Teamhalfwaythere.com will be working closely with the On Point Foundation.  Check them out at: www.ImONPoint.org

Here is who they are and what they do:

Our Mission:

Helping service members regain control of their lives through education, rehabilitation, services, and equipment.

ARE YOU ON POINT?

“On Point” is a military term referring to a person who takes the lead in a patrol or tactical movement. This lead individual carries the mission of guiding the rest of the unit and assumes the responsibility of protecting all that follow. That individual is known as being ON POINT!

Service members have always worked around the clock, devoting their life to duty. The attacks of 9/11 brought forth a new era for service members, along with the high price they would pay to protect our way of life. All service members have made sacrifices while some have paid the ultimate price in defense of our county and community. With the shifting economy and the ever present strain carried by our men and women in uniform it is time for us to be “ON POINT” and take responsibility for our service members.

On Point Foundation was formed as a nonprofit in 2009 by three former soldiers. With combined military experience of over 30 years, 20 years overseas experience, and 11 operational deployments – these three service members have now focused their dedication, knowledge, and love of country to “helping those who protect us”.

When deployed overseas and engaged in combat we put our trust in other organizations to protect our family and our way of life at home. These organizations do not violate our trust! The soldiers that founded On Point wish to honor and take responsibly for many service members, not just the members of the Armed Forces. We define service members as personnel – past or present – of the Armed Forces, law enforcement officers, fire fighters, and federal agents.

On Point is dedicated to providing honest and valuable services that can truly make a difference in the lives of the people we sponsor.

Next up for the team……, Uncategorized

Overtrained and overraced.

So, the last two races were pretty miserable.  Thankfully I had great teammates to pull me through.  Lessons learned: don’t race at 100% plus, have completely debilitating lower body cramps (curled up on the side of the road – see the Odyssey One Day write up), throw your back out a few days later, take Percocet and Flexiril and think that is an adequate recovery and taper for a race 2 weeks after the blow up race!

Did I mention how lucky I am to have the teammates I have!

Thoughts on AR, Uncategorized

The title says it all.  We have two teams for the upcoming Odyssey One Day Race on 24-25 July, and are looking forward to another epic Odyssey event.  One team is comprised of Lukas, Christy, Aaron and Barry.  The second is myself, Jeremy and Jen and Mark from Paradofobia.  Of note is that although Barry is a long time Teamhalfwaythere.com team member, this will be his first 24 hour race.  Go Barry!!!  Follow our progress online at Checkpointtracker.com

See you outside,

Shane

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Promised Land State park was the start and finish for the 2009 GOALS Cradle of Liberty race.  From early Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon we paddled, shot (paintballs), trekked, biked, and navigated our way over, under and through northeastern PA.

We had two new additions to the team for this race: Jen Moos from the Paradofobia AR team flew in from Ft. Lauderdale and my personal friend Tim Miller raced this as his inaugural AR event.    We had a good race and ultimately ended up 5th in both the overall and three person coed categories.   Thanks so much to both of you for doing this with me!

Highlights from the race:

Pre-race.  The drive from Northern VA to NY to pick up Jen en route to Tim’s house outside of West Point, NY.  Friday I-95 traffic.  Grrrr….. 12 plus hours of driving.  Getting Jen, arriving at Tim’s and chowing on some BBQ – worth the effort

Race.  A short time into the race there was a paintball event – one person per team had 20 paintballs to knock over a gallon water jug, failure to do so resulted in a 10 minute penalty.  Tim smoked it.

High water levels, and the last 2/3rds of the paddling was in a raft.  Question.  What is the maximum  hull speed for an inflatable raft?  Answer.  Crazy slow.  Quantified as 1 to 2 knots faster than drunk people propelling themselves by having their small children swim behind their rafts.

Wet bike sections on “almost” unrideable trails.  Wet roots, rocks and deadfall everywhere.  Any worse, and the effort to ride would not have been worth it.  But, it was rideable and we made decent time riding it. (Read –  we worked our butts off trying to keep up with Jen, she absolutely crushed everyone in sight on these sections.)

Dismal trails on the O-section.  Hindsight, it would have been better to  bushwhack than attempt to follow the trails.

Making some great decisions as a team late in the race.  We assessed how long the trek would take vs. the point value of the the CP’s along it.  So we skipped the trek, bagged some high value bike points, and had more time for the final bike o-section.  Definitely a good team move.

Post race.  Chatting with all my fellow racers – always one of the best parts of the racing scene.

Ordering one of everything on a McDonald’s menu.  Strawberry shakes….hmmmm.

Racking out on the most comfortable bed ever – Tim’s giant couch.

Thanks to Bill and Ann Gibbons and all of their staff for putting on a great, epic race.  Can’t wait for next year’s edition!

Lastly, a special thanks to our sponsors.  We could not compete at the level we do without your assistance.  Thanks to all of you for making this possible!

See you outside,

Shane

Race Reports, Uncategorized

Rottencheeseburgers have just finished Untamed New England , the only AR World’s qualifier in North America this year.  Official results are still pending, but it looks like our folks will pull a top 10 finish against an extremely tough field.  Everyone seemed in great spirits and we’re looking forward to hearing some great stories.

