The race is full! Woohoo. It will be some serious Adventure Racing come October 25th! See below for a few important updates and exciting news! Make sure your team has read update #1!
"TEAM CASTELLI TELLS ALL"
Most exciting news - "were not coming back in 2020, so someone else gets the title!"
The last three Lapine Loop races have been won by Team Castelli from Portland Oregon. Mike Sheppard and Shari White are veteran endurance monsters that essentially came out of retirement from other endurance sports about 6 years ago to start adventure racing. And they rock at it. And luckily for them, so do their kids. Two years ago they won as a family, and last year Mike and his oldest son took the title. Legit racers all. We sat down with them to talk about their tips for newer teams, strategies for families racing together, and a few of their low moments. Fun stuff. We'll miss them this year...but if you are hoping to be competitive in this years race, you won't miss them at all.
Unique format for the start
As part of our Covid precautions, we will be having a "Prologue" to this years race which will help separate teams right at the start. We won't give away too much, but what we do need everyone to answer a question for us as to relative experience. Basically we need to know the Average # of adventure races (not OCR, triathlons, marathons, etc) that your team has competed in. This is just a rough estimate. So if this is everyone's first race, that # would be 0. If one person on your team had done a race, but no one else, you would answer <1 (average races are less than 1). If everyone on your team has done at least one (or one person has done 4, but everyone else is a rookie) then you would answer >1 (average races greater than 1). Finally, if you are full of experience as a team, with an average of more than 3 races per team member you'd answer simply "veteran team".
Race Check in:
Race check in will be at the Lapine State Park, near Lapine Oregon. Getting to the race start is easy with Google Maps. As you enter the park (past the flagpole), you will take the first left turn. This will lead you to a parking lot and check in. If you cross the bridge in the park you've gone too far. Turn around and take your first right. There will be Bend Racing Flags marking the area. After checking in, teams will need to take their bikes to the Bike TA (not very far), and their boats to the Boat TA (also not very far). Then come back to the start/finish area and get prepped!
Celebrity Sighting at Lapine Loop!
We are pleased to announce that we have some "Eco-lebrities" coming to race with us in October. First off, if you have not watched Eco Challenge: Fiji on Amazon Prime...WTF?!?!?. Stop right now and binge watch it. Ok. So you probably remember Sonja from team "Iron Cowboy"...tough as nails and not afraid to cry. And Jennifer from team "Curl" whose team had a bike crash on the final leg that forced them out less than a day from the finish line. Jenn uttered the oft used line in the trailers "I'm not afraid to climb, I'm afraid to die!" And of course you remember Team Bend Racing's own Mel Coombes - one of the most experienced females in the sport. Yep. Chelsey Magness called them all up and said - "let's race together". She'd always wanted to see what it was like on an all women's team. We are excited to have them. And all of you.
Media Coverage
We will have a small media team out there shooting photo and video. Please do not smile at them, or wave. Just race as normal. If they ask you a question or for a short interview feel free to answer - or just run past if you are too busy racing. No offense taken. But their job is to cover the race as a whole, and capture the general feeling of a Bend Racing event.
Course Info and additional suggested gear
Waterproof headlamp (one per team): This is not mandatory, but strongly suggested (at this point in course development). A light that can say on underwater might be nice at a certain section of the race, especially depending on cloud cover/sun angle. Enough said.
Wim Hof: Look it up. Get used to embracing cold water (around 50 degrees F). Have a plan for getting warm after whether that is dry clothes, or running/biking extra hard till your core temp recovers. And seriously, some practice can help. While we don't believe that Wim Hoff breathing is will cure Covid, we do think it is a pretty good technique for surviving (and even thriving) in cold water.
October 25 could look like this.....