From the passport on the hike section:
Benton Mackay trail from Tilley Ch. through CP 7, 8 to Skeenah Mill campground. Prohibited routes are FS35 and Skeenah Mill Rd....(FS35 is the critical one)

problem: BM trail doesn't go through either Tilly Church or Skeenah Mill campground.

questions to RD race morning:"Can we bypass the first big climbs of BM with this little access rd to the N?"Answer: yes..."and then the only prohibited routesare the ones listed?"Yes.

Because we were allowed to bypass a large difficult early section of the trail with a small road, this led me to infer that the BM trail was a guideline for direction, but that navigation along that route was in play...ie. avoid high points with bushwhacks or fire roads, etc.

One other problem - no road numbers on the maps...the road off of Brawley isUSFS45... not FS35

http://www.mountaintravelguide.com/Hiking%20Trails/georgia/fannin/Brawley%20Mountain%20Loop.htm

http://gorp.away.com/gorp/trailfinder/trail_details.tcl?trailid=3929

...and thus, not a prohibited route. 5 experienced racers stood there and made this call.

So, there were several issues raised with these directions (as there often seems to be in Odyssey races)...Why have prohibited routes if navigation is not in play? How were we supposed to get on the BM trail to start with? Did every team get the same info about the direct access trail to the N out of Tilly Church. Or did some teams go to the nearest trailhead thinking that anyone that took the direct access would be DQ'd? How were we supposed to get to Skeenah Mill campground? HWY60 was off limits during the next segment...I can see why some folks illegally chose to bushwhack to Skeenah Mill.

There were definite gaps in the Odyssey directions...certainly enough for any experienced racer to reach several interpretations.

Everyone that knows me and my team knows that we race fast and hard, many times to our detriment (the 2 penalties at recent races were entirely our fault because of failure to read the directions fully and miss-plotting aCP)...Unfortunately (and fortunately) this sport relies heavily on thought and rules laid out by a course designer...When they are vague, or able to be interpreted multiple ways, it creates this situation...Southeastern RD's like JimFarmer, Tony Berwald and Chris Brown as well as the folks at the Atlanta Trailblazers have learned that the lead teams push boundaries and have responded with thoughtful, well-laid and super challenging courses for all.

We enjoy being the one's that folks look to for a unique option during a difficult leg...I have said that thinking is my favorite discipline in the sport...but our team always races inside what we feel are the boundaries of the rules with the information as we have it...and we will present and argue our case before ultimately accepting an RD's call. In the end, this is just a sport and we are all just playing in the woods...There are far more important issues in the world.

TrailBlazer Adventure Racing Club Message Board

2/13/2006 - LAR wins the Odyssey One Day and qualifies for Nationals...

Racing for the first time as Team Litespeed/Inov8, the team of Brenda & Lee Simril and Jay Curwen overcame some early navigational troubles in the boat to distance themselves from the field on a tough, snow-covered day. Temperatures hovered near freezing all day while LAR stuck to the 20 minute transition rule...coming out of one TA in less than 10...LAR, Checkpointzero and the 2-person team of NADS were the only teams to make it to the final o-course and a shot at a full course finish. Litespeed made their way to 4 of the 6 o-points and down to the finish in Blairsville, GA to secure the win during the biggest snowstorm of the season. Teams were spread all over the course, and Ronnie Angel's team at OAR Events deserves all the credit for keeping track of all of them and keeping 'em safe...

11/14/05 - LAR takes 11th in super competitive USARA National Championships

Against teams like Balance Bar, Nike ACG, Revo, DART, EMS, Mighty Dog, MOAT and 60 more of the top teams in the US - Litespeed had some great highs (leading for a time) and lows (losing 4 hours in an o-course section) to eventually take 11th in the fast and very competitive championship...see below for race report..and see Checkpoint Tracker for race details

Whew! What a race...Competitive just doesn't cover it...4 hours into the day, the top 10 were separated by about 20 minutes...12 hours into the day, the top 10 places were separated by about 20 meters...The final lead by the 2 MOAT teams was very hard earned...

USARA Nationals report

Thursday: We knew that the race would be, by far, the most competitive field we'd faced, so as Dan, Monica and I pulled into N. Tampa and nervously looked around at Balance Bar, Revo (1 and 2), EMS, DART, ASM, Tally Ho, Mighty Dog, MOAT, Nike, Flight and the other 50 or so top teams in the nation, we knew a good race could still result in a middle of the pack finish...And me coming down with the flu during the drive down didn't help our preparation.
After check-in a & short meeting we all received maps and coordinates for the next day's fun. The start would be a foot section with directions being given out the next morning.

