Death Race For Life Project Sponsored By Long Trail Brewing: Finding the Death Race

Project Summary

I am dedicating February through July 2010 to my passion for endurance sports and an effort to help the Lance Armstrong Foundation fight cancer. Between March and June I will undertake a bicycle racing tour of multi-day stage races in the western United States. I’ll be racing in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and California. I’ll spend the winter training in Colorado and New Mexico. My tour will serve as conditioning for a final test – the Death Race. On June 24 I will join 99 other selected athletes in Pittsfield, Vermont for the 2010 Death Race.

The Death Race, loosely defined as an “adventure race” is a 24-hour slog that blurs the line between challenge and absurdity. The race consists of an unknown number of tasks spread out over a mountainous course with an unspecified finish line. The route and sampling of mental and physical challenges are also unknown. Previous races have included wood chopping, swimming, running, cycling, mud crawls, memorization tasks, fire building, weight caries, waterfall climbing, and more. The race boasts a 10% finishing rate. The international field of contestants includes ex-special forces, ultra-marathoners, Iron Men, and athletes from other disciplines. You can see the New York Times video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rtMFKpOYqo

My tour will benefit the Lance Armstrong Foundation by raising money through direct donations and pledged donations per mile that I ride during the tour. In this blog you can find more information about the tour, my training, my connection to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, donations, and my motivation for starting this project.

Thanks for visiting the blog and supporting my project!

Cully Cavness

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Finding the Death Race

The Death Race is an annual event held by Peak Races in Pittsfield, Vermont. I found the race last year when the assistant swim coach at Middlebury invited me to a “workout” at the Peak training facility. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was told to arrive at 4:30 in the morning with my bike and workout clothes.

The training facility was a huge barn that had been converted into a sixty-bed bunk room. Peak brings athletes from around the country to train at this place. Last I heard, the US national women’s wrestling team was in the middle of a two hour set of jumping jacks after two hours of rock climbing and an hour of hot yoga in the custom built yoga studio.

The “workout” consisted of chopping logs, moving boxes of dirt, building a stone wall, hauling wooden beams, running up a mountain with sledge hammers and tractor tires multiple times, a 42 mile bike ride over two passes, and an hour long circuit of Cross Fit style weight lifting. We started with about fifteen athletes ranging from body builders to cross country skiers. After eight or nine hours of exercise, there were five people left, and Andy asked me to join the 2010 Death Race.

1 comment:

DanApril 27, 2010 at 3:33 AM
sick job on the races so far. make sure you rest up before the death race. i hope that includes riding my wheel on a casual ride from campus to lake dunmore...unless you are out of the country...
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