Doing The Hard Things – May 2026
What’s inside: A note from the Director of AdventureRemembering Tara GluskiA rising tide lifts all boatsA partnership built on confidence, trust, and compassionGluski Park Campaign Kickoff: Be There!New on Made UP PodcastEvents with 906AT A note from the Director of Adventure Much of our story over the past 12 years has been well-documented. We started with one coach and five kids. The program has since turned into 650+ coaches and more than 1,300 kids in 17 communities across the Midwest. We created events that are regarded as some of the most challenging endurance events in the Midwest. Marji Gesick is regarded by many as the “hardest single-day mountain bike event in America.” If you can qualify, you’ll be inducted into a “Hall of Pain.” We promote the doing of hard things, finishing what you start, and personal accountability, to name just a few. Neither the youth program nor the events follow traditional formats. You don’t come to the U.P. to win our events, you come up here hoping to survive them. Adventure Team, our youth resilience program, emphasizes character development and skill development. We meet kids where they are. We’re patient and invested in them beyond how fast or far they can ride a bike. The endurance event we’re focused on preparing them for is life. Sport has been historically male-dominated. Not here. 46% of our leadership is female. Girls and young women account for more than 42% of all youth participants. 30% or more of all participants in Polar Roll, The Crusher, and Marji Gesick, are women, too. Like I said at the start, all of that has been well documented. The next part has not. I have watched who we reach change. I have watched the program get to kids and families other programs cannot. We’ve expanded our reach well beyond the traditional cycling community. We’re not a race team. The majority of these kids are not rolling into bike club on two, three, four thousand dollar bikes. They’re riding a Huffy, or a hand-me-down their brother and sister rode five years ago. We see unicorn helmets, baskets hung on the handlebars, and tassels dangling from the grips. For a lot of these kids this might be their only real outdoor activity all week. This matters to them in ways most of us can’t understand. This summer, we’re breaking ground on a new chapter: Gluski Park – a community trailhead for outdoor adventure. The park will be the vehicle that allows us to create new programs, venture into outdoor education, and reach more kids. It’s not an ending, it is a beginning, and we hope you’ll join us. “My goal in life is hopefully to live it as honorably as she did.”-Sandy Gluski On a quiet and cold morning in April, Sandy Gluski and her husband Paul, sit with me at their dining room table. We laugh, we smile, and we also wipe tears from our faces as they remember and share stories of their daughter, Tara Gluski. Tara was the 906AT Adventure Coordinator for over five years. She worked alongside Todd, growing Adventure Team programming, creating systems for managing data, sharing her love of the outdoors with youth and the community. She was well known and well loved. She had a number of jobs before moving from the Lower Peninsula to the Upper Peninsula – she worked for a cleaning company, a gardening company, for ETNA – which brought her to the Upper Peninsula two times a year. Sandy says she was drawn here for the outdoors. She fell in love with Marquette. “From day one in Marquette she worked for nonprofits – she had to do something she felt good about in her heart.” She always wanted to work with children – at one time aspiring to be a special education teacher. Her mom says she always loved kids – loved being outdoors with kids and helping them. Tara died in a car accident in 2024, ten months after 906 Adventure Team purchased the property on Lakeshore Boulevard and plans began for a park on the green space behind the building. The loss devastated her family, the community and her 906AT friends and family. The organization pressed forward determined to continue to work and find a way to honor and carry her energy, spirit and passion in everything they would do. 906AT decided to name the park, Gluski Park – a tribute to a woman who believed in the mission of empowering people to become the best version of themselves through outdoor adventure with everything she was. “It means everything to us,” says Sandy. “How many people who’ve lost someone they loved so much, has something named after them? It means everything.” Tara’s dad Paul stops at the 906AT property every morning for a cup of coffee. He feels connected to her in the space. He talks to her. He knows her car will never again be in the parking lot, but it’s a place he can go to feel the mark she made on this world. Sandy says, “We are fortunate to have known such a person, a person who created such an impact on the community that she will always be remembered. It’s heartwarming that she’s always here.” It’s beautiful to listen to the stories of Tara’s life. Of her childhood playing in the woods and in the lake. Hearing the story of her wedding day on Presque Isle, the laughter she shared with her husband, the happiness she felt traveling, spending time outdoors, adventuring. Her dedication to 906AT and the work she did with Todd for youth, families and the community. She made an impact. As we move into the next phase of the Gluski Park project it’s important to look forward, but it’s equally as important to reflect back and never forget where the project began – with Tara and Todd. Tara is an example of a life well lived, and the difference one person can make. For her work, for her dedication, for her passion, spirit and energy – we’ll honor Tara with every speck of dirt and drop of sweat that goes into