Race organizers had also only given us the first 16 of 20 coordinates, so we all knew there was some more racing to be done once we got to 16...we just didn't know what or how much.

Start: Trek
We were give a series of OCPs to be gotten before reaching CP1 and with everyone getting one of several different sets of OCPs, you couldn't just follow the pack. We managed to zip through most of this section pretty well, even taking the lead briefly, and made it to the boats only a few meters out of the lead...unfortunately, we bobbled the very last OCP prior to the boats and lost a few places...but with such a long day, we knew that few minutes wouldn't matter a bit.

Boat:
Hard to describe this little slice of hell. We are not the strongest paddlers and it was tough to watch super stud boaters like Artie and Mighty Dog just sail past...but when we got to the "boat whacking" section, things got really nasty. Up and over, up and over, up and over, up and over...for like 3 hours...ugh. Seeing Dan Wieland's blood covered face and helping Nike get their boat up and over some of those logs just highlighted the difficulty of the day thus far...When we finally emerged from the log-jam section my flu had kicked into overdrive and I was all but leaning over the gunwales puking...navigation was impossible and I had to turn the maps over to Dan Miller to find the CP's off to the sides of the river during the final miles of the paddle. We dropped back to about 20th but were still only 20 minutes out of the lead...what a field.

Bike:
Finally back onto a section we were strong in, we started reeling folks in during the too-short bike leg...I was starting to feel a little better and navigation was pretty straightforward, but we made some smart moves and managed to bring back some of the front runners like Mighty Dog.

Trek:
We opted to swim rather than use a bridge and attack the start of this leg a little differently than most...the move paid off...as we ran away from CP11, we saw Flight and Mighty Dog look up surprised that we had caught them from an opposite direction...We all joined forces to attack 12...little did we know it was about to get slightly comical.
CP12 was in the middle of the swamp and we knew there was going to be some confusing directions there on way pointing to find subsequent CPs...As we neared the attack point for it, who should run up on? All the top teams! Just like that it was all together again and the top 10 teams were standing in a trail junction trying to figure out where the hell to go. For the next 2 hours, we just formed a conga line through the swamp as we went from waypoint to waypoint...Race organizers had given a coordinate for 12 and then there were directions to a series of waypoints, each one giving a bearing and a distance to the next...eventually, there was a punch. The funniest part of the race came at that punch when there 10 of the best teams in the country standing in the swamp and we all realized that nobody had kept track of what we had been doing to get to this point! We had no clue what bearing to take to get to CP13!...Ardie and I kind of took a lead and figured a conservative route due west to hit an old road and attack from the north...it worked and we were off to the races again...Having all of us descend at once on some poor dude out in the middle of the swamp manning CP13 was another funny point...Eventually, the teams started splitting up and racing again, all trying to get back to CP16/TA4 (the last info we'd been given so far)...We decided it would be best to keep an eye on Flight, as they were both fast and local...they'd probably know the trails.

Time trials:
As we rolled into TA4 tied for the lead with Flight, we learned that the next part was a TT...one person rides, one runs, one navs...pretty cool accept nobody would tell us how far the run was...Being the strongest runner, it was determined that I'd run on the chance that it was way long...Monica biked...and Dan, fresh off some great results as the navigator, would do the land nav. Unfortunately, the run was short and fast and the land nav was reaaaalllly hard. Monica and I blitzed our TT but Dan was given some bad info by a volunteer and actually headed out on the run course before realizing where he needed to be...It was tough to watch our hard fought lead evaporate with some bad luck...After about 2 1/2 hours out on the course Dan came back in and we prepared for the next leg...until we were told he had missed an orienteering point...It turned out there were 2 checkpoint 3's and they were less than 100 meters apart and undistinguishable from each other...how cruel. Dan was cooked, so I headed out trying to find the correct point...Fortunately, I found Lisa Randall out there and we hooked up to eventually find the point (she did a great job counting steps in some horrendous palmetto crap!)
Now we had spent well over 3 and 1/2 hours in a segment that had taken the leaders 58 minutes...race over, case closed...you just can't recover from a mistake like that in a field so fast. We headed out on the bikes pretty deflated but determined to finish.

Bike:
5 minutes into the 2 hour night-time bike, Monica's and my Niteriders failed...would the bleeding ever stop? 20 minutes after that, my chain broke...ok, now that's just cruel. Fortunately Dan's a great mechanic and we fixed the chain in about 15 minutes and kept plugging away...Unbelievably, many of the top teams came back to us...we even briefly caught up to and rode with 5th place Mighty Dog...but with the race basically ending with a 3 hour paddle, we knew the hope for hanging with paddling stud Ardie Olson was short lived.

