January 02, 2006
by Anna DiBattiste

Ever wonder how a team with new members manages to get ready for a race like Primal Quest when the team members don’t all live in the same state?

It’s not easy knowing that your teammates have nightmares about turning on their computers every morning. But e-mail is a wonderful thing, all the same. The e-mails don’t fly out of control all year, but just at certain critical times: when the updates come out, when the gear list is published, when the certifications are due, when the website is being built, when we’re planning training weekends. And of course, they fly frantically for about a month right before the race. Once, during that period, a teammate from last year who shall remain nameless sent me a note that said, “If you send me one more freakin’ e-mail today, EVEN JUST ONE, I will check myself into the local psychiatric clinic and you will have to find a new teammate for the race…”

I’ve certainly met people who are anal enough to make me look easy-going. Engineers, accountants and their ilk. I guess I just haven’t met any of them in the AR world lately, because I seem to be the most detail-oriented person around these days. I make gear checklists, action step checklists, budgets, tracking sheets. My teammates often have to remind me that they have real jobs and can’t sit around reading my checklists all day. I just seem to have this uncontrollable fear that we’ll forget something important if it isn’t on a checklist posted on my bulletin board.

This year, I discovered that my new teammate Russ has conference call capabilities. Not those jerry-rigged kinds of conference calls where one person tries to string a bunch of lines together and inevitably loses one or two callers, but a real conference call line with a toll-free number and a code. Of course, I still had my checklists in front of me, but we could actually speak to each other about them. We even had Eddie, our first official alternate, join us on the call.

Luther is in his element on a conference call, because it means he gets to be the gear head he truly is at heart. He says things like, “I recommend that everyone buy a new bike light that has compatible batteries with an adapter to go from NiMH and NiCad, and weighs .06 ounces less than my carburetor exchange tube with the duoflage discriminator.” Or something like that. At least on a conference call I can say, “What?” several hundred times instead of sending more e-mails.

Russ is in his element too, because it means he can say things like, “Am I still on the team?” and sound funny instead of paranoid. His other favorite line, when Luther starts talking about the weight of our gear, is “My _______ weighs almost nothing, which will be great when you guys have to carry me off the course…”

We haven’t gotten to know Blain that well yet, but my sense on our first call was that he was just listening and soaking it all in. Blain is our most experienced racer, but also the one person on the team who hasn’t raced with any of us before, and in fact hasn’t even met two of us in person yet. I worry about the day he does. He’s already seen the photo of Russ on a bad hair day, so the worst is over. But he hasn’t even begun to experience the worst of my out-of-control e-mail days.

The topic of our first team conference call, was, of course, Holy Certs! Not sure if I’ve had a race with that many certifications before. I think it’s a good thing, however, to make sure racers are truly prepared. Don Mann’s reputation for dismal finishing ratios is not to be taken lightly. I opened the call by saying, “Do you think we can make an action step checklist with plans and due dates for each cert?”

“I’d like to go through the gear list first,” Luther said, “because we need to clarify the specs on the length and material required for each lanyard, and I want to make sure that none of our webbing weighs more than .0003 of an ounce this year.”

“Party on,” answered Russ. “Am I still on the team?”

Maybe these conference calls will get a little more focused as they go on…

December 27, 2005

Oh my goodness, what a shocking month it has been. I’m assuming that most of you are settling into the winter grind (good grief, even the wet coast has been frozen since the end of November and our local ski hills enjoyed their earliest start in decades) and it’s been a relief to get past the shortest day of the year. The big news for our team is that I’ve regretfully made the difficult decision to withdraw myself, but NOT the team, from the Primal Quest. This is a strictly personal decision based on the evaluation of how much time I would be taking from my family over the next year and also, thanks to a financial opportunity that didn’t come through, how much the financial commitment to the race would delay various family goals (yes, it’s true, I do have goals for other things beyond adventure racing). In the interest of remaining a committed husband and father I have decided to back away from my enthusiasm for the Primal Quest and dedicate myself to my family first.

MindOverMountain.com is still in the Primal Quest with Gary Robbins, Aimee Dunn, and Mark Fearman representing us in the race, with Daniel Havens, John Baron and now me as alternates. I really appreciate the comments and support from my team and will continue to be involved with leading the team in other events in 2006. Gary Robbins has taken over as Primal Quest team captain and the team is evaluating my replacement for primary navigation duties.

I am retaining my role leading team MindOverMountain.com through 2006 and beyond and managing race entries, training, and sponsorships, so you’ll still definitely see me at Mind Over Mountain, Trioba, and possibly the Full Moon in June and Raid the North BC races in 2006. As an added bonus, I’ll be doing at least one or two adventure races with my family again!

The decision itself wasn’t that tough to make - it is definitely the right thing to do for everyone except my ego and possibly the rest of the team - but accepting the consequences of the decision has been tough. I feel a little dumb for having come this far before facing reality, but my enthusiasm for the Primal Quest is undiminished and I’m vowing to try again in the future. I’ll let Gary speak for himself in the rest of this entry.

