Death Race For Life Project Sponsored By Long Trail Brewing: Death Race Training Begins!

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, June 2, 2010

Death Race Training Begins!

So you race in a few bike races and think your tough...

I've put away the helmet and the cycling shoes, because now I need to start focusing on the upcoming Death Race in Vermont (June 26th). Check out the email I received from the race organizers a few days ago:

"Existence is a strange bargain: life owes us little; we owe life everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose....William Cowper

Mandatory Gear for 2010 DEATH RACE
1. $50.00 in Pennies
2. Post Hole Digger
3. 10 lb. Bag of Onions
4. Knife - 3 inch blade minimum
5. Book - Greek: An Intensive Course (Paperback) written by Hardy Hansen & Gerald Quinn

HINTS:
Know your competition.
You will walk the valley of darkness but fear no evil.

Please e-mail me if you aren't going to race. We have had a number of athletes drop out for various reasons. Many of the athletes have dropped because of injuries sustained while training, life (weddings, work obligations, family obligations, etc.), and a few because they were scared. I simply need to know if you won't be attending. We have just over 100 enrants thus far but I'm guessing by race day we'll be at 100 or just under.

Best of Luck with your training and I look forward to seeing you Friday, June 25th. We will have a pre race meeting at 5 p.m.

We will have two more e-mails in regards to race weekend.

Andy Weinberg"

What!? I don't want to eat 10 pounds of onions. I really don't want to know what the pennies are for either. I just got back from a 10 day trip to Greece with my girlfriend, and now it's time to buckle down. On Monday I woke up at 6:00 and ran up Lookout Mountain (45 minutes, a personal best!), descended, then picked up a big granite boulder and hauled it to the top on my shoulders - about four hours on lookout mountain that morning. People looked at me like I was nuts. Then I got in a good hour long lift at the gym and passed out at 9:00. I ate about 6,000 calories that day. I know this regiment sounds crazy, but these guys in Vermont are psycho. I think they actually want some racers to die.

I'm planning to head up to Vail next week to start chopping down dead trees at high elevation. I'll practice cutting the logs into smaller pieces and hauling them around - they always have wood chopping challenges in the Death Race. Better get good with the post hole digger too! A big piece of my training is building calluses on my shoulders, feet, and hands because the Death Race requires a lot of manual labor that would be awful with big blisters.

More to come. Enjoy the speedo photo from Greece.