Hey Gang!!

Great News for Team Merrell/Akali and Project Athena this week!

*Team Merrell/Akali’s Carter Johnson tried out for and made the US National Marathon Canoe and Kayak Team in both the K1 (solo) and K2 (two person)catagories in the last two days! He’ll be all over the world racing for Team Merrell/Akali!

*I have a few quotes in a CNN.com story today about adventure racing. This author, Ashley Fantz, will also be coming to the Rim to Rim to Rim trek as a Fundraising Goddess on Sept 1-5th, and plans to write a piece about PA for CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/05/25/adventure.races/

*Team Merrell/Akali Adventure (Greg and Denise Mchale, with Benjamin Midena and Nathan Peterson) is rockin’ the last day of the XPD Australia Expedition race. They’ve been battling among the top 3 for the past 4 days, and should finish either 2nd or 3rd place by tonight (out of 50 starting teams. World Champs of Team Orion dropped out yesterday). Another podium finish in a world class AR World Series race for us!

Woo hooooo!

Xoxo Robyn B

With the advent of the Grand Traverse ski race, I officially changed focus from winter sports to summer sports. Although it continued to snow on and off at my house through the middle of May, with numerous spring dumps of nearly a foot, I hung up the skis and increased time on the bikes and in the boats.

Local orienteering races are always a good training staple this time of year, and I finished second at the Chatfield meet and third at White Ranch. Seen here, I am comparing splits with Leif Anderson, the White Ranch winner. We were quite even for most checkpoints, except for the one that I seriously messed up and ran around in circles for 15 minutes (which is not helpful in an hour-long race)!

I have been doing more road biking than usual, and I entered the Lookout Mountain Hill Climb, which occured early morning on day of the White Ranch meet. I clocked 20:12 for the uphill race, and was happy with the time.

Up next are the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic (a road race in Durango) this weekend and the Teva Mountain Games Ultimate Mountain Challenge in Vail next weekend. Should be fun!

The following 10 athletes will represent Team Merrell/Akali and Team Project Athena in 10 different adventure sports… Read More!