Tecnu Extreme/Asolo adventure racing, one of the top teams in the world, will be heading to Malaysia to race an arduous 5 days stage race Dec 2-6th the Perak Amanjaya International Eco Adventure 2009 representing the United states.  We are thrilled to have one of the hand-picked 20 teams from around the globe to this invitation only race put on by ESPN STARS network which will air 75 hours of broadcasting about this event to over a billion people in the Asian market over 26 countries.  Running, mt. biking, paddling, rope work, and inline skating, this team will race 5-8 hours a day with day five crowning a winner of this innagural event showcasing the beautiful country of Malaysia. 

We are thankful for Leki for making us special inline skating poles last minute to help us go faster, and for Rollerblade for coming on board and providing the team with SUPER fast SpeedMachine 110 skates so we will blaze the roads during the inline skating section.  I will send you an update as we get closer to the race, but we are excited to race internationally at an event that will surely become a mainstay on the teams schedule going forward. Stay tuned for more information, and the race website so that you can follow the race as it unfolds, and cheer us on as we test the boundaries of human endurance.  Thank you for all our sponsors/partners for all your continued support of our journeys.  We won't let you down.

Live well this life.

 

Cheers!

 

Earring Doug Judson-Tecnu Extreme/Asolo adventure racing team captain.

www.espritdecorpadventureracing.com 

Want to win a Tec Labs cooler bag? In the spirit of the season we are playing a little holiday trivia. Check out our questions and enter the giveaway!

Click here to enter our giveaway!

Team Tecnu Extreme / StaphAseptic has some of the best athletes in our country competing in some of the toughest adventure races around. Here are some links to articles written about them:

Iona McKenzie, the "Queen of the Machine" is featured on Human Touch Wellness Council website. See her article athttp://www.humantouch.com/bio-mackenzie.html

Melissa Griffiths was features in BDO News http://lebaker.com/uploads/BDS_Director_in_San_Francisco_Pushes_Her_Endurance_to_the_Limit.pdf

Mark Richardson was featured in the Tracy Press

If you have a minute, check out the article. They are all fascinating..

This past weekend Team Tecnu Extreme/StaphAseptic traveled to the 250
mile Gold Rush Adventure Race with the intent on winning this
notoriously hard fall race put on by Adrian Crane and Mark Richardson..

The gun went off at 7:30 am thursday morning with 12 of the best teams
from the West Coast competing and started with a paddling section where the team
finished strongly and came out with a 2 minute lead. The race continued
on with a long biking leg into a trekking leg, and many optional
checkpoints of which the team was the only team to clear them all.

Finally, after 2 1/2 days of racing, with the finish line almost in
site, the team had finally dropped all the competitors, and settled into a
comfortable almost 5 hour lead, and came off their bikes and headed out
on a trekking leg to get more optional checkpoints. Team Tecnu
Extreme/StaphAseptic was clicking on all cylinders and pulling away
from the rest of the field. Whats even more impressive is that we are
a four person team, and the two nearest teams were both 3 person teams
who should have been able to move faster throughout the race course but
couldn't match this teams drive through the course. This team was rock
solid. What remained between the team and a sure victory was the
remainder of a short trek, hopping back aboard their bikes for a mostly
easy mt. bike. ride, an easy 22 mile paddle on Don Pedro Reservoir, and
then a 2 mile run to the finish line. There was a dark zone at the
waters edge, but the team was going to get there and be able to get a
rest, and get a time credit for sitting waiting for the paddling
section to open back up at 5 am, and that would only make their lead
over the rest of the field that much bigger, and so all was fantastic.
And then the adventure racing Gods decided to be cruel, and in a matter
of seconds, the race was over.