Boat:
Long, painful, dark and sleepy...That basically sums up the last paddle...We remembered to bring Dan's Niterider and thus had a great light during this part...we were able to provide some light for Team Benton Publishing...a team that had already helped us several times during the race (they even brought one of our passports back to us after a volunteer mistakenly kept it and another told us we didn't need that one anymore)...After a short and easy land nav during this paddle...we slowly made our way back to the finish for a hard fought 12th place that doesn't do justice to the highs and lows we felt during those 26 hours.

Great job to all the teams from the SE...We definitely look forward to getting back to hills and long bike courses!...

Cheers,

Jay Curwen
Litespeed

10/29 - Litespeed looks to Nationals with a move into 4th on USARA points...

LAR moved into 4th place on USARA points with strong placings at Overmountain Extreme (3rd) and The Smoky Mountain Adventure Race (2nd).

Overmountain saw LAR's Monica Curwen team up with Explorer/Tally Ho's Jim Farmer and Paul Cox for a good run at 2 of the south's powerhouse teams (Mighty Dog and Adventure Sports SE)...With a slight navigation bobble early in the race LAR was racing with a tough penalty but still managed a strong 3rd to these two strong teams.

At SMAR, Litespeed went in at a bit of a disadvantage after Lee Simril was sidelined with a broken colarbone just days before the event. New LAR teammate Chuck Dumke stepped up, and being one of the south's top triathletes, looked like a great replacement, but with limited experience in multi-day racing Chuck knew it would be a steep learning curve. And the team, including Jay Curwen, Brenda Simril and Joe Crocker, had some revenge to get after some earlier dissapointments at some of Raceday's events...After building a huge lead during the bike and trek portions of the 2 day SMAR, LAR went through some bad nutritional and morale points late in the race, forcing a strategic abandonment of a tough bushwhack checkpoint...LAR crossed the line first with a big lead but could only wait and hope that no other team managed to find all the checkpoints within their 5 hour penalty window...Sure enough, Team Explorer used a steady and strong pace to locate all points and cross the line just 4 hours behind LAR, relegating Litespeed to a well deserved 2nd place...See Adventure Sports Magazine for the story

In other events, Jay Curwen as well as Lee & Brenda Simril (prior to the collarbone incident) hammered out the tough Beast of the East Half Ironman triathlon in Hayesville NC on September 25th with Brenda stomping all comers for the win and Jay & Lee coming 2nd and 4th respectively...Jay and Monica Curwen ripped it up at the Tsali off-road triathlon on September 10th with Jay winning the individual title for the second year, Monica taking a strong 2nd and both teaming up with paddling stud Chris Hipgrave to win the following day's team event.

and finally, Dan Miller and Monica Curwen teamed up with another strong southern athlete, Patricia Williams, to crush the field at the final installment of the River Sports Adventure Series, the Pickett 12 hour AR ........                              ...see Adventure Sports Magazine for the story...

8/29 - LAR takes 1st and 3rd podium spots at Fall Creek Falls

Team Litespeed fielded 2 strong teams at the Fall Creek Falls 12 hour adventure race sponsored by Riversports Outfitters this weekend. In an absolute horse race to the end, Litespeed1, containing the duo of Lee and Brenda Simril, along with teammate Ardie Olson (on temporary loan from Team Mighty Dog) managed to take advantage of a navigation bobble in the closing steps of the race by Jay & Monica Curwen and Chuck Dumke of Litespeed2, to take a win by just a few minutes. Team Explorer (Jim Farmer, Patricia Williams, Alan McAdams) were also caught in the confusion late in the event but still managed to secure the second spot. Litespeed2 realized their misstep to late for the win but managed to race in minutes behind the leaders for a 3 place finish. Team Adventure Sports Magazine and defending champions Knox Rox took the 4th and 5th spots. The flagship event for Riversports Outfitters took racers throughout the park in the rivers, through the gorges, on the lake and around the trails with a final 150 foot free-hanging rappel followed by an 80-90 foot vertical rope ascent. The racers were all glad to finally reach the finish area and their share of the post race burgers and beverages...

8/16 - Litespeed takes second straight win at Challenge 4

LAR teammates Lee and Brenda Simril teamed up with Mighty Dog's Ardie Olson to take the top spot at the Challenge 4 sprint AR in Woodstock GA...see this link for the story...

8/8 - Team Litespeed on a tear at events all over the south...

