Georgia on my Mind

We've got a ferociously nasty 24 hour adventure race on tap for this weekend! "The NGAR" (North Georgia Adventure Race) promises to be the coldest, wettest, GNARliest thing I have done in a while. BREATHE Magazine did a tremendous write-up on the race.


NGAR historically is a cold, nasty race. With temperatures at the start line a few years ago reaching a mind-numbing 10 degrees (F), capsizing your canoe is something you want to avoid at all costs. Multiple stream and river crossings in sub-freezing temperatures, often in the middle of the night while carrying your bike, are also part of the deal. Fun, right?

Right now, the forecast predicts warmer-than usual weather: 30s and rain. This is actually quite an improvement over the recent snow and 15 degree temperatures the area has endured during a record-breaking cold front.








This year’s course will be approximately 90 miles through some of the most scenic, challenging, and historic terrain in north Georgia - roughly 20 miles paddling, 25 miles hiking and 45 miles biking through the frigid North of Georgia and the picturesque Fort Mountain State Park. When asked to make a prediction as to how much snow would fall on course this year, Berwald jokingly mentioned, “35 feet, bring snowshoes.”

Once again I am racing with my usual adventure racing team, renamed for the 2010 season "nuun-SportMulti". My teammates will be Area 51 escapee alien-human hybrid Ryan Van Gorder and time-traveling Terminatrix Jen Rinderle (Jen is a local Georgian on loan from Team Checkpoint Zero, fresh off a tough race in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia). We are all looking forward to tremendous competition coming from the local teams as well as current National Champions from New England.

Dreams will be crushed. By Sunday afternoon we will know whose. Win or lose, it will be a challenge for all teams from the elite down to the first-timers just to finish the course.

While most athletes know nuun is the leading electrolyte tablet that we all drop in our water bottles, SportMulti may be new to some folks. SportMulti a multivitamin co-developed by our team captain Cyril Jay Rayon and fellow adventure racer/ultrarunner Christian Burke, both highly accomplished racers on the international level. The SportMulti formulation was specifically created for athletes and is priced quite competitively against other options on the market. I have used it for about a year now. www.sportmulti.com or you can buy it online at endurance supplement store FeedTheMachine.com

See you on the other side!

Sean