LLTNT (still!)

Tom Jarecki

They say the hardest part of an Adventure Race is just getting to the starting line…our team is quickly learning this to be very true.

The New Year is not even upon us and we have already lost our team navigator! This is a double loss, since Tom Jarecki was also our team captain, team web logger for Primal Quest, and the only team member with any Expedition Race experience!!

Tom’s decision was a tough one to make and the entire team supports him in this. He will still continue to be a big part of our team, but unfortunately won’t be able to join us in Primal Quest.

This is where I step in: my name is Gary Robbins and I have been nominated to fulfill Tom’s duties…all, that is, except for the navigation…we’d be on course for a month if I were leading us.

“Sorry guys, our maps must be wrong, there are funny little squiggly lines all over them?”

Thankfully we have an alternate racer who is able to step in and guide us through this race. However, he also has no expedition race experience, so we are now a team consisting of complete rookies!

I was forced to do some math as we were presenting our team video to Primal Quest, (the math portion of my brain has been on a permanent vacation and seemed to be suffering from serious heat stroke as I called upon it to once again function). I made a list and checked it twice, and was shocked to have calculated my total Adventure Racing experience to date, as a grand total of just 700km. Primal Quest alone will more than double my total racing experience! I have to throw in my two Ultra Runs just to eclipse the 800km mark…HELP!!!

See, I don’t come from a seriously competitive background like many in this sport. As many of you were competing and training over the last ten years, I was drinking, partying and traveling.

It was only in March of 2004 that Mark Fearman and I decided to give adventure racing and trail running a go. We showed up to a local fun run where you can select your distance on a 15km course. Fifteen kilometers would be more than I had run in 2 years, so Mark and I threw our names down and showed up the morning of. We met a group of very established and accomplished Vancouver Ultra Runners and before we knew it they had ‘tricked’ us into doing a second lap. Neither Mark nor I had ever run 30km in our lives, in fact before that fateful day, I had only run more than 10km three times in my entire life.

By the time the day was out, we had both suffered hallucinations, cramping and pure physical exhaustion…but something inside of us, somewhere deep, deep down inside, absolutely loved the pain and suffering we had endured. Hell, the longest run of my life before that day was just 20km. I upped that by 50% - what could our bodies withstand with some continual punishment?

By the time 2004 had ended, Mark and I had completed our first Ultra Run of 67km (just three months prior I had absolutely no idea what an Ultra even was), and I had somehow managed to win a trail racing series (well, my age group at least). We had competed in three adventure races, two sprint races and one stage race, having fared well in all of them. When the dust had settled and the injuries had recuperated, we had time to reflect on what a year it had been. We decided on the spot that we would do an Expedition Adventure Race, as soon as our bodies and bank accounts would allow!

During our first year of competing we met Aimee Dunn, who is now our teammate for Primal Quest. When Aimee was in her late teens and early twenties she was a competitive soccer player and triathlete. During the last few years she had been competing in adventure racing more for fun, due to work commitments. When I proposed Primal Quest to her she nearly hit the roof! Then she went about baking muffins, cookies and cupcakes to celebrate.

Aimee, you see, has a bit of an affliction. She cannot show up to a training session without some form of homemade baked good. She is well deserving of her nickname, Betty Crocker. I am convinced that our team will be the only one showing up to the start of PQ having gained weight through training.

Our team is spread out over a few hundred kilometers, which I realize in comparison to many teams is like sharing a bathroom together. Aimee and I being the closest in distance means I get to indulge in the greatest consumption of baked goods. This past weekend Aimee showed up carrying a pumpkin/almond cheesecake…I tell you she’s a sick girl!

On my suggestion we headed out to do some snowshoe running. I live in Squamish, B.C. and am blessed with variety of terrain. I am a five minute walk from a river that feeds into the ocean, a nice deep ‘Sound’, called Howe Sound, which generally gives great paddling conditions. I have mountain bike and running trails out my back door. “The Chief”- the most recognizable climbing rock in Canada - is basically nearby and it generally rains in town and snows on the mountains during the winter months. Squamish had been aptly named “The Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada.” In small print somewhere it must also say, “and a great place to train for PQ.”

The snowshoe running was great, the pumpkin/almond cheesecake even better. Aimee was off to drive home and I was just getting started on my cross-training for the day…it was Saturday night.

While most people my age are off to some sort of social arrangement centered around beer, I am concentrating on how to best utilize my time - how to multi-task, as it were. We are Canadian, and Saturday night means Hockey Night in Canada. I refuse to miss this event, as it has been ingrained in me since childhood. I guess it rivals Sunday football in the States, or soccer in pretty much the rest of the world.What better way to take in the event than to set up my bike trainer and start peddling. I quickly discovered that one water bottle holder is actually designed to hold the remote control for the television, so as to allow channel surfing during commercials. The second water bottle holder seemed perfectly shaped to accept a beer bottle…who knew?