The Litespeed crew has been omnipresent in the last few months, taking top places at adventure races, triathlons and cycling events all over the south...Litespeed started June with some great results with Brenda and Lee heading to Bristol, TN for the Flint Mill Grind off road triathlon. Brenda took another overall victory while Lee battled hard for a podium spot in 3rd. LAR teammates Brenda & Lee Simril, along with Dan Miller crushed all comers at the Hiawassi Sprint AR on June 25th while at the same time, Jay and Monica Curwen were finishing 4th in a very controversial SOAR Highlands adventure race...Meanwhile, Joe Crocker was in Fayetteville WV on 6/11 for a close battle at the Captain Thurmond's Challenge...a grueling off road and paddling adventure that is extreme enough to cause pro-level athletes to just stay home...Joe's won it before but battled to a close second in the results this year. LAR's Jay Curwen returned to Philadelphia, MS for the Heart-O-Dixie triathlon on July 23rd and avenged last year's second place with a strong win at the Mississippi state triathlon championship. At the same time, Monica Curwen was at home in Asheville mixing it up with some of the south's premier cyclists in the Hometrust French Broad Cycling Classic...Monica succumbed to difficult team tactics during the road race, managing a 13th...but came back the next day to energize the field and take 2 primes along with a 6th place finish in the criterium. Finishing off a big 6 week run of races, Litespeed fielded teams at the Ocmulgee Challenge and Midnight Rush AR's in Georgia. At the Ocmulgee, LAR teammate Dan Miller slipped into the winner's circle by joining forces with southern powerhouse Team Explorer and taking a very close 3 minute victory from Litespeed teammates Jay Curwen and the Simrils. Finally, Litespeed climbed back onto the top step of the podium with a convincing win over the current leaders in the USARA national rankings, Team Adventure Sports Magazine, at the Atlanta Trailblazer's flagship race, The Midnight Rush...

6/1 - LAR navigator Jay Curwen joins Team Adventure Sports Magazine at C2C

On loan to ASM, Litespeed Navigator Jay Curwen helped the top ranked AR team in the country to a 3rd place podium finish at Florida's brutal Coast To Coast 3 day expedition race. In a paddle intesive event (almost 100 miles in the boat), ASM overcame the hurdle of very substandard boats (giving away as much as 2 miles an hour in boat speed) to take the 3rd spot behind powerhouse TallyHo/Mighty Dog (FL Swamp Stomp winners) and perrenial top paddlers Florida E-Caps...see Adventurous Concepts for full results...

5/21 - Brenda and Lee Simril back in action!...

Team Litespeed, with the Simrils back in the saddle, teamed up with Team Mighty Dog's Patricia Miller to take on Chattanooga's Greenway Challenge. The team moved through the course smoothly, see-sawing back and forth with local favorites Team Rock Creek...In the closing section, Rock Creek managed to hold off a hard charging Litespeed to secure the win...See Checkpoint Zero for more details...

5/7 - Brenda and Jay take the Ranger Duathlon...and Lee - hammers the 15k.

LAR teammates Jay Curwen and Lee & Brenda Simril opted for solo races this weekend with Jay and Brenda crushing the field in the Ranger Duathlon (5k run/35k bike/2 mile run) and Lee putting some great trail miles in for a top 20 placing in the 15k...See here for results.

5/2/2005 - LAR takes 2nd at Asheville's Mountain Sports Festival

Team Litespeed (Jay Curwen, Monica Curwen, Joe Crocker) recovered from some early race problems and closed on leaders ATP hard towards the end to take second at this year's race...a qualifier for the USARA National Championships...Visit www.checkpointzero.com for a full story...

4/30/2005 - Dan Miller and Jay Curwen team up for a solid win in the Outdoors Inc. Canoe and Kayak Race at the Memphis in May Festival...

4/5/2005 - Litespeed caught in frozen SMAR

The innaugural Smoky Mountains Adventure Race saw an amazingly strong field with Montrail's Patrick Harper, Dan Barger and Team Subaru, Racemetrics, Hooked, Mighty Dogs and a host of others all vying for the overall. Mother nature was the strongest team though as the 40 hour race was eventually cut in half when only 10 of the origional 75 teams managed to see the end of the bike and the halfway point. A freak spring snowstorm engulfed the North Carolina mountains with up to a foot of the white stuff and plunged the course into near whiteout conditions. LAR ended the day ranked 8th but was really happy to come away with all fingers and toes still attached!...See here for details...

3/23/05

LAR husband and wife teammates Jay and Monica kick the season off with top finishes at the Mountain Madness Duathlon in Franklin , NC

Jay took 1st overall, dominating the field from start to finish while Monica took control of the women's race before a wrong turn relegated her to a close second...see www.gsmtc.com for details.

12/20/04 - LAR receives end of year award and national spotlight...

