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Team Mighty Dog Takes a Bite
Out of NGAR 2004
(2nd Place Elite Division)

" Team Mighty Dog" spent Saturday and Sunday (January 17/18) battling bitter temperatures and constant rain in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia to finish in 2nd Place in the 2nd Annual NGAR hosted by Raceday Inc., a non-profit racing organization. The race format included 30 hours of non-stop action with approximately 100 miles of mountain biking, canoeing and hiking/running. Ardie Olson of Cumming, Colleen X. Pitts of Alpharetta (who was racing with a broken figure from a training injury) and David J. Cook of Dunwoody make up Team Mighty Dog. Sherry Olson and Russel Partain supported the team throughout the 26 hours it took to finish the grueling course. Competition was tough with nationally recognized teams coming from across the United States.

At the start, the 78 teams competing huddled in the parking lot of East Fannin Elementary School in Morgantown beside their support vehicles to plot their course using the UTM coordinates provided. The first leg of the race required the teams to portage their canoes to Lake Blue Ridge (over a mile away from the start). The next leg was mountain biking on a route they have to strategically choose themselves to get from one checkpoint to the next as quick as possible. With legs tired from biking over 50 miles, the team's third leg required them to hike/bushwhack over 30 miles across several mountain ridges.


left to right: Artie, Colleen, David

Some key navigation choices in this leg (as well as months of training together prior to the race) lead to Team Mighty Dog's overall success. The fourth and final leg of the race was an all out sprint to the finish on their mountain bikes. The weather conditions were brutal on the racers with only 6 teams finishing the full course and meeting the 12:00 noon cut-off on Sunday to officially finish the race. Although, the temperatures stayed in the low 30's for most of the race , it seemed warm compared to last year's starting temperature of minus five degrees.

Team Mighty Dog finished 3rd at NGAR in 2003, under extreme conditions, with one team member suffering 2nd degree frostbite on two toes. You can bet they'll be back in 2005!