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The inaugural Equinox Traverse starts Friday morning. Doug Crytzer of American Adventure Sports has teamed with Chris Caul to put together what promises to be an epic event (http://www.americanadventuresports.com/traverse.htm).  We are fielding one coed elite team of Bryce, Andy and Michelle, while Andi B. is joining forces with a team from Odyssey.  This will be a 48 hour unsupported race, essentially a two day expedition style race.  As a bonus, this is both a double points race in the Checkpoint Tracker series (www.checkpointtracker.com) and a USARA qualifier (www.USARA.com).  Good luck everyone!!! We can’t wait to hear the race stories from this one!

Next up for the team……, Uncategorized

The 2009 Wild and Wonderful race was another excellent Odyssey event.  We fielded 2 and 1/2 teams:  Teamhalfwaythere.com, Teamhalfwaythere/RottenCheeseburgers and a combination of myself and Yoga Slackers creating Halfway Yoga.  The short version of the race:  We prepped, slept, paddled, trekked, biked, orienteered, biked, made a critical cutoff, trekked and finished 3rd.

The long version is a bit more entertaining…

I had been looking forward to this race for over six months.  Way back in December, Jeremy signed us up and we put together a 4 person team.  Unfortunately, life gets in the way and I did not think I be able to race.  So, Nate stepped in and all was well.  Just weeks before the race, my wife surprised me and I was back in the game – but without a team!  I few phone calls and emails to Mark and Sara of Yoga Slackers, an addition of Luther Papenfus and bingo, we have a rock solid team.

The night before the race we all arrive, check in and plot all 8 points.  8 points?  Huh?  Yep, there is an orienteering course in the middle.  We’ll receive and plot those 15 points at CP3.  Additionally, the key time hack for the race is 7:00 am at CP 6.  Some backwards planning, and we estimate it will take us 5 1/2 hours to get from CP4 to CP6.  So, we plan on leaving CP4 at 1:30 am.   We finish packing our stuff, attend the race brief, stage our bikes and packs next to the Odyssey vehicles and rack out.  Unfortunately, some racers didn’t have their kit ready so they had to come back before 5 am to drop off their packs.  Apparently, they thought since they were awake, we all should be.  Lesson learned – camp farther away from the hub of activity!  Grrrrr….

Race day.  Eat, grab sunglasses, and get on a bus.  Knock out a run/swim prologue and start paddling.  The water was high and our guide wanted to do well (financial incentive and bragging rights involved), great combo – we hit those rapids head on!  A little over an hour later and we were in TA and prepping for our trek.  Foot movement for about another hour to CP1 and our bikes.  Quick TA and we are gone.  Excellent double track and single track.  Couple of short climbs, overall great ride.  Show up and CP3 in 4th just behind TeamHalfwaythere.com.  Top off on water, plot points, quick plan and we are out of there.  

Orienteering in and around strip mines is difficult.  Huge kudos to Luther and Mark for some great nav.  Like everyone else, the movement consisted of a lot of elevation change, scaling and descending small cliffs, and navigating in terrain not always accurately depicted on the maps.  After over 12 hours, we ended up with 11 points and came into CP4 almost an hour late. 

Very quick TA and we left at 2:31 am.  We had 4 1/2 hours to get to CP6.  We figured it would be close and if we pulled it off, we were in the top three.  Essentially our race was against the clock for the next several hours, with little margin for navigational errors.  Thanks again to Mark and Luther, we made it error free seemingly biking uphill the majority of the time.  There was a short hike a bike a bit before CP5 just to change things up.  We hit our critical intersections, always chose the correct route and and pulled into CP6 at 6:31 am – exactly 4 hours after leaving CP4.  

From there some easy trekking to CP7 and then the finish.  Through this section the views were incredible, sun was up and we were all in great spirits coming into the finish.

As always, a special thanks to all our sponsors for their assistance.  We really couldn’t all compete at this level without your help.  

Final results for all of us were:  Halfway Yoga 3rd, Halfway Rotten Cheeseburger 5th and Halfwaythere.com 7th in coed elite.

Lastly, thank you to Mark, Sara and Luther.  It was great racing together –  I look forward to the next time we combine efforts.

Shane

Race Reports, Uncategorized

We are about 10 days out from our next race – Odyssey Adventure Racing’s Wild and Wonderful.  Jeremy does a great job of capturing the essence of the race in his post below.  For this race, we will field two full four person co-ed teams: Halfwaythere.com (Jeremy, Lukas, Nate and Christy) and Halfwaythere.com Werewolves (Brian, Aaron, Bryce and Andi).  Additionally, we are also part of an “adventure race team outreach program” – (combining resources with another team), I am racing with Yoga Slackers Mark, Sara and Luther – look for us as Halfway Yoga.

Follow us online through the Checkpoint Tracker website:  www.checkpointtracker.com or go directly to the race at: http://www.checkpointtracker.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=app.showDashboard&eventID=163

Shane

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This is a test. Just seeing how it works.

Looking for a target

Uncategorized bryce