Team Litespeed navigator Jay Curwen saw enough action in 2004 to garner the name of "Adventure Athlete of the Year" by Blue Ridge Outdoors...the South's premier outdoor publication...and Jay & Monica can also be seen featured in a December Adventure Sports Magazine article profiling top AR couples nationwide...

The late season also saw some great individual results from the husband and wife team:

Monica - 1st Tennessee State Cyclocross Championships and 1st Johnson City Cyclocross series final.

Jay - 2nd Habitat for Humanity 10k-Nashville TN, 4th Tennessee State Cyclocross Championships and 14th in Asheville's Shut-In Ridge trail run.

10/22 - Monica Curwen helps take 2nd in National Championship Marathon Relay

Teaming up with some other local women, LAR teammate Monica Curwen put in a strong performance over her 6.5 mile leg to help the team take the runner-up spot at this weekend's Dupont State Forest Marathon, site of this year's USAT National Trail Marathon Championships...

10/21 - Jay Curwen takes first place open class in Half Moon Outfitter's Island Giant Kayak race in Charleston, SC

Racing in a whitewater downriver boat, LAR's Jay Curwen struggled to keep Charleston's top paddlers, like Olympic champion Greg Barton, in site as they raced through the flatwater marshes of the Isle of Palms...Not able to compete against the specialized racing boats of the top 3 finishers, Curwen had to settle for 1st in the "open" class of slower boats...

10/9/04 - Jay Curwen takes 2nd at Rock Creek Outfitter's Stump Jump 50k

After a summer of virtually no running due to knee surgery, LAR's Jay Curwen cautiously toed the line at Saturday's Cumberland Trail Stump Jump 50k. Running a conservative race, Curwen managed to overhaul everyone except all day leader Josh Beckham of Nashville for a strong second place showing...

9/16 - Monica and Jay take on the Biltmore Lake and Tsali triathlons...

In rare appearances at a traditional triathlon, LAR husband and wife teammates Jay and Monica Curwen both made the podium (Jay 2nd and Monica 3rd) at the second annual Biltmore Lake Triathlon in Asheville, NC on 9/4/04...The highlights of the day were Monica's stellar bike leg (13th overall) and Jay's surprising swim (1st overall)...

At the NOC's Tsali Challenge Triathlon, Jay took the overall win and bragging rights in this cult classic race after 4 years of trying...Boat choice is everything at this event as the opening 4 mile paddle leg relies on a handicap system that is designed to even out the field...Customarily, the top athletes choose fast boats that have as small a handicap as possible...this year, Curwen chose a very slow boat (and thus a smaller handicap) and was able to keep the local paddling powerhouses of the NOC in close enough sight to power to the overall win during the subsequent 5 mile run and 12 mile mountain biking legs...On the women's side, LAR teammate Monica Curwen recovered from a lackluster paddling leg to rocket through the field into a top 10 finish...

8/17 - LAR prepares for the Smoky Mountain AR and Odyssey's New Balance Beast of the East

For the past month, Litespeed members have been racing solo, recovering from injury and preparing for the final races of 2004 - The objective being a top finish at the New Balance Beast of the East. While the Simril's have been training together in Chattanooga (rehabbing Brenda's hip) the Curwen's have been solo racing - posting wins at the Riverlink Triathlon (Monica's 3rd and Jay's 8th) as well as podium finishes at the Mississippi state triathlon championships and French Broad Cycling Classic in Asheville...LAR is expecting to field at least one and possibly 2 teams at Highlands, NC's Smoky Mountain Adventure Race in October and the final Beast team of Lee & Brenda Simril, Joe Crocker and Jay Curwen should be well prepared for November's assault on the Big South Fork...

6/28 - LAR makes it 4 in a row and defends at SOAR with a close win...

Litespeed's Monica and Jay Curwen teamed up to continue LAR's winning streak and took on an unexpectedly difficult Special Ops Adventure Race in Highlands, NC...The race took full advantage of the area's incredible beauty and savage topography...Spending the majority of the day locked in a battle for a top finish with 2 solo male competitors and a 2-person male team, the Curwen duo managed to go hard when it counted in the final few bike checkpoints to take advantage of a critical error made by one of the solo men who had been consistantly leading the day...LAR rolled across the line with a scant 1 minute lead in 10 hours and 20 minutes...

Look for Team Litespeed at the upcoming Megadose and Beast of the East Odyssey races...

5/24/04—Litespeed dominates the 2004 Odyssey Endorphin Fix

The 2-man team of Joe Crocker and Jay Curwen took top honors at Odyssey’s E-fix this weekend. Known for making your pain their pleasure, the folks at Odyssey didn’t disappoint, as this year’s version of the E-Fix saw teams covering 135 miles of some of the most remote and challenging terrain in West Virginia’s New River Gorge. LAR paid dearly for a torrid pace that produced a 7+ hour victory...both Joe and Jay were showing some serious battle scars at the Camp Washington Carver finish line...mountain bike crashes, nausea, full-on bonks and the horrors of stinging nettles all conspired for some serious lamenting during the post-race feeding frenzy...