I immediately got to work, for my team was playing one of the best in the league that evening, and they would need all of my peddle power to succeed. We were inextricably linked, for as I peddled faster, they skated faster, and as I struggled to keep pace, so too did they. I rode for the entire game, all three hours of it, and am pleased to say that I helped the Edmonton Oilers defeat the nasty Vancouver Canucks.

Sure I live just an hour out of Vancouver, and Edmonton is thousands of driving kilometers away, but I am a dedicated fan and have never turned my back on the team that Wayne Gretzky made famous throughout the eighties. One day we will win the Stanley Cup again and when we do, I will be pleased to say that I contributed to that victory by sweating out every second of it on my bike trainer in my living room, while trying my damndest to condition my ass for Primal Quest!

Gary Robbins,
Team Captain for MindOverMountain.com

December 27, 2005

Oh my goodness, what a shocking month it has been. I’m assuming that most of you are settling into the winter grind (good grief, even the wet coast has been frozen since the end of November and our local ski hills enjoyed their earliest start in decades) and it’s been a relief to get past the shortest day of the year. The big news for our team is that I’ve regretfully made the difficult decision to withdraw myself, but NOT the team, from the Primal Quest. This is a strictly personal decision based on the evaluation of how much time I would be taking from my family over the next year and also, thanks to a financial opportunity that didn’t come through, how much the financial commitment to the race would delay various family goals (yes, it’s true, I do have goals for other things beyond adventure racing). In the interest of remaining a committed husband and father I have decided to back away from my enthusiasm for the Primal Quest and dedicate myself to my family first.

MindOverMountain.com is still in the Primal Quest with Gary Robbins, Aimee Dunn, and Mark Fearman representing us in the race, with Daniel Havens, John Baron and now me as alternates. I really appreciate the comments and support from my team and will continue to be involved with leading the team in other events in 2006. Gary Robbins has taken over as Primal Quest team captain and the team is evaluating my replacement for primary navigation duties.

I am retaining my role leading team MindOverMountain.com through 2006 and beyond and managing race entries, training, and sponsorships, so you’ll still definitely see me at Mind Over Mountain, Trioba, and possibly the Full Moon in June and Raid the North BC races in 2006. As an added bonus, I’ll be doing at least one or two adventure races with my family again!

The decision itself wasn’t that tough to make - it is definitely the right thing to do for everyone except my ego and possibly the rest of the team - but accepting the consequences of the decision has been tough. I feel a little dumb for having come this far before facing reality, but my enthusiasm for the Primal Quest is undiminished and I’m vowing to try again in the future. I’ll let Gary speak for himself in the rest of this entry.

LLTNT (still!)

Tom Jarecki

They say the hardest part of an Adventure Race is just getting to the starting line…our team is quickly learning this to be very true.

The New Year is not even upon us and we have already lost our team navigator! This is a double loss, since Tom Jarecki was also our team captain, team web logger for Primal Quest, and the only team member with any Expedition Race experience!!

Tom’s decision was a tough one to make and the entire team supports him in this. He will still continue to be a big part of our team, but unfortunately won’t be able to join us in Primal Quest.

This is where I step in: my name is Gary Robbins and I have been nominated to fulfill Tom’s duties…all, that is, except for the navigation…we’d be on course for a month if I were leading us.

“Sorry guys, our maps must be wrong, there are funny little squiggly lines all over them?”

Thankfully we have an alternate racer who is able to step in and guide us through this race. However, he also has no expedition race experience, so we are now a team consisting of complete rookies!

I was forced to do some math as we were presenting our team video to Primal Quest, (the math portion of my brain has been on a permanent vacation and seemed to be suffering from serious heat stroke as I called upon it to once again function). I made a list and checked it twice, and was shocked to have calculated my total Adventure Racing experience to date, as a grand total of just 700km. Primal Quest alone will more than double my total racing experience! I have to throw in my two Ultra Runs just to eclipse the 800km mark…HELP!!!

See, I don’t come from a seriously competitive background like many in this sport. As many of you were competing and training over the last ten years, I was drinking, partying and traveling.

It was only in March of 2004 that Mark Fearman and I decided to give adventure racing and trail running a go. We showed up to a local fun run where you can select your distance on a 15km course. Fifteen kilometers would be more than I had run in 2 years, so Mark and I threw our names down and showed up the morning of. We met a group of very established and accomplished Vancouver Ultra Runners and before we knew it they had ‘tricked’ us into doing a second lap. Neither Mark nor I had ever run 30km in our lives, in fact before that fateful day, I had only run more than 10km three times in my entire life.

