AdventureCORPS News, May 8, 2008

Greetings, fellow athlete-adventurers!

In this Issue:
• Quote for the Day
• Furnace Creek 508: Awesome race field
• Badwater Rosters: 1987 through 2008
• Survival at Extreme Events
• Badwater Video: ultra cool!
• The Road to Badwater: Alene Nitzky
• 508er on the Road to Washington, DC
• Those Plastic Recycling Symbols
• Uranium Mining next to our National Parks?
• This Newsletter Archived on our Blog
• And Now For Something Completely Different

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

"The four of us were once world-class wanderers, equipped with weeks to spare but little cash; now that we're all professionals, with less time and more money, we try to pack our outings into small, highly structured slots. One day I realized that we spend more days plotting our trips than taking them, and it made me think that we'd lost our adventurous edge, that we were no longer willing to do something that amounts to nothing." - Steven Rinella
______________________________

FURNACE CREEK 508: INCREDIBLE 2008 RACE FIELD

We are extremely pleased and honored by the remarkable quality, and quantity, of applicants for the 25th Anniversary Furnace Creek 508. An extremely impressive race field of 100 soloists, 37 two-person teams, and 18 four-person teams has been assembled. Currently those athletes are confirming their entry in the race. Once they do so, in about a week, we will post the entire race roster to the Furnace Creek 508 website: www.the508.com. Thank you, 508 racers, crew, and staff for your support of "the toughest 48 hours in sport!"

______________________________

BADWATER ULTRAMARATHON ROSTERS: 1987 through 2008

The online race roster for the 2008 Badwater Ultramarathon has now been expanded to include bib number, wave start time, personal website links, and charity links.

Additionally, the rosters for all previous Badwater Ultramarathon races have been posted to our online database. Soon all race results from throughout the history of the world's toughest foot race will also be online and searchable in all manner of interesting ways. Check out this growing resource here.

Note: We will be adding all Furnace Creek 508 data to this online database, too. With decades of history from both of these epic Death Valley races to sort, prepare, and add to the database, it's a time-consuming process. It's also a fantastic resource. Thanks, Cathy!
______________________________

NEW STORY AT BADWATER.COM:
BADWATER AND EXTREME EVENT SURVIVAL TIPS
By Arthur Webb

I have officially completed the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon nine times. The following list covers everything that has worked best for me at this race. Some points may also help other runners, crews and pacers, at Badwater or at any extreme event, spend more time focusing on race goals instead of being distracted by lots of piled-on suffering and unnecessary down time.

1. Physical training.

I run 120-miles a week for three months. Half the mileage is on the flats and half in the hills. I do daily core strengthening and stretching workouts at a fitness center and cross train with long bike rides. This stamina and confidence boosting training regimen may seem extreme, but so is Badwater or any ultra race.

Full story.
______________________________

AWESOME BADWATER VIDEO FROM 2007

Bär Shoes put together one of the nicest, most well done videos I've ever seen of the Badwater Ultramarathon, featuring the two German athletes who wore Bär shoes in the 2007 race, Achim Heukemes and Dagmar Grossheim. It has great music, too, plus has subtitles to translate the German. If you are interested in the Badwater Ultramarathon or just love Death Valley, take a few minutes to enjoy the show at this link.
______________________________

THE ROAD TO BADWATER: ALENE NITZKY

Local ultramarathoner pushing the limits
By Miles Blumhardt/The Coloradoan

The curious stares Alene Nitzky draws while jogging along the Spring Creek Trail are warranted. After all, dressed in the all-white training suit she looks like a cross between the Flying Nun and someone responding to a hazmat incident.

But then the 44-year-old nurse isn't your normal runner. Full story.
______________________________

508 VETERAN RUNNING FOR U.S. CONGRESS

Ron "Sparrow" Shepston of Silverado, CA (in Orange County) has been a fixture at our Death Valley cycling events for more than 15 years, recently riding our Death Valley Century with several family members. It's a good thing he has spent all those years honing his stamina and reflexes, because he's currently running for Congress in California District 42, a diverse community stretching from Mission Viejo in the south to Chino in the north and west to La Habra. Approximately two thirds of the district is in Orange County with Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties contributing evenly to the final third.

Here's the scoop on Ron and here.
______________________________

THOSE PLASTIC RECYCLING SYMBOLS

If America were going to be characterized by any one material, it would have to be plastic. It's in our food packaging, our clothing, our cars, our toys, our waterways, our streets, and, yes, it’s even in our bodies.

By way of the food chain, and also drinking water and using plastic items in our everyday life, we are ingesting plastics every day, in the form of the following chemicals:

* Cancer-causing PFOAs
* PBDEs, which cause reproductive problems
* Phthalates, another group of reproductive toxins
* BPA, which disrupts your endocrine system by mimicking the female hormone estrogen

Do You Know What Plastic Recycling Symbols Mean?

The Daily Green offers this handy guide on the various types of plastic. Be sure to check it out; it turns out that many of those plastic products with the little triangle-with-number symbols are not actually recyclable.

Full story, including more of Dr. Mercola's comments quoted above.
______________________________

URANIUM CLAIMS SPRING UP ALONG GRAND CANYON RIM
By Judy Pasternak, Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2008

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZ. -- Thanks to renewed interest in nuclear power, the United States is on the verge of a uranium mining boom, and nowhere is the hurry to stake claims more pronounced than in the districts flanking the Grand Canyon's storied sandstone cliffs.

On public lands within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park, there are now more than 1,100 uranium claims, compared with just 10 in January 2003, according to data from the Department of the Interior.

Full story.

Thanks for your support and participation, everyone! We look forward to seeing you out there soon!

Yours in sport,
Chris Kostman
Chief Adventure Officer and Race Director

Copyright 2008 AdventureCORPS, Inc. Copies of this Internet posting may be made and distributed in whole without further permission. Please forward to a friend by clicking the little envelope icon below.