The United States Adventure Racing Association has been the primary national organizing body of adventure racing for over twenty years. Troy Farrar founded USARA in 1998 with the intention of making the sport more accessible to novice racers while creating more robust safety standards and offering high quality insurance at an affordable price for race directors. Since then, USARA has sought to advance the sport through various initiatives and programs including the Women in AR campaign, USARA-sanctioned calendars and rankings, individual mentoring for race directors, and the organization of a National Championship with a corresponding sponsorship program for regional champions.
 
In 2020, a new leadership group assumed responsibility of USARA and is committed to restructuring USARA as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. This new leadership team will continue to build upon the strong foundations already in place thanks to the work of those who came before, and they will work with the greater adventure racing community to expand the organization’s reach and impact. Since its founding, USARA has worked to encourage the growth of the sport and bring together racers and race directors across the nation. The new team will cultivate an even stronger, more unified, and more vibrant adventure racing community in the US.

Executive director

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Photo: Legendary Randy Ericksen Films

Mike Garrison

Mike Garrison grew up with no disciplined athletics, but has always loved adventure and the outdoors; skiing, climbing, hiking, and mountain biking whenever possible. He was first introduced to adventure racing by watching Eco -in the late 90’s. After thinking of it as a “someday maybe” for years, he completed a Don Mann-directed sprint race in 2001. In 2002, he worked his way up to his first 24-hour race, which his team won by staying found and not quitting. That was it, he was hooked. His career highlights from racing on a variety of teams include dozens of 24-hour races across the country with a handful of wins and a 2nd place finish at Nationals in 2014. He has also completed several expedition races, starting with Untamed New England in 2012 and culminating most recently with Eco Challenge: Fiji in 2019. Garrison has also directed races from sprint to 36 hours in length in central and southern Indiana and will reliably tell anyone who will listen that it’s harder than racing. In 2018, he joined the board of the Adventure Racing Cooperative, deciding it was time to contribute directly to the future of the sport he loves, and he looks forward to continuing that endeavor with USARA.

Working board

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Photo: AdventureLifeSA

Brent Freedland

Brent Freedland discovered Eco-Challenge as a teenager, and he spent the next decade daydreaming about adventure races. Since 2006, he has competed in over 100 events, including 11 USARA National Championships and 12 expedition races. Racing highlights include winning the 2018 USARA National Championship and 2018 podium finishes at XPD and Untamed New England, but his favorite memories are the little moments with his teammates out on the course. In addition, Brent has directed events for over a decade, first with GOALS ARA and then as a co-founder of Rootstock Racing with his wife, Abby. He has worked with USARA for almost as long, as the Ranking Coordinator, a Racer Rep, and an advisory board member. He counts his work with Rootstock Racing as his greatest accomplishment in the sport to date and loves designing courses and watching racers explore them. He lives in Philadelphia with his family.
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Photo: Legendary Randy Ericksen Films

Mark Lattanzi

Mark Lattanzi stumbled upon adventure racing in the Fall of 2000 when he volunteered for a 24-hour event in North Carolina. After seeing all the fun the racers were having, he signed up for his first AR a few weeks later. Since then, he has raced all over the US and the world. He has volunteered at races, designed and vetted courses, learned to navigate (and wrote a book on it), helped start the Adventure Racing Cooperative, and organized fifteen or twenty races with his wife Lora under the TanZ Navigation label. In addition, he is one of the founding members of the Blue Ridge Orienteering Club. He has raced on quite a few different teams over the years and always enjoys getting to know new racers and learning new things.These days, he lives in the mountain town of Blacksburg, VA with Lora (who has convinced him that adventure travel is as fun as adventure racing) and their two German Shepherds. 
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Photo: Ali Bronsdon

abby perkiss

Abby Perkiss volunteered at her first AR in 2006, at which time she declared that she could never do an adventure race. A year later, she completed her first adventure race, and has since competed in dozens of events at the regional, national, and international levels. She is a two-time USARA national champion who still ranks learning to rappel off the garage roof as one of the highlights of her racing career. In 2010, Abby began designing and directing races, first under the banner of the GOALS Adventure Racing Association and then as Rootstock Racing, which she and teammate/husband Brent Freedland founded in 2015. Abby believes that the best part of adventure racing is working together with teammates to create something better than the sum of their individual parts. She lives in Philadelphia with Brent and their two kids, Zoe - who currently prefers RDing to racing - and Simon, the newest member of the team. 
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Photo: Legendary Randy Ericksen Films

cliff white

Cliff White competed in his first adventure race at age 18 and has been hooked ever since. Cliff has now raced in 18 states and six countries on three continents, including five USARA National Championships, three Adventure Race World Series events and the 2019 Eco-Challenge in Fiji. In between, he also squeezed in a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, a thru-paddle of the Maine Island Trail, and more than 20 ultramarathons. As half of the leadership team of Strong Machine Adventure Racing (along with wife Kate), Cliff has been a race director for five years, putting on the Maine Summer Adventure Race and the Wildlands Adventure Challenge. He believes that adventure racing should exist and be fun for all types of racers, that the sport is the perfect way to get people active in the outdoors, and that an adventure race is not an adventure race without some epic paddling. He lives in Portland, Maine, with Kate, their son Wilder, and their adventure pup Mose.
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Photo: JS O'Connor Photography

kate white

Kate White participated in her first adventure race in 2012 with her husband, father-in-law, and friend, and crossed the finish line at the back of the pack. Nonetheless, she was intrigued by the sport and has spent the years since then learning, training, and pushing her limits. Race career highlights include many USARA National Championships, a tour of races from coast-to-coast in more than a dozen states, and expedition racing around the world including ITERA in Ireland, Nordic Islands in Sweden and Norway, and Eco Challenge in Fiji. Kate also co-directs races as part of Strong Machine Adventure Racing and enjoys balancing the suffering and the fun in the courses she designs. Kate lives in the adventure paradise of Portland, Maine with her husband (Cliff), son (Wilder), and dog (Mose), where her favorite activities include sea kayaking and hiking or running in the hills. 

