Have Dental Floss, Will Travel

Tomorrow afternoon, Brent, Bruce, and I will be heading to upstate New York for 30 hours of racing in the wiles of the Catskills Mountains.

This’ll be our last race before Costa Rica, and so our last opportunity to play around with rhythm and pace, focus on transitions, work out any fueling issues, and test out new gear.

But perhaps equally important, it’s also our last chance for awhile to rack up some points.

As of June 1, Team GOALS ARA is ranked #1 in the inaugural run of the East Coast Adventure Racing Series.

And even more fun, we’re listed as 3rd in the United States Adventure Racing National Rankings (though Brent tells me that we’re actually in 2nd place, as one set of race results hasn’t yet been updated).

These numbers are a little bit misleading, as they’re based not just on placement in each race, but also on the number of races in which a team places.  But still, it feels good to see our team coming out of the gate strong this year, and though there are still a ton of races to run (most of which we will not be competing in) I’m eager to see where we end up in the final analysis.

This weekend’s Longest Day brings together some of the toughest competition in the nation, with four or five of the top ten teams from last year’s national championships towing the line at the start.  Perhaps more so than any of our races this year so far, results will come down to who can run a clean race navigationally and who can move well through gnarly terrain.  And of course, who can conquer the white water of the Esopus Creek, which led to my downfall at the Longest Day in 2009.  There are some teams that have a better chance of coming out on top, but really, with NYARA, anything can happen.

Race directors Rodney and Amy (also of Team NYARA) are known for their creative and challenging courses, and we’ve been looking forward to this one for months.  We tried to get some information out of them a few weeks ago when we raced side-by-side at the Cradle, but no such luck.

Really, all we know is this:

Bottom line?  It’s going to be epic.