By the time the day was out, we had both suffered hallucinations, cramping and pure physical exhaustion…but something inside of us, somewhere deep, deep down inside, absolutely loved the pain and suffering we had endured. Hell, the longest run of my life before that day was just 20km. I upped that by 50% - what could our bodies withstand with some continual punishment?

By the time 2004 had ended, Mark and I had completed our first Ultra Run of 67km (just three months prior I had absolutely no idea what an Ultra even was), and I had somehow managed to win a trail racing series (well, my age group at least). We had competed in three adventure races, two sprint races and one stage race, having fared well in all of them. When the dust had settled and the injuries had recuperated, we had time to reflect on what a year it had been. We decided on the spot that we would do an Expedition Adventure Race, as soon as our bodies and bank accounts would allow!

During our first year of competing we met Aimee Dunn, who is now our teammate for Primal Quest. When Aimee was in her late teens and early twenties she was a competitive soccer player and triathlete. During the last few years she had been competing in adventure racing more for fun, due to work commitments. When I proposed Primal Quest to her she nearly hit the roof! Then she went about baking muffins, cookies and cupcakes to celebrate.

Aimee, you see, has a bit of an affliction. She cannot show up to a training session without some form of homemade baked good. She is well deserving of her nickname, Betty Crocker. I am convinced that our team will be the only one showing up to the start of PQ having gained weight through training.

Our team is spread out over a few hundred kilometers, which I realize in comparison to many teams is like sharing a bathroom together. Aimee and I being the closest in distance means I get to indulge in the greatest consumption of baked goods. This past weekend Aimee showed up carrying a pumpkin/almond cheesecake…I tell you she’s a sick girl!

On my suggestion we headed out to do some snowshoe running. I live in Squamish, B.C. and am blessed with variety of terrain. I am a five minute walk from a river that feeds into the ocean, a nice deep ‘Sound’, called Howe Sound, which generally gives great paddling conditions. I have mountain bike and running trails out my back door. “The Chief”- the most recognizable climbing rock in Canada - is basically nearby and it generally rains in town and snows on the mountains during the winter months. Squamish had been aptly named “The Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada.” In small print somewhere it must also say, “and a great place to train for PQ.”

The snowshoe running was great, the pumpkin/almond cheesecake even better. Aimee was off to drive home and I was just getting started on my cross-training for the day…it was Saturday night.

While most people my age are off to some sort of social arrangement centered around beer, I am concentrating on how to best utilize my time - how to multi-task, as it were. We are Canadian, and Saturday night means Hockey Night in Canada. I refuse to miss this event, as it has been ingrained in me since childhood. I guess it rivals Sunday football in the States, or soccer in pretty much the rest of the world.What better way to take in the event than to set up my bike trainer and start peddling. I quickly discovered that one water bottle holder is actually designed to hold the remote control for the television, so as to allow channel surfing during commercials. The second water bottle holder seemed perfectly shaped to accept a beer bottle…who knew?

I immediately got to work, for my team was playing one of the best in the league that evening, and they would need all of my peddle power to succeed. We were inextricably linked, for as I peddled faster, they skated faster, and as I struggled to keep pace, so too did they. I rode for the entire game, all three hours of it, and am pleased to say that I helped the Edmonton Oilers defeat the nasty Vancouver Canucks.

Sure I live just an hour out of Vancouver, and Edmonton is thousands of driving kilometers away, but I am a dedicated fan and have never turned my back on the team that Wayne Gretzky made famous throughout the eighties. One day we will win the Stanley Cup again and when we do, I will be pleased to say that I contributed to that victory by sweating out every second of it on my bike trainer in my living room, while trying my damndest to condition my ass for Primal Quest!

Gary Robbins,
Team Captain for MindOverMountain.com

March 03, 2006
By Stephanie Bruce

Prudence. It might be the most underrated characteristic of an adventure racer. It’s not as lauded as perseverance, fitness, skills, or even empathy. If you were prudent, you probably wouldn’t be racing, would you?

But if you think about it, what - if not prudent - is an adventure racer? You have to carefully manage your resources, which are few during the course of the race; you must have good sense in managing practical matters like sleep and food; and on the course you are constantly evaluating situations to avoid risk - like finding the balance between running fast moving water while keeping an eye out for strainers.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Anna DeBattiste

Ask adventure racers why they do it, and you’re likely to get a number of predictable but meaningful responses. We do it to test the limits of our minds and bodies; we do it for the pride of accomplishment after great physical effort, pain and discomfort; we do it for the camaraderie and teamwork; we do it to see beautiful places and experience exotic cultures.

