EX2 has posted their race calendar for 2010! Next year EX2 will produce 21 races that break down into the following categories:

• 1 Adventure Run
• 2 Adventure Races
• 3 Mountain Bike Races
• 2 Mountain Bike Relay Races
• 1 Off-Road Triathlon/Duathlon
• and 12 Trail Runs!!!

I’ve just gone through the list of races and created an iCal file that you can easily import into things like iCal or your iPhone or even your Google Calendar!.

Womens_Half_Marathon_10192008_043, originally uploaded by Brian Knight Photography.

Well, it’s that time of year again… Time to start break out the running gear (and camera gear) and get out for some runs and races.

I’m still working on the big picture calendar, but I’ve already got the following events lined up to cover. All of these are brought to you by the good people at Pacers:

• Pacers Fun Run, TODAY!! 6:45pm in Clarendon, VA
• Earth Day 5K, April 18, Silver Spring, MD
• Pacers Running Festival, May 10
• Run as One 5K, June 27, evening race
• Independence 5000, July 4
• Crystal Run Twilighter, July 25, evening race

Maybe I’ll see some familiar faces in the crowd!

Nation’s Triathlon, originally uploaded by Brian Knight Photography.

For the TMS: Fixation show that opened last night, each photographer was required to write an essay describing the subculture explored in their work. My four photos, Swim, Bike, Run, Crash focused on the weekend warrior athletes and thus my essay tries to suss out what exactly drives these people.

What force drives a man to spend thousands of dollars on a machine made from the lightest space aged materials, wear a suit so tight that no part of his anatomy is left to the imagination, and don a helmet straight out of a sci-fi western? What glory is so great to cause men and women to dive into one of the most polluted waterways in the country? What need is satisfied for the thousands of people who gather in the soupy summer evening for a 10K race? What flashes through your mind when one slight mistake suddenly hurtles you through space and time in a manner not meant for living creatures? And what obsessive preoccupation is served by trekking out to remote places to capture such events with a camera?

In this city of suits and ties on one hand and crime statistics on the other, there is an alternative lifestyle of weekend warrior athletes driven to compete simply “because it is there.” I cannot fully answer the first four questions, except I know that I spend more money than I should on my own gear in hopes that it will help me perform just a little bit better. I’ve spent plenty of time in and consumed copious amounts of water from that same river in pursuit of my own recreational needs. I lined up in the same oppressive summer heat hoping to capture a series of shots showing the beauty and grace of athletes in motion. And I’ve put myself in more than one “oh shit” moment when I know something very bad is about to happen and am powerless to stop it. I cannot tell you why we do any of these things except that when it works, when you get that image you want, when you cross the finish line, when it all comes together, you forget the pain and suffering and only want more.

What?! You were not one of the 500+ 700+ people who came to the show last night? That’s ok, even though you missed a great party you can still check out all of the amazing photos this week. Doors will be open Noon(ish) to 7PM(ish). If you really want to add to your viewing experience, come Wednesday evening and watch the skaters too!

Monster_Mash_MTB_10112008_1370, originally uploaded by Brian Knight Photography.

Apologies for the delay, but the aforementioned 9-5 job has been more of a 7-7er the past several weeks… The good news is that the wicked head cold I have been fighting all week finally allowed me a chance to finish editing the photos! All of the Monster Mash photos are now online. I hope you enjoy them.

One of the next set of photos you will see in my Flickr stream will be of my camera and lenses boxed up and ready for shipping to the Canon repair facility. A downside to hanging out on the trails shooting races is that I sometimes forget to treat my gear with the proper amount of delicacy required by such fine, precision optical equipment. This is all just to say that while I took a ton of photos at the MM, many of them were way too soft for publishing, so if you don’t see yourself in the gallery, I’ll definitely do my best to get you the next time…

Earlier this week wire stories began trickling out from local stations in South Dakota/North Dakota (thanks Google Blog Search!) with news about Primal Quest: Badlands and today we have confirmation with a newly re-badged and very ominous looking website that is chock full of news about next year’s race.

Some highlights:

• Location: Badlands of South Dakota
• Length: Longest ever PQ at 600 miles
• Support Crews: None
• Disciplines: trekking, mountain biking, orienteering, swimming, and paddling plus spelunking and climbing. And navigation, lots and lots of navigation.
• Local Wildlife: deer, buffalo, bald eagles, prairie dogs, turkeys, elk and big horn sheep.

PQ Badlands is sure to be another race for the ages. To see what the Montana version of “The World’s Most Challenging Human Endurance Competition” looked like, check out my photo gallery.

Registration opens 12:00PM (EST) on November 15, 2008 but I’m going to submit my leave request now and start pitching story ideas. See you in S. Dakota!

Nation’s Triathlon, originally uploaded by Brian Knight Photography.

ING Capital Criterium, originally uploaded by Brian Knight Photography.

Spent the last two Sunday’s hanging out downtown covering races.

On the 14th I teamed up with Dan Hicok Photography to shoot the third annual Nation’s Triathlon. Several thousand people swam in the Potomac and then biked and ran past monuments, museums, and Federal buildings. As a result I ended up taking several thousand photographs and am still working on the final edits though I did manage to post a bunch to a teaser gallery.

