I'm a geek!

This is too funny. But you probably have to be a geek yourself to get it.

Race report is coming soon.



More great comics
here.

Chilly!

The forecast for the race this weekend is very weird. It's almost as though someone ordered up the cold blistery conditions for that specific day! Check out this forecast for Hiawassee. I choose to regard the weight that I intended to lose and didn't as an extra insulating layer that will actually work to my advantage. Glass half full right!

I went out to Hiawassee on Saturday with one of my new teammates (the guy who had the knee surgery) and another adventure racer. We had a great time and managed to work in quite a few different things so that he could test out his knee; riding steep hills, bike wacking, bushwacking and travelling on foot by trail. The funniest part was when we got back to the cars there was actually a note from the race director!

If anyone reading this cares to follow the race go to CheckpointZero and look for team 'Misguided' on the leaderboard.

New Team

Whew, the negotiations were tough but a new team has been formed for the race. The tough negotations consisting of 'hey do you wanna' and 'ya, sure'.

My original teammate is just not recovered enough from his chest issues to race. But he is recovered enough to join my Dad as support crew! The new team consists of a great navigator that is coming off of knee surgery. His two original teammates have had to bow out due to injury. He's typically a top performer given his strength and great nav ability and his weakened condition makes this likely the only time I would have an opportunity to race with someone of his caliber. Even in his weakened condition I'm worried about being strong enough to keep up! The other fellow is a racer who has been training a lot and has a lot of race experience but for whatever reason wasn't on a team til now.

Now we just have to get a canoe....

Checkpoint Zero AR

Checkpoint Zero Adventure race is only two weeks away! My teammate and I started out with specific training plans for riding, running and paddling. Scouting trips to the race area had been planned and we were going to be at every orienteering meet. hmm, I think we did about 20% of our original plans. Furthermore, my teammate has been hit with the flu/some kind of bronchitis which has derailed things even further. We haven't yet secured a boat for the race, and since he's out of town this weekend we only have one more for training and planning.

On the plus side, our support crew is all lined up (teammates' wife and my Dad). I've been able to do some training on my own although it's never as much as is needed. The last couple of O-meets that I've done have been good on the navigation but still leave a lot to be desired when it comes to speed. I also started taking Kettlebell classes at Gym Condition and this has been fun and beneficial in a couple of ways; it's near where I live so I actually go and do it and I feel the combination of cardio and core strength will have to substitute for actual paddle training since I haven't been in a boat since my last race in September. I've also been going back to ATS for spin classes. We've had a couple of fun trips to North Georgia for Winding Stair Loop (bike) and the Coosa Back Country trail (foot). Now that it's written out it all seems very lame considering the magnitude of the race. Oh well, when you work 50+ hours per week and live right in the city you do what you can. To see what it really means to train to be a competetive adventure racer check out Lisa Randall.