Blah, blah, blah. It’s all good stuff, and it does truly mean a lot to me. But I tend to focus on the more eccentric side of AR. I live for the random hallucination, the 3:00 am sleep-deprived and garbled comment that induces hilarity on the team, the surrealistic midnight encounters with strangers who have no idea what four dirty people with backpacks and ice axes would be doing carrying their bikes through impenetrable brush in the middle of the night on a mountain top. I love the time a teammate saw me lying on the ground with my feet up on a tree trunk and thought I was the Madonna with babe-in-arms, and the time I sang “Rubber Ducky” to stay awake until my teammates threatened to throw me out of the boat. I especially love the time during last year’s Primal Quest that I woke up, mid-sentence, in motion, to find myself asking my teammates if there would be any basketballs at the transition area. Now that’s good stuff. I feel bad for people whose entertainment comes from TV.

That doesn’t mean that Team Tango doesn’t have goals this year. We’ve added two new members since the 2004 PQ event, and I’m darned excited about both of them. With an even split between serious military types and recreational Colorado types, we should have the perfect mix of skill, experience and attitude to do our best in this race. See our profile if you want to hear more about that.

But here’s what I really want to talk about today: what a challenge it was to make that video! When the first PQ update came out, asking us to submit team videos for PR purposes, we blew it off. With the two halves of our team split up across the country, one half in Miami and the other in Colorado, I figured it was too hard and not worth the effort.

Two weeks later, we changed our minds–three days before the deadline. I drove to my new teammate Russ’s house in Steamboat Springs, Colorado during a major snowstorm, taking three hours to make an hour and a half drive. The plan was to film the two of us, overnight the tape to Miami so our teammates could add their piece, and hope they could overnight the tape again in time to make the deadline on Wednesday. A risky proposition, given that Fed-ex doesn’t do overnight from the mountains of Colorado.

“I wrote a script!” Russ announced as I walked through the door.

“Really?” I asked, incredulous. I hadn’t even thought about what to say. Somehow, I thought it would just happen.

Russ’s wife Clay, a woman nearly as funny as Russ himself, walked into the kitchen and slapped a bottle of wine on the counter. Chardonnay, my favorite. “You’ll need to start drinking right now,” she advised me. “I’ll be in the living room getting the video camera set up.”

Thank god for Clay. Russ and I watched from the couch, stupefied, drinking, as she navigated the wilderness of video camera technology. We tried to practice a couple of times. When I had a few glasses of wine down the gullet, I decided I was now brilliant enough to come up with a theme.

“So!” I said. “I’ll give a serious introduction to the team and our background, and you can break in every couple seconds or so with a funny one-liner. What do you think?”

Russ nodded. “That’ll work,” he said. “But I’m not sure how funny I can be on cue.”

“Nonsense,” I sputtered. “You’re always funny.”

I had paced Russ in the Leadville 100 last year, and I knew this to be true. Seventy miles into the race, utterly spent, dry heaving and staggering and incoherent, Russ had still managed to crack me up with a running litany of jokes and one-liners. I had delivered him to his next pacer in a state of hilarity, despite the freezing temperatures and the fact that it was 3:00 am.

But alas, it was true. In front of a camera, trying to be funny on cue, Russ was about as funny as I am. Which is to say, about as funny as a turd in a punchbowl. Clay watched, worry lines furrowing her brow as we did take after take. Each one got harder, more stilted, less entertaining. Finally, we threw up our hands and delivered the tape to Clay for transfer to the Miami half of the team.

We did have one or two good moments. As I described our teammates, Luther and Blain, one an Infantry Officer with a Special Operations background and the other a Special Forces Officer, Russ broke in, “and I’m just kind of your basic ‘special’, myself.” We can’t tell you if our Miami teammates have redeemed us because we haven’t seen the rest of the tape yet.

Next year, if someone wants to lend us a couple thousand dollars, we’ll hire a media company to do a proper job.

One more thing. In case you haven’t read our team profile yet, it’s important for you to know that “Tango” is not some team name that I thought was cute. Tango is my best friend, a 15-year-old dog who has been with me her entire life. I thought it important to report this fact before our team name potentially changes due to sponsorship. If Tango had any money, she would make sure she got to keep the lead spot on the team name. Right now, however, she’s mainly focused on keeping control of her bowels and getting me to feed her dinner early.

Tune in next time to hear about the results of Team Tango’s efforts to pursue sponsorship.

December 13, 2005
By Anna DeBattiste

Ask adventure racers why they do it, and you’re likely to get a number of predictable but meaningful responses. We do it to test the limits of our minds and bodies; we do it for the pride of accomplishment after great physical effort, pain and discomfort; we do it for the camaraderie and teamwork; we do it to see beautiful places and experience exotic cultures.

Blah, blah, blah. It’s all good stuff, and it does truly mean a lot to me. But I tend to focus on the more eccentric side of AR. I live for the random hallucination, the 3:00 am sleep-deprived and garbled comment that induces hilarity on the team, the surrealistic midnight encounters with strangers who have no idea what four dirty people with backpacks and ice axes would be doing carrying their bikes through impenetrable brush in the middle of the night on a mountain top. I love the time a teammate saw me lying on the ground with my feet up on a tree trunk and thought I was the Madonna with babe-in-arms, and the time I sang “Rubber Ducky” to stay awake until my teammates threatened to throw me out of the boat. I especially love the time during last year’s Primal Quest that I woke up, mid-sentence, in motion, to find myself asking my teammates if there would be any basketballs at the transition area. Now that’s good stuff. I feel bad for people whose entertainment comes from TV.