See the Odyssey site for full results and info on the rest of their painfully pleasurable events...and congratulations to all the teams that suffered through this daunting event!...

5/15/04—LAR takes second at the Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race

             Pisgah Death March – The name pretty much says it all. Local Asheville bike shop Bio-Wheels hosted this grass-roots mountain bike event on May 15^th. Teams of 2 were charged with finding 4 of 5 checkpoints scattered throughout Pisgah National Forest in any order and return to the start/finish. Sounds simple enough…but promoter Eric Wever has an intimate knowledge of the local trails and had prepared a course fitting of the race’s name.

             Checkpoints included one mandatory and four optional points…route selection would be crucial. Litespeed (Jay Curwen and new member Joe Crocker) plotted their course prior to the start, opting to skip the point that required the most distance in favor of a bit more climbing, and set off with the other 30 teams at 9am. As the teams split up, each pursuing checkpoints in their own order, the race was on. 6 and a half hours of riding, pushing, and cursing later, after 49 miles and 16,000 feet of climbing, Litespeed rolled back into the start/finish to find that they were in second place to another very strong and very local team…Fittingly, they had chosen an entirely different route to best LAR by just 18 minutes…They had traveled more miles but had stayed low and clear of much of the single track in favor of gravel roads. As with most adventure races, cunning and strategy had played a huge role after all…

                          LAR’s Curwen and Crocker will be contesting Odyssey’s Endorphin Fix on May 21^st…

5/8/04—Litespeed hammers at Asheville’s Mountain Sports Festival

Injuries are still rampant within the team these days. Navigator Jay Curwen has fully recovered from knee surgery and is going well again, but now the team’s true work horse, Brenda Simril, is sidelined with a torn hip muscle. This weekend, the team went separate ways with Lee and Brenda taking top honors in the individual paddle race on the French Broad in Asheville, NC (Bren can paddle, but that’s it...She is reportedly forcing Lee to spend up to 5 hours in the boat each weekend day...He is praying for a fast recovery)...Meanwhile, Jay teamed up with some old friends, Julie Dauphine and Mac Brown, from back in the days of Team BMC Software. The trio fell right back into sync with the uncharacteristically straightforward navigation required by Racing Ahead. After receiving the maps and points, LAR flew out of the start with only a single plot in hand...Plotting on the fly and swapping the lead with the all male team of Odyssey Gold, LAR hit TA1 5 minutes down in second place...On the bikes, Litespeed managed to leapfrog Odyssey into a 16 minute lead going into the 17 mile paddle...The water saw the lead open up to 36 minutes over last year’s winners RAD and late entrants Adventure Sports/Suunto (featuring Finland’s Tehu Laitinen , a former MSOQ winner )...After the boat, it was a quick transition back to the bikes and a hard charge into downtown Asheville for a 40 minute win...Defending champions, RAD came on strong for the runner-up spot with Odyssey Gold a few minutes later in 3rd.  Full MSF results.

A slight modification will be made going into the May 21st E-Fix due to Brenda’s ongoing recovery...Joe Crocker (secret weapon) will be teaming up with Jay Curwen in the 2-man team race...Hopefully, the full team will be healthy and ready to roll at The Beast.

4/19/04 – Litespeed back on top of the podium…BRAR – North Georgia

After a long string of near misses…LAR finally put together a winning combination at this weekend’s Blue Ridge Adventure Race in Blue Ridge, Georgia. The short, fast format definitely didn’t play to the teams strengths and Jay’s recently scoped knee was uncertain at best - but the team came together and found themselves steadily moving through the strong field until just one team stood in the way…Sensing an opportunity, LAR overtook long-time leaders Team Switch in the closing stages of the bike course and held them off during the final run and mandatory challenge tests to secure a 3 minute win in the 90 team race…a good final prep to the Odyssey One Day next weekend…

3/20/04 – Double Dog Dare AR – Nashville, TN

With Jay Curwen sidelined recovering from knee surgery, LAR sought out local Chattanooga stud Tom Sell for a replacement during the Double Dog Dare in Nashville this weekend.   After a couple of early navigation miss-haps, the team charged through the course and swallowed all but the local favorites, Team Cumberland Transit…The finish was made doubly exciting as teams had to be careful to read the directions…the final checkpoint was optional!...The leaders failed to realize this and opened a small crack in the door for a hard charging Litespeed…Ultimately, there just wasn’t enough real-estate as LAR ended up about 10 minutes down in second place…Final results here

1/20/04 - Litespeed kicks off 2004 with 7th place at the NGAR...