ADDITIONAL PERSONNEL

rachAel abler

Rachael Abler, USARA's calendar coordinator, has worked in collegiate outdoor programming for nearly a decade, serving as the Assistant Director of Outdoor Education at Colorado College. A native Michigander, Rachael discovered the love of the outdoors as a child, enjoying access to endless adventures: exploring the woods of her backyard and traveling “up north” for camping, biking, paddling, and skiing trips with family and friends. So, essentially, she has been adventure racing from the very beginning! Rachael was introduced to the more formalized world of AR in 2009, when she took an "AR 101” course, partaking in a few local races before taking a pause to pursue grad school and her career.  She has since shifted her focus back to AR, driven by the camaraderie, challenge, growth, fun, and the sense of adventure these races provide. When not actively racing, Rachael is training, volunteering, or researching upcoming races, and she is motivated to help others enter the sport as well.

emily korsch

Emily Korsch, USARA's social media coordinator, discovered adventure racing in 2009 as a converted iron-distance triathlete, and she's never looked back. Competing with Missouri-based Alpine Shop and Minnesota-based WEDALI, her teams have finished six USARA National Championships, earning two top-five results. Emily tried her first multi-day race in 2015 and has gone on to complete seven expedition adventure races to date, including ARWC Wyoming, Maya Mountain Adventure Challenge Belize, and GodZone New Zealand. Emily also thoroughly enjoys orienteering and navigating with the St. Louis Orienteering Club, and she and her husband Scott, aka "Erl," are directors for their local Castlewood Eight-Hour Adventure Race and instructors for an AR101 and AR201 series of classes. Emily's favorite part of adventure racing is finding and executing stellar navigation route choices. She lives in St. Louis, MO with Erl and Tess the Trail Dog, and she loves wearing pink on Wednesdays.

Clifton Lyles

Like most of us, Clifton Lyles, chair of USARA's Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, was drawn to adventure racing by watching Eco-Challenge in the late 90s. After seeing Eco-Challenge Morocco in 1999, he signed up for the first event he could find, a High-Tec sprint race in northern California. He learned a lot from that race and went back to work on his endurance and mountain biking. That same year, Cliff moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he became connected with an active AR community. Competing in roughly a dozen races a year, from sprints to expeditions, he continued to hone his skills in events such as Raid the North Canada 2004; Primal Quest San Juan’s 2004; Raid Extreme Bend Oregon 2005; and Primal Quest Utah 2006. After living abroad for several years, Cliff got back into endurance sports again when he returned to the US in 2015. Many will recognize him as captain of Onyx Adventure Racing, the first all-African American adventure race team to compete on the global stage, at Eco-Challenge Fiji in 2019. Cliff is passionate about bringing more diversity to the sport of adventure racing; he believes in order for the sport to grow and thrive, it needs to appeal to all people.

Steph ross

Stephanie Ross, USARA's nationals coordinator, competed in her first adventure race in 2002, Odyssey's twelve-hour Jeep Kentucky AR at Carter Caves State Resort Park. She raced it solo and was completely demoralized by the course - and also completely hooked on the sport. A year later, she designed her first race, the Red River Gorge American Classic, aka the Fig, now the longest-running adventure race in Kentucky. She continued to organize races under the Flying Squirrel Adventure banner until 2015, when she turned over the Unbridled AR series and the Fig to 361 Adventures. Her efforts now focus on bringing more women (and youth) into the sport, through the Women of AR campaign. She has directed two USARA National Championships and has assisted with planning and vetting courses for Nationals since 2010.

Founder

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Photo: Vladimir Bukalo

Troy farrar

Troy Farrar founded Terra Firma Promotions, one of the pioneering companies to produce adventure races in the United States. Terra Firma produced over 200 events under Troy’s leadership, with the mission of bringing extraordinary adventures into the lives of ordinary people. In 1998, Troy founded the USARA and has served as the president for 22 years. Under Troy’s guidance, the USARA has developed safety standards, insurance coverage, a national ranking system and the USARA Adventure Race National Championship. Troy has competed in over 100 adventure races in three different countries, dozens of 12 and 24 hour mountain bike races and the Texas Water Safari which is dubbed the World’s Toughest Boat Race. Racing highlights include several 12 and 24 hour mountain bike race wins and two podium finishes at the USARA Sprint Adventure Race National Championship. Troy and his wife Debbie are focused on creating the same spirit of adventure in their son and daughter and look forward to the day when the Farrar tribe competes in their first adventure race together.

UNITED STATES ADVENTURE RACING ASSOCIATION

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