First Race of the Year!

Posted Wed, May 6, 2009 - 9:15 PM
advracing

I've been busy the past few days getting ready for the first big adventure race of the year: the MIchigan Xpedition race. It's based out of Traverse City in the NE part of lower Michigan, and six or seven of us are driving out there. Brian, Dave, Molly and I are racing and Rick and Corey are doing support for us. The race starts on the morning of Wednesday the 13th and ends on Saturday, with a total length of about 300 miles.

Part of our mandatory gear is aerial distress flares. I think it's going to be hard to restrain ourselves from setting one off just to see what it can do!

It's funny how I've become less and less concerned about long races as I've gained experience. Back when we first started in 2002-3, we would stress out over every detail of a 12-hour race, as that seemed like a long time to be out, and we wanted to make sure we followed all the rules perfectly. We'd stay up late making sure all our gear was in order and strategizing, an approach only made useful by the fact that no one else knew what they were doing either. Now a lot of that preparation and checklisting has become second nature, so even a 36 hour seems like a normal weekend.

Compare these pictures of our earlier career:

With some recent ones:

And our best evah photo, which made it onto the Adventurous Concepts website as a promotional banner:

Florida C2C 2007 - Bad Ass Gnome Hunters