Possibly the most poignant moment in the 2004 North Georgia Adventure Race came during the pre-race briefing. When the race director asked the 240 assembled racers “How many of you are doing your very first adventure race tomorrow?” …only about a dozen hands went up. Adventure racing has arrived.

             As expected, the weather and course at this year’s event proved to epic in every sense of the word. Myself and the rest of Team Litespeed would deal with hypothermia, blisters, mechanical problems and a myriad of other difficulties all day and night.

             The 6am start came too early, but, thankfully, drier than anticipated. After some frenzied (and fatefully inaccurate) coordinate plotting, we made the short portage to the lake to begin the paddle. After last year’s winter weather cancelled the paddling portion, the race organizers this year decided to make the lake section early and fairly straightforward. So after just a few hours, we found ourselves just 11 minutes down in second place, trailing early front runners Adventurers Anonymous and ready to begin our strong leg…the bike. Unfortunately, multiple flat tires and a continual slow leak slowed us dramatically…we would ride until my back rim was bottoming out, then stop to refill it…each filling would last about 15 minutes…not the most efficient way to ride, but better than wasting tubes and CO2 cartridges on a bad rim.

             Rolling into the second TA, we were amazed to find ourselves still in second place and only about an hour down from the leaders…and we came to find out that the leading team likely had a one hour penalty for a piece of missing required gear. Suddenly, we were in a virtual dead heat for the lead and back in the hunt. We set out on what looked to be a truly masochistic trekking section full of competitive fire.

             Soon enough, we found that the course itself was a much more formidable opponent than any team. Each navigational trick we tried seemed to backfire and cost us more time…Eventually we found ourselves in 4^th place and standing on top of a very wet, cold and windy mountain looking for a checkpoint that just wasn’t there…We later learned that our “fast and dirty” style of coordinate plotting had certainly been fast, but had also cost us this checkpoint…Trying to re-plot proved to be impossible in those conditions…I was unable to hold the map steady while shivering uncontrollably, let alone use a plotting tool. We were probably only yards from the CP, but, hypothermic and dejected, we decided after more than an hour, the smart thing was to go down and take a penalty for missing a checkpoint. We continued on, managing to hit the final few checkpoints and even managing to close the gap a bit on the 2^nd and 3^rd place teams during the final bike leg.

             Crossing the finish line at 10:30 Sunday morning, we found out that missing a checkpoint was, in fact, a disqualification offense. In the blink of an eye, we went from a salvaged 4th place showing, to unranked…A tough result for sure, but solely our own fault for failing to be more thorough in our navigation and course rules knowledge. In the end, race officials assigned LAR 6^th place in the 75+ team field.

                 The NGAR proved to be a great mix of professional course administration and grass-roots adventure racing fun. What it taught Team Litespeed was to slow down and be more thorough with the navigation…It’s great to go fast…unless you’re going the wrong way…

11/8/2003 - Litespeed takes 8th in a controversial USARA National Championships. 

Finishing out a rough, snake-bitten season, Litespeed ventured to Lakeshore, California to defend their USARA National title. Arriving in the thin air of the Sierras, LAR found that Old Man Winter had also made his appearance, forcing race organizers to scramble a bit, modifying the course to accommodate the first snow of the season and to take into account an impending storm forecasted for race day...Coming into the race brandishing the 2002 title of National Champions placed the bull’s-eye square on LAR's backs. The team took the race out hard and shared the lead with western mountain based teams Subaru and Salomon for much of the first "bike" leg ("bike" is a charitable word here...bikes were ridden for possibly 20 minutes of the more than 8 hour leg), including a grueling summit of 10000 foot Red Mountain. But altitude, snow and unfamiliar terrain conspired to cause some navigational troubles, relegating the defending champions to 13^th going into the nighttime paddling section...Litespeed shone here, blazing the paddle to jump back into 4th overall...After a brief run into the top 3 on the final land nav, Litespeed took a gamble on a risky nav route that failed to pay off and headed towards the final checkpoint in 5th place... Unfortunately, a misplaced checkpoint marred the finish as most teams were unclear on how to proceed when the CP was not found...LAR scoured the designated coordinate for well over an hour until informed by race officials to proceed to the finish...In the confusion, several teams managed to slip by, putting Litespeed in 8th...Not the perfect ending to a tough, bad luck riddled season, but a great experience and fun time tromping around in the woods just the same...Now to look towards 2004...