Running along a technical trail with shallow footholds, and sharp
rocks, Glenn Rogers was leading the charge when he stumbled, tripped, and went down.
When he fell he lacerated his finger, almost cutting it off, breaking it, and exposing the
tendons. With serious concern over loss of the finger, the team
reacted quickly to get him out of the back-country. The team was
forced to hit the 911 button on the teams SPOT tracking device which
sent out an emergency call to the police and fire department and race
staff. Kyle Peter and Leslie Reuter ran out of the back-country to
help flag down the emergency vehicles while Charlie Kharsa stayed with
Glenn to make sure that he didn't go into shock. Eventually Glenn and
Charlie hiked out to the incoming emergency vehicles, who then took
them to the hospital so that he could get patched up. So, here's the
silver lining. Glenn is okay, got patched up, and will live to race
another day. With safety as the first motto on the teams bylaws, we
knew that when it happened, getting Glenn the help he needed totally
overshadowed winning an adventure race. Were we bummed to have to pull
out of a race we were almost assuredly going to win? Absolutely! But
it is hard to bike and paddle with only one hand. But it is the pursuit
of a perfect race and controlling all the variables that
keeps us coming back to this incredibly hard sport we love so much. And
the team got to go eat burritos and have a well earned meal with the
assistance crew and Greg the camera guy who was following us throughout
the race, so all was not lost. : ) So....looking ahead to 2010. Look
for us January 15-17th in Georgia as we look to take the first points
of the year at the Checkpoint Tracker series. We will be racing against
Granite AR who just won the USARA Nationals, and also NUUN/Feed the
Machine, so the competition will be fierce, but we are confident in the
teams ability to challenge for the title. Stay safe and sane.

See you there!

Earring Doug Judson-Tecnu Extreme/StaphAseptic Adventure Racing Team
Captain

Jared Hanley, member of Team Tecnu Extreme, recaps his experience competing in the 2009 Primal Quest.  Read about it on his 2009 Primal Quest blog.

http://pq2009.blogspot.com/

Tecnu Extreme /StAphaseptic continues to crush the competition at the always arduous 250 mile Gold Rush adventure race in Northern, California put on by Mark Richardson and Adrian Crane. Currently well into the lead with a 2 1/2 hour lead over the rest of the field, Tecnu Extreme/StaphAseptic is out on an optional trekking leg picking up time bonuses that will further cement their lead, before heading back onto their bikes as they paddle to the Don Pedro reservoir. There the team will paddle through the night on a 20 mile paddle, and the race will finish with a mile run to the finish line tomorrow early morning in what looks like a very convincing win to finalize a VERY strong 2009 racing campaign. Running in second 2 1/2 hours behind Tecnu Extreme is NorCal AR which is a 3 person co-ed team. Tecnu Extreme/StaphAseptic is a 4 person co-ed team from Northern Cali and Wa. We would like to thank our sponsors and supporters for their continued friendships and partnerships, and for helping this team become a force to be reckoned with in the adventure racing community in North America. We cannot wait to see you all again for a fun 2010.

Cheers,

Earring Doug Judson-Team Captain of Tecnu extreme/StaphAseptic adventure racing
www.espritdecorpadventureracing.com

Laboratory Equipment
Source: Duke University

Scientists at Duke Univ. have found another problem linked to rising carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere: It'll make you itch more.

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report that poison ivy not only grows faster in a carbon dioxide-enriched atmosphere, but it also produces more urushiol, the chemical substance that causes the noxious vine to give most people a nasty rash. The lead author was Jacqueline Mohan, a recent doctoral graduate of the Nicholas School who is now a postdoctoral scientist at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass...

They found that poison ivy vines in the CO2-rich area grew 149% faster and produced a concentration of urushiol that was 153% higher than vines grown in control plots.

The rampant growth bodes ill not only for human health but also for the health of forests, which some scientists believe are already suffering because of a proliferation of vines that rob slower-growing trees and woody plants of available light, nutrients and water.

This is only a portion of the original article. To view entire article, visit laboratoryequipment.com

Meet Mark Richardson. An 18 year veteran with the Tracy Fire Department and a member of Team Tecnu Extreme / StaphAseptic

See the entire story in the Oakdale Leader here... http://www.oakdaleleader.com/news/article/837/

Today I received wonderful feedback from Marc in Cadiz, KY and I just had to share:

"I attended an occupational health and safety conference in July of this year. I
am a safety consultant that works for the Kentucky School Boards Insurance
Trust. While working my way through the safety expo I came across your product,
Tecnu Extreme. I listened intently as the pitch-man told me of how your product
worked and what it would do for a person affected with poison ivy, oak or sumac.

