dogs.  Same trail as yesterday but it took 90 minutes due to the blizzard and constant falls due to hidden rocks!
• Thursday:  Trail run, 90 minutes with my buddy, James, from the Team GoLite, and the dogs, who were sufficiently caked with mud by this point in the week!
• Friday:  65 minutes of paddling with James at Cherry Creek Res.
• Saturday:  Two hours of trail running in the snow-what a nice, peaceful day!  Followed this up with a real-life adventure involving a challenging plumbing problem.

Team Goal of the Week:

Fitness and a transition to summer training were on our minds this week.

Tip of the Week:

Anything that works and does not break is better than anything super-light that may break.  We’ve all been out there in the middle of the night when a crucial piece of gear reaches its limit.  My advice is to thoroughly test all items ahead of time.  Something super-cool and super-light is worthless out on the trail if there’s a possibility that it might break.  Also, carry lots of zip-ties to fix things when they do break.

What’s Next?

I’ll be getting into orienteering meets with the Rocky Mountain Orienteering Club (www.rmoc.org) in the next few weeks.  Orienteering is an excellent way to practice navigation skills while getting a great running workout.  My teammates in the mountains have a few more weeks of snow and skiing to anticipate!

Happy Training,

Travis Macy

Photo by Brian Solano

My partner, Bryan “Wick” Wickenhauser, and I ended up 4^th place after 9 hours 35 minutes of racing.  Jon Brown and Brian Smith ended up 7^th and Jari Kirkland and Tucker brought home 2^nd in the co-ed division.  Mike Kloser and Jay Henry won the race.  It was a decent showing for Team Salomon/Crested Butte in one of the toughest races we do all year.  Teammate Travis Macy opted for a summer option and won the solo division at the 12-Hour Adventure Xstream Moab race.

The week leading up to the Traverse is always fun as the training becomes a minimum, and arriving at the starting line, “the fresher the better” is my motto.  So Wednesday, Thursday , and Friday were total days off with jus a 10 minute ice bath Wednesday and Thursday.  It just gives me a chance to get all the gear totally dialed in and minimize everything to the smallest degree in the pack.  So here is what the rest of the week looked like:

• Monday – Rest day with a 12 minutes ice bath and foam roller session on the legs.
• Tuesday – Ski previewed the first 2.5 hours of the Grand Traverse course and evening ice bath.
• Wednesday –  90 minute massage, ice bath.
• Thursday- Rest day.
• Friday- Race begins at midnight!
• Sunday – 45 minute run and 30 mile road ride to Crested Butte, ice bath.
• Monday – 1 hour on the HALO swim trainer and 90 minutes on the stationary bike with some muscle tension intervals to a 30 minute treadmill run as it was snowing again and blowing 30 m.p.h. outside.  Ice bath and I am ready for Spring!!

As a team we didn’t work on anything for the week together, however we all had to have our gear dialed in for the race so packing and gear minimizing were key components for everyone, which will make it easier to know exactly how much food and water to bring out on a 8-9 hour section in Primal Quest only a few months away.  Remember the 6 P’s of racing folks, “Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance”!!

Some gear modifications that we made especially for the Grand Traverse were attaching retractable dog leashes on the inside of the pack with the leash exiting at the bottom, making for a non swing tow-strap that zips back inside the pack after use; it’s a hands-free towing device!  Another was the hand warmer taped up H2O bottle to prevent freezing your water instantly.

The next event to start looking forward to for me is the Foster Grant Ironman 70.3 event in Orlando , FL on May 17^th.   So putting away the skis for the season yesterday felt good as I am as jazzed as ever to get in the pool and swim, swim, swim.   Now I know swimming isn’t the funnest thing ever but I can guarantee that hard swimming with intervals will make any athlete no matter their fitness a whole heck of a lot better, especially for the paddling sections in these long adventure races, which is where more racers lack than any other department in a race such as Primal Quest.  So try hitting the pool 3x’s a week and work on your weaknesses this pre-season and feel confident the middle of August!

Cheers,

Sully

National Geographic Adventure

The goal of Project Athena is to assist women with breast cancer or other health issues, to realize their athletic and adventurous goals. The organization grants “Athenaships” in an effort to encourage those dreams and to help make them a reality. For instance, in this story, Robyn and a group of very athletic ladies, including two cancer survivors, set out to compete in the Costa Rica Costal Challenge.