10/5/03 - Litespeed split up for several events this weekend. Dan Miller and Monica Curwen stayed in Asheville for the Firebell duathlon while Jay Curwen joined forces with some friends in VA for the Richmond edition of the Balance Bar Adventure Sprint Series. In Asheville, Dan was having a near perfect race when disaster struck...a broken chain saw his 4 minute lead evaporate and force him out of the race...Monica, meanwhile, was handling everyone easily for a second overall win on the home course. At the Balance Bar race, Jay Curwen teamed up with East Coast Patagonia sales director John Collins and Blue Ridge Mountain Sports co-owner Jeff Smith, both newcomers to the adventure racing scene, for a respectable top 10 result in the corporate division. Blue Ridge Mountain Sports, one of the east coast's premier specialty outdoor stores, dominated the corporate division placing no less than 4 teams in the top 10!...Check back for upcoming pictures...

9/27/03 - Team Litespeed ventured to Highlands, NC this weekend and split into 2 two person squads to contest the Special Operations Adventure Race. The team of Dan Miller and Jay Curwen dealt with mechanical and navigational issues to barely hold off a hard charging Brenda and Lee Simril in the closing paddle of the 9 mile run, 150 foot rappel, 20 mile mountain bike and 4 mile canoe event...With the team members all racing so closely in fitness, things look good for a strong showing in November's USARA National title defense...

9/19/03 - LAR's Lee and Brenda Simril ventured to Foster Falls, VA and laid down the law in the River Falls Challenge this weekend. Both Simrils dropped all comers and hacked good amounts of time off the exsisting course records in both the men's and women's event...see the accompanying story...

9/13/03 - LAR's Jay and Monica Curwen snuck down the street in Asheville for a quick local result at the Grace Race 5k this weekend with Jay recording the overall win in 17:40 and Monica taking 2nd overall in 22:20.

9/6/03 - Litespeed's Dan Miller and Jay Curwen raced against each other for a change this weekend in the Nantahala Outdoor Center's Tsali Challenge Triathlon...their efforts in the 4 mile paddle, 5 mile run and 13 mile mountain bike event earned Curwen 2nd and Miller 4th overall...performances overshadowed perhaps by 51 year old phenom Rand Perkins' overall win!...see www.noc.com for complete results.

8/11/03 - Litespeed crosses the line as first coed team at The Beast but, after penalty rulings, is relegated to second. 

The national championship team of Brenda, Lee, Dan and Jay suffered through a myriad of little problems that conspired against them for the entire race...flat tires, blisters, weather and a Beast of a course...all added up to an adventurous weekend. Taking control from the opening bike leg, a flat tire and early blisters on Lee's feet meant the team was to play catch up the rest of the first night. Lead navigator Jay,  missing 2 of the orienteering points, didn't help...this meant the team had to make a tough call to stay on the pro course...skip these 2 points and take a 10 hour penalty or risk missing an early cut-off by bushwhacking again for the points. Taking the penalty and hoping for mistakes by the other top teams, Litespeed pushed on with the leaders. After a brutal 3 1/2 days it came down to the 8am cut-off on the final morning. Litespeed caught and passed long-time leaders Team Leatherman just a few miles from the finish and crossed the line 50 minutes before the cut-off. Leatherman, dealing with injuries from a late race bike crash looked unlikely to meet the deadline (giving them a similar penalty to Litespeed, and thus losing the lead)...but with only 6 minutes to spare, Leatherman came around the last corner and staggered across for the win...An exciting finish to an epic race...see www.oarevents.com for full results...

6/28/03 - Litespeed went with Asheville locals Dan Miller, Jay Curwen and Monica Curwen for this hometown event. In races this fast, everything needs to be perfect...and it wasn't. After the deflation of one of their boats, Litespeed put feet to pedals and managed to get back in the hunt....but in a 2 1/2 hour race, 10 minutes is just too much....LAR came up a bit short of catching Team Wesser and Team RAD-Racing but managed a strong third place to these talented teams.

6/16/03 - Team Litespeed's full 4-person team (Brenda, Lee, Dan and Jay) took to north Georgia's Southern Crush this past weekend and put a clear stamp on the overall race. Race organizers had difficulty managing the 35 team field over a course more suited for a 24-hour event than 12. LAR took control in the opening kayak and bike legs and continued charging through the course with a commanding lead before learning from course officials that race management had realized their misjudgment of the course distance and instructed all teams to return to the finish area via an abbreviated course...After the confusion had settled Litespeed was declared overall winners with all concerned learning valuable lessons on communications and course layout...WorldAr.com and Southern Crush has plans to invite all teams back for a revamped course this Fall... 

6/10/03 - Team Lightspeed descends on Asheville's Mountain Sports Festival...