That doesn’t mean that Team Tango doesn’t have goals this year. We’ve added two new members since the 2004 PQ event, and I’m darned excited about both of them. With an even split between serious military types and recreational Colorado types, we should have the perfect mix of skill, experience and attitude to do our best in this race. See our profile if you want to hear more about that.

But here’s what I really want to talk about today: what a challenge it was to make that video! When the first PQ update came out, asking us to submit team videos for PR purposes, we blew it off. With the two halves of our team split up across the country, one half in Miami and the other in Colorado, I figured it was too hard and not worth the effort.

Two weeks later, we changed our minds–three days before the deadline. I drove to my new teammate Russ’s house in Steamboat Springs, Colorado during a major snowstorm, taking three hours to make an hour and a half drive. The plan was to film the two of us, overnight the tape to Miami so our teammates could add their piece, and hope they could overnight the tape again in time to make the deadline on Wednesday. A risky proposition, given that Fed-ex doesn’t do overnight from the mountains of Colorado.

“I wrote a script!” Russ announced as I walked through the door.

“Really?” I asked, incredulous. I hadn’t even thought about what to say. Somehow, I thought it would just happen.

Russ’s wife Clay, a woman nearly as funny as Russ himself, walked into the kitchen and slapped a bottle of wine on the counter. Chardonnay, my favorite. “You’ll need to start drinking right now,” she advised me. “I’ll be in the living room getting the video camera set up.”

Thank god for Clay. Russ and I watched from the couch, stupefied, drinking, as she navigated the wilderness of video camera technology. We tried to practice a couple of times. When I had a few glasses of wine down the gullet, I decided I was now brilliant enough to come up with a theme.

“So!” I said. “I’ll give a serious introduction to the team and our background, and you can break in every couple seconds or so with a funny one-liner. What do you think?”

Russ nodded. “That’ll work,” he said. “But I’m not sure how funny I can be on cue.”

“Nonsense,” I sputtered. “You’re always funny.”

I had paced Russ in the Leadville 100 last year, and I knew this to be true. Seventy miles into the race, utterly spent, dry heaving and staggering and incoherent, Russ had still managed to crack me up with a running litany of jokes and one-liners. I had delivered him to his next pacer in a state of hilarity, despite the freezing temperatures and the fact that it was 3:00 am.

But alas, it was true. In front of a camera, trying to be funny on cue, Russ was about as funny as I am. Which is to say, about as funny as a turd in a punchbowl. Clay watched, worry lines furrowing her brow as we did take after take. Each one got harder, more stilted, less entertaining. Finally, we threw up our hands and delivered the tape to Clay for transfer to the Miami half of the team.

We did have one or two good moments. As I described our teammates, Luther and Blain, one an Infantry Officer with a Special Operations background and the other a Special Forces Officer, Russ broke in, “and I’m just kind of your basic ‘special’, myself.” We can’t tell you if our Miami teammates have redeemed us because we haven’t seen the rest of the tape yet.

Next year, if someone wants to lend us a couple thousand dollars, we’ll hire a media company to do a proper job.

One more thing. In case you haven’t read our team profile yet, it’s important for you to know that “Tango” is not some team name that I thought was cute. Tango is my best friend, a 15-year-old dog who has been with me her entire life. I thought it important to report this fact before our team name potentially changes due to sponsorship. If Tango had any money, she would make sure she got to keep the lead spot on the team name. Right now, however, she’s mainly focused on keeping control of her bowels and getting me to feed her dinner early.

Tune in next time to hear about the results of Team Tango’s efforts to pursue sponsorship.

By Brock Foreman

December 12, 2005

All adventure racers share a gritty determination, and you can hear this determination in the voice of Mary “Mash” Glanville, team captain for Dancing Panda. “If we have to crawl across the finish line, we’ll finish the race” says Glanville, 42, as she recounts the time when she and her teammates heroically carried one of their own across the finish line. Glanville recalls another race where she suffered her own bruises and a nearly debilitating pulled tendon in her leg. Despite the injuries, Glanville continued to push herself and help her teammates achieve a top finish. In another supremely inspired - albeit vastly more comical – effort, Glanville once trekked through the night without pants after a punishing bike ride left her cringing with first degree saddle soreness.