Yesterday found me hanging out on Pennsylvania Ave again this time shooting the ING Capital Criterium for DCist. The highlight was an 85km race that saw professional cyclists from around the world fighting for the $50,000 prize purse. I tried to be a bit more disciplined yesterday, but still managed to shoot over two thousand photos (something super easy to do considering the race course was only a 1km loop, meaning I saw the pack 85 times in two hours – avg speed was 24mph). Still have a lot more photos to edit, but the teaser gallery for this race is here and you can look for them to show up today on DCist too!

Here’s Mr. Stermer’s reply:

From: Dugald Stermer
To: Gary
Sent: Monday, September 8, 2008 12:06:53 PM
Subject: Re: Use of my copyrighted photo.

Hello Gary.

I did do the illustration, from, as you point out, your photograph. However it was supplied me by Bicycling magazine as reference. My assumption was that they had a staff photographer take the picture or at least had acquired permission. Your quarrel is with them, and I sympathize, even empathize.

The art director’s mail is erin******@rodale.com.

Best of luck,

Dugald

Cleared for take-off, originally uploaded by gmr2048.

UPDATE, September 9, 2008: Ok, Gary at least heard back from the artist, Mr. Stermer so I will dial back my rhetoric about his copyright infringements. Bicycling Magazine still has some explaining to do.

All images and text © 2007 Gary Ryan. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the express prior written permission. For permission, email me.

Seems that someone didn’t quite take to heart the “Copyright ©” part of this cool shot of Larry Camp clearing a log. Compare this image to the “illustration” found on the Bicycling magazine website (or in the October 2008 PRINT edition of the mag). They’re an exact match. Well, no, that’s not entirely true, as Gary points out on his blog, several modifications were made:

Things that are different
Jersey color
Number on race plate
Their rider doesn’t have a head. Poor fella.

Gary’s friend Ben helps out with the comparison:

Way to go Mr. Stermer Bicycling Magazine. You all seem to be playing from the old school way of business that Mr. Stermer rails against when he talks about the erosion of intellectual property rights or when he wrote the following:

Further, much of the theft has to do with moving the stolen pictures to other sites on the internet anyway, basically dot for dot. None of us has the time, will or resources to try to track down these illegal acts, and the thieves know it. Further, unless we take the considerable time and trouble to register each of our pictures with the U.S. Copyright Office, even if we did track down an offender all we can do at best is get a cease-and-desist order, which he may or may not choose to obey.

The thing about the internet is that as information housed on the web grows larger, the world will continue to shrink. We now have family, friends, and all manner of online contacts spread all over the world. And they are all consuming bits and pieces of the data stream, which means we do not have to worry about the time and resources to track down illegal acts. Just like the one illustrated above, illegal acts are going to pop up almost instantly. Combine each of our social networks with search engines like TinEye and the world flattens even more.   Thieves will no longer be able to hide.

I spent quite a few of my days in Montana driving around the middle of nowhere with Alexandra Alter (seen in photo above), feature writer for the Wall Street Journal. She was great company as we searched for stories and photos and video that might capture the essence of a race chock full of amazing stories, fantastic quotes, and some of the most beautiful scenery you can imagine. Her story, following Team #28’s Kathy Roche-Wallace, is in Friday’s paper and online now.

As someone who has recently struggled to get my version of the race pared down to under one thousand words (see the October issue of Trail Runner), Alexandra’s version does a great job at capturing the many challenges a race like PQ Montana presented to racers. Go pick up a copy of the Journal at your local newsstand or read it online right now! Oh and be sure to watch the video. My left arm and camera make a cameo at 20 seconds into the film. Just don’t blink!

Iron Mom

Alexandra Alter follows a 47-year-old woman out to conquer 548 miles of mountains, snow and exhaustion.

By ALEXANDRA ALTER
July 25, 2008; Page W1

Big Sky, Mont.

Four days and 263 miles into a backcountry race and Kathy Roche-Wallace isn’t even halfway to the finish. She’s limping on a big toe that is infected and swollen. She has a purple bruise the size of a grapefruit on her left thigh from a spill down a mountainside. Her sweat smells of vinegar and ammonia, a sign her fuel-starved body has started burning muscle. |Read Full Story|

Primal Quest Montana – Race Day 4, originally uploaded by Brian Knight Photography.

Wow was that ever painful. I’d like to take this moment to track down and kick the ass of whomever came up with that cute little diddy about sticks and stones… Clearly they never tried to be a writer, professional or otherwise.

I am happy to report that when inspiration finally and truly took hold I was driving down 395 in rush hour traffic. Instead of zoning out to NPR or cursing my fellow commuters for their crappy driving skills I started talking to myself. A little kernel of an idea snuck into my brain and I started working it over and over until I had a couple decent paragraphs going… When I pulled up to my house twenty minutes later I rushed inside, fired up the Mac, logged into Google Docs, and started typing on a fresh new page. Four hours later I was done. Whew.

And now I leave you with this classic West Wing moment:

CHARLIE
Aren’t you supposed to be writing?

TOBY
I am writing.

CHARLIE
I don’t see paper.

Toby walks up to him and sits down.

TOBY
“We can sit back and admit with grave sensitivity that life isn’t fair and the less-advantaged are destined to their lot in life and the problems of those on the other side of the world should stay there, that our leaders are cynical and can never be an instrument to change, but that, my friends, is not worthy of you, it’s not worthy of the President, it’s not worthy of a great nation, it’s not worthy of America!”

Paper’s for wimps.