Happy New Year!!!

A message from Executive Director Brent Freedland

Hello fellow adventure racers!

As we head into 2026 and reflect on the year behind us, I hope you all are daydreaming about last year’s adventures and new ones that lie ahead. 2025 was an eventful year for USARA as we continued to explore new ways to support racers and race directors, and we were thrilled to host 74 teams in Bentonville, Arkansas for our 25th National Championship.
 
Looking ahead, we are excited about the new adventure racing season, one that is, in fact, already in motion. Bend Racing is working hard to put together what will be a unique, challenging, and beautiful 2026 Nationals course, and we are thrilled to be hosting the Championship in the Pacific Northwest for the first time. We hope to see many of you make the journey to Oregon for what will surely be a memorable event.
 
As we transition to the new year, I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new Executive Director at USARA and acknowledge and thank two of our leaders who are moving into new roles. As many of you know, after five years of leading USARA as Executive Director, Michael Garrison has stepped down as ED, but I’m excited that he is sliding into the Board Chair seat.
 
As Chair, he will stay highly involved with USARA, which I am thankful for as he has been instrumental in helping the organization evolve since the transition back in 2020. I have worked closely with Garrison since our initial group (Kate and Cliff White, Abby Perkiss, and Mark Lattanzi) took the reins of USARA, and over the last two years, as I became more involved in managing operations at USARA, I have worked with him even more directly.
 
Garrison’s ability to see both the big picture and the minutia made him the perfect leader as we set out to both preserve the core of what USARA has done well but also reexamine and reinvent how we operate in our quest to improve upon the foundations USARA-founder Troy Farrar left behind. Some of Garrison’s many strengths include his ability to remain objective and connect with those he works with while keeping the work focused and on point, and anyone who has worked with him knows that he is a model manager. I could wax on for quite some time, as I am prone to do, but I’ll simply say: THANK YOU, Michael Garrison, for your leadership and sacrifices for USARA and AR over these past five years. Truly, there isn’t a better human being, and it has been an honor working with you.
 
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge and thank Abby Perkiss for her work as Chair of the Board. Especially during the early years of the transition, Abby coordinated regular meetings, often on a weekly basis, and she worked closely with Garrison; there were times when it’s fair to say that no one put more into USARA than Abby. She rarely took a public role, but without her collaboration with Garrison, I’m sure we wouldn’t be where we are as an organization as I step into the Executive Director role. While she passes the baton to Garrison, Abby will remain on the board alongside our other current board members: Andy Bacon, Steph Ross, and Paula Waite. I’m grateful to work with them all.
 
For those who do not know me, I have been adventure racing since 2006 and have been fortunate to compete all around the world. I was privileged as a young racer to be invited to race with some amazing mentors and teammates with GOALS ARA, and while most of those teammates have long ago retired, I learned from the beginning that this sport is special because of the community it fosters and the teamwork that it requires. You cannot succeed in this sport without embracing the selflessness that it asks of you, and this greater-than-self commitment and the extended AR family is what has kept me in the sport for two decades.
 
Since my time with GOALS ARA, I have continued racing and race directing with Rootstock Racing, I have been fortunate and humbled to race with dozens of exceptional teammates who have continued to teach me about the sport but also about life off the course, and I have been working in various capacities with USARA for over a decade. I joined Troy’s advisory board some time ago, managed the USARA rankings, represented racers as a Racer Rep, and have now served on USARA’s working board since the transition in 2020. In addition, I have been working in an administrative role for the last two years, and in that time, I have been fortunate to foster relationships with the many amazing race directors across the nation.
 
2026 will be a new adventure for me as I continue to immerse myself in the role of ED, but I am excited for the challenge and thrilled to continue collaborating with the many amazing RDs who choose to partner and sanction with USARA. We already have some exciting new projects in the works, and we are already talking about what might come next.
 
As we turn the page on 2025, I want to thank all of you for the continued support you show, not only for USARA but more importantly for the dozens of race directors who keep our sport going. We truly are a sport that is built on the foundations and relationships our community maintains, and those foundations are laid and nurtured by you, the racers.

Here’s to another successful year of adventure racing. We always love hearing from you, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at info@usara.com with your ideas, thoughts, questions, or observations. Stay tuned for an update on what USARA has been working on, and have a truly happy New Year, hopefully one full of amazing adventures and AR community.
 
Brent