Some say that endurance athletes like Glanville – those willing to run through the pain, push past the point of exhaustion, and, say, hike through the woods without clothes – are often running from something deep inside. The motivation usually stems from some pivotal life experience. In fact, there are many stories of people turning “Forrest Gump” after they lose a job or a loved one. In his recent biography, “Ultramarathon Man,” Dean Karnazes explains how the death of his sister compounded his mid-life crisis and fueled his unparalleled ultra-running binge. Similarly, Glanville’s childhood might explain her proclivity for long-distance racing, a bug which bit her after a friend convinced her to enter a mountain bike race in 1999.

Glanville was born in Soviet Russia where her father had been confined to a concentration camp. Eventually, her family was forced to flee west, and, as refugees, she and her family arrived in Toronto in the early 1970s. It is plausible that the adversity of being uprooted from her home and raised in an unfamiliar country shaped and hardened Glanville and gave her the courageous heart of an adventure racer, not to mention the drive to succeed as a busy executive in a biotechnology company. Certainly the Forrest Gump – Dean Karnazes theory of psychology explains why Glanville might be drawn to a sport like adventure racing and Primal Quest.

Of course, Glanville might just like adventure racing because it is, well, fun. This is more likely the case, especially considering Glanville’s light-hearted attitude and complete lack of angst. Do not forget, her team’s name is “Dancing Pandas,” an esoteric reference to an old Kit Kat candy bar commercial featuring two playful Pandas.

“You’ll never hear a team laugh harder. We never stop laughing even when it’s tough…we’re out to have a good time,” says Glanville as she describes her team’s smiles-will-get-you-miles philosophy. She adds: “During the race you’re going to see ugliness in yourself. When you’re in extreme stress, your true self comes out, and I know people who race once and they never want to see that side of themselves again. As long as someone can laugh at themselves, and really want it, they can do it!”

Glanville is clearly in it for the camaraderie she shares with her teammates. She loves it when they share funny stories during the race. The team often revisits the time Glanville’s husband of 18 years and team co-founder, Rob Glanville, 40, was searching for a checkpoint and, in a fit of sheer terror, came bounding out of the woods with a bear at his heels.

Along with laughter, Glanville says music is a key ingredient in the team’s race strategy. Music is their caffeine, it keeps them awake at night during the race. Like most teams, her team constantly looks for more ways to shed ounces from their gear. However, they will never part with their 375 gram MP3 player and mini-speakers. “We’re working on a new play list for PQ,” says Glanville. The team favors newer bands like Spoon, The Killers, and Franz Ferdinand. And when the going gets really tough? “We play a lot of crap from the ‘80’s.” Glanville chuckles, adding that blasting Depeche Mode will probably help the team avoid future bear attacks.

Glanville and her husband reside in San Diego and have raced together since 2000. New to the team this year are the couple’s good friends Eric Ervin, 30, and Mike Bell, 35, also from San Diego. Glanville says everyone on the team has day jobs as well as very understanding families that thankfully allow them to pursue their passion.

Glanville feels that despite her dubious ropes skills and her husband’s uncontrollable horse allergy, her team’s skills are well-suited for longer, expedition-length racing. While they realize they are not in contention to finish near the top, they aim to finish the full 800Km+ Primal Quest – no small feat of endurance and teamwork. Her team looks forward to training their muscles for their first PQ…and for the strenuous laughter and dancing that always accompanies them on their races.

In which Tom terrorizes a rural Canadian town and gets dragged through the mud. December 01, 2005
By Tom Jarecki

Crazy adventure racers - I mean completely normal adventure racers who appear to be crazy to everyone else - seem to be part of a pretty out-there athletic culture, don’t you think? There’s no TV following us, local papers are more interested in Little League and pro sports, and most people don’t even know what you’re talking about. These thoughts ran through my head as I woke up at 1:30 am last Saturday morning, the first link of a relatively complex logistical chain of preparation and travel that would see me on the water with my team mates at 5:30 am on the far side of the city for a paddle followed by a run. My work mates think I’m nuts to want to do this sort of thing (don’t you know there’s the Western Conference CFL finals that you’re going to miss?), my boss appreciates my passion for the sport as long as I still show interest in my work, and my wife only smiles at me while telling me to have fun and not to wake her up to say bye.

The silly time was the result of going to bed at my normal time (the price of being a middle-aged working stiff with a family, unlike my hotshot team mates), not wanting to use my family’s one car (to maximize the training effect, and to leave the car for my wife to use ferrying our kids to soccer games, a birthday party, and Home Depot) and not feeling like riding an extra 60 km to get to a bridge on top of the 60 km I was already committing to in riding from Ladner to Deep Cove. The last bus north-bound through the George Massey tunnel under the Fraser River, which cuts Ladner off from the rest of the Greater Vancouver area and is a no-go zone for cyclists, was leaving at 2:10 am and was my only chance if I was going to get to Deep Cove by our 5:00 am meeting time.