After hearing his pitch, I explained to him that I had an outbreak on me at the
time. He offered me a sample and told me to take it and try and get back with
him as to the results. I left with the sample, thinking, yea, right, more
snake-oil (ever the skeptic). I went back to my hotel room and proceeded to take
a shower and wash the effected areas with Tecnu Extreme.

Literally within minutes I was no longer itching, and the rash had begun to disappear. By the
next day, the redness was gone. It blew me away as I had been having issues with
the trifecta of poisons for years and all of a sudden a product that is making
it go away. Needless to say, I went back to the vendor booth and told him that I
was sold!!! In my line of work as a consultant to school districts, I often see
groundskeepers who are itching away from one of the poison trifectas. I
immediately recommend your product and now that I know it is relatively easy to
get, I tell everyone that complains about poison ivy, oak, or sumac. It really
works!!!!"

OK...

So the Untamed Adventure race was a weird one indeed, and that's the nature of adventure racing. Here's kind of a recap of what happenned this weekend. We raced hard, raced hard at the front of the pack for much of the race, but in the end, because we listenned to the race organizers once, and made a stupid decision in the end, even though we finished MOST of the course, our placement plummetted. Only 2 teams out of 44 finished the course. Even iconic and one of the best teams on the planet Merrell/Zanfel, who we raced ahead of for much of the race , suffered the same fate we did. We made a huge gamble and portaged most of the 19 mile second paddle to make the cutoff by 5pm, going all the way to 3rd place, but were the 2nd team to miss it, and were told NOT to go to the checkpoint where we were only 15 minutes away from, so we did as instructed, something that would come back to haunt us later on. we went on with there race, in 2nd place, then 4th, and were maintaining 4th place when the race directors decided to hit us hard for not going the extra 15 minutes to the paddling checkpoint, and dropped us behind all the teams that did, dropping us from 4th, to 17th which would have been the best finish we could have had. We continued hard , hit the checkpoints in 4th place for most of the remaining race, were ahead of Merrell/Zanfel and the two eventual top teams, made a couple of small mistakes along the way, but were many hours ahead of the top ten teams, when we reached the climbing site they turned us away saying we were now on an alternate A course because we didn't go to the paddling checkpoint, and that were were now unranked, and effectively out of the race. We argued our point that we had only done as instructed, but were told only two teams were now essentially racing for first and second, everyone else was racing for third, but because we did not hit that checkpoint, we were not unranked and could finish which as you can expect, pissed us off. We were going to finish the race anyway, and headed to checkpoint 30, the 2nd from last checkpoint. The bushwhacking, the terrain, was some of the toughest we had ever encountered, and were getting shredded. It was 11 pm, and then it started to pour. It was coming down so hard that you couldn't see more than 30 feet in front of you, and we went round and round looking for the checkpoint for over 4 hours. Knowing that despite being at the front of the pack, and having raced smart and hard for most of the race, that somehow we were unranked and now on an Alternate D course, we decided to call it quits, and pulled out our satellite phone, and call race headquarters. Over 25 teams quit in the pouring rain as the sent trucks out to get us at a remote location we had to hike to. We feel for the race organizers. It was a VERY tough race, tough course, tough competition, but in the end, the made some mistakes, and it hampered teams abilities to finish the course, and in the end, cost us a chance for top 5 against some of the best teams in the world. 44 teams started the race, and only 2 finished the entire course which is crazy. We did 90% of the course before quitting out of frustration knowing that even if we finished ahead of most of the teams, we would not be given credit for it. Such is adventure racing sometimes. Life goes on, and we are excited to know that the team is peaking heading towards PrimalQuest. We raced strong against some of the best teams, and handled them a spanking, so we know that our fitness level is peaking, and we expect great results for the rest of the year. Good learning experience, and we expect to come back to the Untamed adventure race next year and podium. We will NOT settle for anything less.

Included in this email are some excerpts from the race organizers from their field notes so you can see how tough it was, and all the teams that quit. In the end, our placement, means NOTHING. We beat almost ALL teams, but because we missed the paddling checkpoint as they instructed us to, we did not get credit for it. Frustrating, but life. Next race is July 25th, the Gold Rush training race in northern Cali. Our last training race and tuneup before the PrimalQuest. We are looking forward to it.

Cheers,

Earring Doug Judson-Tecnu Extreme/Staphaseptic adventure racing