Team Spyder is off and running again

Daily Camera

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Individually, Travis Macy, Dave Mackey and Danelle Ballengee have talent to burn.

You name it - trail running, mountain biking, snowshoe racing, rock climbing, paddling, peak bagging - and there aren't many people in Colorado who can keep up with them.

But when you put them together as a team, they're world-class. Competing as Team Spyder, the athletes have an ambitious schedule of multisport adventure races on the schedule this year, including the multiday, $250,000 Primal Quest Expedition Adventure Race slated for late June in Utah.

Although the three raced together last year, Mackey, of Boulder, and Macy, of Louisville, have been racing with other teammates while Ballengee, of Dillon, has been getting back into form after November ankle surgery. They recently returned from winning an X-adventure Raid World Cup two-day race in Australia, and in late February, they were second at the three-day Camdex Adventure Race in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

On March 25, racing as an individual, Macy beat three-time Eco-Challenge champ and Boulder resident Ian Adamson in a five-hour race in Moab, Utah. Ballengee said she is not 100 percent, but she finished eighth at the Winter Triathlon World Championships on March 25 in Norway.

Their inaugural event as a team this year will be a six-hour adventure race June 4 at the Teva Mountain Games in Vail.

"Our goal is to finish on the podium at every race we do," Mackey said. "Physically, we can all compete at a high level in every discipline. Navigation is the only area that we don't excel at, but we're all getting better at it."

Until recently, Mackey, 36, was best known for his success as a trail runner. The Boulder real-estate agent, a two-time U.S. trail-running champ and back-to-back recipient of the USA Track & Field Ultrarunner of the Year award, got bitten by the adventure racing bug a few years ago and helped teams finish 15th and fifth in the past two Raid World Championship events.

Macy, 23, a 2005 University of Colorado graduate, has been adventure racing for several years and has been around it since he was a preteen. His dad, Evergreen attorney Mark Macy, is an eight-time finisher of Eco-Challenge, the defunct made-for-television race that helped launch the sport on a global level.

Ballengee, 34, is one of the most accomplished female endurance athletes in the U.S. and arguably the best female adventure racer in the world. She's a former member of Colorado-based Team Nike/Balance Bar, which, from 2002 to 2004, finished first or second in every major race around the world.