I arrived in Deep Cove at 4:00 am - I tend to ride hard when it’s colder than anticipated and I’m underdressed - and my first thought was, ‘Super, I can have a sleep for an hour until the rest of them get here’. It was nice and grassy, I could get under a shrub to get out of the dew dropped from the thick fog, and I had my first aid kit with me and it usually contains my space blanket. Not today, aargh! OK, I’m a tough adventure racer, so I put on all my clothes (unfortunately, that only meant a buff headband, a polartec vest, and goretex pants and jacket), ate some food to warm up, placed my pack and pfd underneath to get off the cold, wet ground, and tried to get to sleep. No way. By the time 20 minutes had gone by, after what had felt like several hours, I was shivering constantly and feeling pretty miserable.

Oh well. I got up and decided to do some power walking to warm up. The local Princeton Tec distributor had given me a bunch of Apex and Eos lights for the team so I played with them as I walked along in the fog. You can get some pretty cool effects shining spot lights through heavy fog at reflective surfaces like stop signs and store windows at 4:30 in the morning, but be prepared to have the police drive up and ask you what you’re doing. Luckily Deep Cove is a small and isolated suburb far from the big, bad city so they were very polite and believed me once I pointed out my bike with paddle attached. My biggest let down while waiting for my team was seeing a bakery-café with its lights on - YES, hot drinks and pastries. I ran up to the door, which was open, only to be told by the rather grumpy baker who was having a break that they wouldn’t open until 6:00 am and that there was no way he could get anything for me. Darn, back to cold water and cold granola bars.

Aimee, I mean Betty [Crocker], arrived with her roommate Robin and a Tupperware container full of muffins and cookies bang on 5:00 am. Robin works for Deep Cove Canoe & Kayak and opened up the office for us. Ah, warmth and cookies - life is good again. Gary Robbins (29 - birthday boy!!) and his girlfriend Donna arrived from Squamish shortly after 5:00 and Mark Fearman (26) arrived a few minutes later from Whistler, with one of our official alternates, Daniel Havens (49), who also lives in Whistler. OK, our team’s complete, though we were missing our other alternate, John Barron (38) from Duncan, who was stuck on Vancouver Island babysitting his dog. No worries, we’ll catch him next time.

What makes adventure racing great are your team mates, or rather my team mates (well, likely yours too). Picture a cold, foggy, very dark, wet and generally unpleasant and stupidly early morning in early winter. Add the prospect of 5 or 6 hours of hard physical effort before most people have even finished their weekend breakfasts. Unlike the rest of the world, all five of us are wide awake and telling stories and jokes, laughing and having fun, and simply enjoying being together doing stuff that we all love. Our team name, MindOverMountain.com, really does express the joy we share for being out and about in the world and everyone’s cheerfulness expressed this joy way out loud. Thank you all for your friendship and commitment to our team.

Our paddle was a blast on flat calm water with fog so thick you could barely see the other boats. We were moving pretty quickly and it was all I could do in the single to keep up with the 2 doubles - generally playing bump the rudder and trying to stay in the draft of one boat or the other. After a couple of hours and a muted sunrise we arrived back at the beach and the welcome site of Robin with an armful of coffee. I don’t even like coffee, but man, did it go down sweet. Feeling fully human again we joined the group of Club Fat Assers (www.clubfatass.com) for a scheduled 20 km trail run. Now this is the life, when you’re part of the warmth of a community celebrating the same love of sweat-equity sports in the outdoors.

The only problem with the run, which by the way was an awesome meander on the biking trails of lower Mt Seymour (yes, part of the infamous North Shore that our spindly little cross-country adventure racing bikes don’t even dare look at let alone ride - what, you mean you RIDE your bike UP the hill and walk the drops? - how old school). The problem was that I had a 25 pound load to simulate my PQ pack and I though the rest of the team knew the plan and would follow suit. Nope. So instead of a relaxed base phase training run I had a fartlek style run right on my anaerobic threshold for over 2 hours. Oh well, it gave me an excuse to clip on the tow and give Gary more of a workout - just remember to go on the same side of every tree or you’re in for a surprise. Technical down hills with slippery logs, rocks and mud on the free-riding trails are even more exciting when on tow - just imagine tap dancing down a sketchy descent and getting tugged forward by the tow at just the right (err, wrong) moment. Yes, the view sure is cool from down here in the mud, thanks for asking.

The best part of an early morning workout is the day-long endorphin rush and getting home just in time to join the kids in bed for their after lunch nap time. Well, both good and bad - they are so nice and warm but they also love to wrestle and have figured out that if they jump on a half-asleep dad knees-first he yells louder. That’s OK; I’m a tough adventure racer and can handle it. And just wait until they experience the snowshoe race we’re going to do together next month - heh, heh.

It’s been a good couple of weeks for our team training and race preparations (only SEVEN months to go - gulp) and we’d like to thank our sponsors for their support: Deep Cove Canoe & Kayak, Experience Cycling, Fuel Belt, and Princeton Tec.

LLTNT,

Tom Jarecki
Team MindOverMountain.com