Bound for the Red Fox Adventure Race powered by Polartec®


Jimi Alida riding through a late Winter.
Jimi Alida was just nine years old when her mother entered her into a kid’s triathlon in her hometown of Steamboat Springs, CO. She didn’t know how to swim but she won the race anyway because she ran fast, and her life as an outdoor athlete and adventurer began.

“I was pretty mad at my mom for entering me, and I was the last out of the pool, but then I won anyway,” Jimi said with a laugh.

A couple of decades later she is preparing for the most interesting race of her life.
Jimi is the captain of the U.S. squad traveling to Russia in June for the 14th annual Red Fox Adventure Race, powered by Polartec, which runs June 11 to 14.

Jimi is also the store manager at the first Red Fox outlet in America, in Lyons, CO.
Polartec is sponsoring the first-ever women-only team consisting of Jimi Alida, Shawnie Mulligan, Kathleen Wickum and Amy Caldwell. It has been five years since the last American team attended Red Fox’s international adventure race.


Jimi gets distracted on a training run.
“I’m really looking forward to this challenge,” Jimi said between training sessions in Lyons.

It’s a natural fit for the Colorado native. Soon after that first triathlon in Steamboat, Jimi began competitive skiing. Then came running, and mountain biking, and just about anything else that involved being outside and moving at high speeds – her two favorite things.

This year’s Red Fox Adventure Race will be in the Karelian region of Russia, on the shores of Onega Lake, 300 miles north St. Petersburg.

The adventure race consists of three loops that require racers to run, bike, kayak, rock climb, swim, wade through mud, woods, brush, water, under and over stone. The race has a short course which must be completed within 48 hours, and a long course, to be completed within 72 hours. The U.S. team is competing in the long course competition.

“And then the other events are primarily more adventure,” she says. “Like jumping off of cliffs, and reaching checkpoints out in the middle of a river, and spelunking and there’s one mystery event which we won’t find out the details until we are there.”

“That’s what I am most excited about. Not so much the running and the biking, but just the adventure of it. To be told you have to jump 40 feet off this cliff to reach this checkpoint way out there in the water. That’s what I’m exciting about.”

The race is timed, as a team. “So you are only as fast as your weakest member,” Jimi says.

“We didn’t have a lot of time and we’ve hardly trained together at all. But I’m confident,” Jimi says with a smile. She found out she was on the team, and its captain, less than two months ago.

“Its 72 hours so it really doesn’t matter who is the fastest,” she explained. “It comes down to attitude, endurance, and a willingness to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”


Jimi Alida and Cathy Wickum on a paddle workout.
In past years the race has been dominated by Russian teams, and a few European countries.

“I’ve been working on getting my running endurance up. I have been biking all winter, I got a Fat Bike this winter so I rode all winter. So now I’m working on my cardio and endurance, getting those up.”

Not too shabby for a 30-something mother of three.

How did Jimi assemble the first-ever all-woman team to compete in this race?

“When I started working for Red Fox, I was looking to put together a team of ambassador athletes to represent our brand,” she explained.

During this process Jimi came across a lot of talented athletes through various social media channels and by checking in with friends. The end result is her team of Shawnie Mulligan from Vail, Colorado, Kathleen Wickum from Lyons, Colorado, and Amy Caldwell of Putney, Vermont.

Jimi connected with Shawnie because the two used to ski race against one another as children in Steamboat, and Shawnie had gone on to become an endurance runner and mountain biker. Kathleen had the good fortune to wander into the Red Fox shop in Lyons with her Rhodesian ridgeback (dog), the same dog Jimi has, and the two got to talking and the dogs got to playing. It turns out Kathleen is a former pro mountain biker and a current Nordic competitor and trail runner. Welcome to the team, Kathleen!

Amy of Vermont knew Kathleen and, as fate would have it, Amy is a world champion amateur triathlete so it was natural to add her as the fourth member of the team.

For Jimi, the upcoming Red Fox Adventure Race comes at a good point in her life.

“I’m in a really good place in my life, and I am ready for anything, and I’m confident that whatever comes at me I can handle it and I’m excited about it,” she says.

“72 hours up in some remote part of Russia, is awesome! It’s an opportunity of a lifetime I’m ready to go.”