The following is an excerpt from the story by Adventure:

It’s day four of the Coastal Challenge (TCC) Rainforest Run—a six-day, 145-mile stage race across Costa Rica—and people are starting to wear out. Most of our feet are covered in blisters, and at only 8:00 a.m., the temperature’s shot well past 90. We’ve already been hiking for the better part of an hour when we come to a jungle-cloaked stretch of single-track that seems to shoot straight up into the sky. Our motivation evaporates.

It’s at this moment that Robyn Benincasa reveals what the rest of us have been suspecting all week: The woman is superhuman. Benincasa, 42, one of the world’s premier adventure racers, straps one of her teammates, who is (understandably) struggling a bit, on to a towline attached to her backpack and cheerfully starts bounding up the mountain, literally pulling her up the slope like an ox. The path climbs 3,000 feet in a mile and a half, but Benincasa barely breaks a sweat. “It just feels so good to know I’m back up and running!” she says.

To read more about Project Athena and their recent race in Costa Rica, click here.

I have fallen off the wagon and wreaked my right ankle in the process.

So the story goes: left Moscow where I had my laptop stolen, got back to Portland, OR after being a day late for my flight,  and had to lay my motorbike down to avoid something worse.  I have always figured that bad things in life come in three’s and so I should be done for a while.

Had to wait two weeks for the kaleidescope of symptoms to pass in order for an x-ray to be useful.  A little prodding by my friends and my mother had me finally going to the doctor who was kind enough to give me a month off of the foot, saying that the x-rays show no break but I most likely had a very bad combination of ligament and tendon damage that is going to take some time.  I told him that I would give it two weeks and I had to get back to training.  He said he would then see me again in two weeks.  Funny doc, real funny.

It is amazing how much I can not do with a bum foot.  I can’t do push-ups, sit-ups, jogging, cycling, or even my rowing machine.  So what is left?  The only thing I have left is drinking beer, hitting winter festivals around Oregon, entertaining friends from out of town, and promptly ignoring my obligations to my blog and school work feeling sorry for myself.  What can I say?  I’m an over-achiever.

I have gotten something done though.  I have had the privilege of chatting with our friends at SPOT  in order to be sure that I was working my SPOT unit properly so that even my mom can follow me.  I’m sure she has been wanting this technology ever since I was a kid, where I had the penchant for getting lost in the farmers market.  I think it finally got to the point where she would take the same approach as if your pet ran away…I would come home when I got hungry.  As usual, she was right.  But now we have this great technology that can have you share my life with me as I travel around the world for business and pleasure.

It does have its drawbacks though.  One of which being that you can keep tabs on me where ever I am.  I guess my point is that I did a test run this weekend when I took some out of town friends to the Oregon Crab and Wine Festival in Newport, Oregon.  When you go to my SPOT link below, you will see the road trip I took to get there.  In order to get familiar with how it works I will present you with a challenge.  I will admit to stopping at a McDonald’s drive through for some cheeseburgers (I told you I fell off the wagon), if you can tell me either which town it was it, or which SPOT track number it was.  I don’t have anything you can win except for your name in my next blog and kudos for your ingenuity. Or maybe I can find something.

Check out my SPOT page at:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/gogl.jsp?glId=00Mp6QEKvsOSAJ2HATEmORFq6a79tUgIS

Until next time…..TODD

Craig Stein, who did an amazing job covering Primal Quest Montana last summer, has written an excellent article on the climb. Here is an excerpt from that story:

At over 360 feet Bridal Veil Falls is the tallest free falling waterfall in Colorado and arguably one of the most majestic and difficult ice climbs in the United States.

On a clear crisp February morning blind climber Erik Weihenmayer and climbing partner Chad Jukes, a below-the-knee amputee, geared-up in Telluride, Colorado to begin a snowshoe hike to the base of this classic landmark. Guided by veteran climber Mike Gibbs of Ouray, Colorado and accompanied by a host of cameramen, the team approached the falls which could still be heard from a distance as water cascaded over portions of the precipice.

“I could hear that big face moving in front of me. It was massively impressive,” said Weihenmayer. “Then getting on the ice was very cool. It had character. There was a lot of weaving and bobbing, which I love.”

To read the rest of this amazing story, click here.  And check out more of Craig’s work at PhotoExpress-It.com.

