An idea for training is to look at a topographical map of a (new to you) area and find some old roads (labeled 4WD on topo maps) and pick a route that you might like to find.  Disclaimer: When you get there, you may find the road or trail is now a paved development road, private property, or completely grown over!  That's part of the fun, you just don't know.  We do a lot of scouting for our races and that's what we do, we find routes.   When you do make it onto a trail that's navigable, use your map reading skills to keep track of streams, other trails, town boundary markers, etc, along your way and you'll be doing your own mini adventure race (with "checkpoints")!  It's safest to tackle these trips with a buddy!  Recently we tried to ride around Dan Hole Pond in the Ossipee Mountains but found one "road" so grown over that it took us way too long to slog our bikes through the woods that we ran out of daylight.  It was kind of like a mini adventure race...approaching night was our time cut-off and we didn't finish our route...a DNF for us!  But we had fun and nearly ran into a moose!

The race started promptly at 7AM this morning and local New England Teams of Team Granite AR (NH), Eastern Mountain Sports Monster Masters (NH), Team Granite AR - 1 (NH), Berlin Bike (CT), and Dark Horse / Masters (CT), are racing well! Team Granite AR was the first team through Checkpoint 1, and apparently it's raining hard down there. Perhaps all that racing in the foul New England weather is setting our local teams up for success! 


Follow along with USARA's Race Updates. Here's wishing the best of luck and great racing to all the teams out there!