The attempt was dubbed Expedition Earth and on November 12, 2008 Carmichael set out from Patriot Hills in the Antarctic in pursuit of his goal. There were set backs almost from the start. Bad weather slowed his progress, and by the end of the first week, the bindings on his skis were broken, and beyond repair with what little equipment he carried with him. Things looked grim, and the prospect of actually walking all the way to the South Pole, rather than skiing, didn’t seem all that promising. But walk he did, dragging his heavy sled behind him the entire way. 

The old record for the solo, unsupported South Pole Trek was 39 days, 9 hours, and 33 minutes, set back 2006 by British adventurer Hannah McKeand.  Todd arrived at the South Pole on December 21st, exactly 39 days, 7 hours, and 49 minutes after he had started. After nearly 40 days out on the ice, he broke the record by 1 hour and 44 minutes, a difference of just .2% of their total time out on the ice, the equivalent of a photo finish for this type of endurance challenge. 

Congratulations to Todd on this amazing achievement. Not only has he become the first American to go solo and unsupported to the Pole, but he also did it record time.

According to the post, Roz arrived in Hawaii at 5:55 AM local time on the 1st of September. The first stage of her journey took 99 days, 8 hours, and 55 minutes, and the last few hours were marked by a very rapid row into shore. In fact, it was so rapid that Roz beat her estimates and arrived in the wee hours of the morning, before any of the press were there to welcome her. She says that she arrived in Hawaii in much the same fashion as she had spent her time at sea, namely, all alone.

With this stage behind her, Roz will now return home, rest, and recuperate, before beginning the second stage of her journey, sometime next year, when she’ll set out from Hawaii and make way for Tuvalu Island, a distance of some 2,620 miles. Then, in 2010, she’ll complete the Pacific crossing by rowing from Tuvalu to Australia, an additional 2,324 miles.

Roz is now the first woman to row solo from California to Hawaii, and for that she should be incredibly proud. But I also know that this is only step one towards her goal, and it won’t be long until she’ll be looking ahead to her next stage. Congrats Roz! Job well done!

According to this story, over at the Guardian, the Matrix Shackleton Centenary Expedition is looking for someone to join them later this year, as the six team members, who include Shackleton’s great-grandson Patrick Bergel, will walk in the famous explorers footsteps. But, they’re also looking for someone to join the team. Someone with a zest for adventure, a love of life, and the ability to work with the team. You’ll have to be in tremendous shape and be prepared to endure the challenging Antarctic conditions. To apply to join the team, just head over to this website for more information and to apply.

The journey will begin in October, and it is expected to last about 80 days. The team will fly to the Ross Ice Shelf from Punta Areneas, where three of them will set out to cover 900+ miles to reach the point where Shackleton and his team turned back. At that point, the four other team members will join them, and they’ll attempt to continue on to the Pole, completing the journey that Shackleton was unable to finish.

Hmm… they’re looking for someone with a sense of adventure, is in good physical condition, and works well as part of team. Sounds like an adventure racer to me. I’m sure any number of racers from Montana could fill the position. Perhaps this is your chance to go to the South Pole as part of a historic team.

My favorite part of the Guardian article is in the first paragraph, where they publish the original message that Shackleton posted when looking for crew members for his original expedition. I’ve quoted it below. Great stuff!

“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success”

In a recent edition of

Along the course of their journey, Rob and James had to, at varying times, employ the use of sledges, bicycles, and sailboats. The used the sledges in the polar regions, traded them in for bikes when traveling through warmer climes, and then transitioned to the ship when out on the open water. Their journey brought them plenty of challenges, as Adventure notes, they faced “a fall through the ice, king-sized storms, and a capsized boat” along the way.

Check out the expedition’s official website, which is extremely well done and offers all kinds of information about the trip. The slick interface alone is worth the trip over, but you’ll also find a well done, interactive map, a blog of the journey, information on the team, and a whole lot more. Seriously, this site should be the model for all expedition websites. Really great stuff.

Congrats to Rob and James for completing their journey. Well done guys. Now enjoy a much deserved rest. (Photo courtesy of ExWeb)

The Appalachian Assault

To follow his progress, head over to WheresKarl.com, where you’ll find daily blog updates, a photo gallery from the trail, and satellite tracking provided by SPOT, whose Satellite Messenger was featured so prominently at Primal Quest Montana. 

Good luck Karl. Just 44 more days and 2,052 miles to go!