Team Profile: Strike Anywhere/ATP Center
Posted on 12/17/05 10:21 PM| by Will
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.
Perhaps prudence is not widely extolled because you may need only one member of the team to carry this characteristic, and often it’s the team captain. But what if the captain is surrounded by these pillars – three teammates whose athletic risk taking is balanced equally with plain, vanilla, good judgment? Tom Economou of Team Strike Anywhere/ATP Center is lucky enough to have this sort of team.
“Oat and I met in 2001 when we did an adventure race together,” recalls Tom. Oatfield Whitney and Joel Janov both work as firefighters, where Joel is the Chief of the Evergreen Fire Department. The three have been racing together on and off for three years, and have each competed in previous Primal Quests separately - Oat and Joel have each competed in two Primal Quests, and Tom competed at Tahoe in 2003.
In his first Primal Quest, Joel’s team didn’t finish the race. “For me, what’s nice is having four committed people, which has added strength from the uncertainty of four individuals. It’s been a struggle to find four people you’re going to continue to race with – not for personality, but for logistic reasons. We live 20 minutes from each other; so we’re training twice a week, not spending energy trying to find four people.”
Nicole Rueth, an office manager for a mortgage company, is the newest member to the group and to adventure racing in general. Approached two years ago about racing with his team, she turned Joel down because she was training for triathlons and various running events. A year and a half later Joel approached her again and this time, Rueth said, “the opportunity seemed more enticing. Triathlons are a lot of fun, but training and racing alone all the time was getting lonely.” After her initial commitment, she jumped right in, “That night Tom mentioned a race only a few weeks away, and immediately I told him I would race with him without even thinking about it. We took 3rd place and I absolutely fell in love with the sport.”
All four team members have jobs that require prudent level-headedness, which has helped with communication and team dynamic. Knowing team members’ strengths and weaknesses is invaluable in the middle of a long adventure race. Pressed to describe each teammate, Joel rattles off, “Tom is the Doer, he makes things happen; always on top of the plans, and organized. Oat is the workhorse, and Nicole is the cheerleader. She’s as tenacious as anyone I’ve ever met and always in good spirits.”
Tom followed up, “Joel is the voice reason – very analytical but not to the point that you’ll debate for half an hour” – which makes him the natural choice as navigator.
While some teams may be daunted by the race being unsupported this year, Joel and his teammates are actually looking forward to the transition, “It’s easier to motivate yourself when you’re not lulled to the comfort of the supported transition. It is nice when there’s a hot meal and someone to help change your clothes. But it helps to get that real expedition experience. The rewards are greater.”
On the question of how firefighting has helped him in adventure racing, Joel expressed the theme of prudence. “The personality types are similar; adventure racing is like firefighting. You have hours of boredom with seconds of frightening excitement. It’s the same with the extreme activities you find in adventure racing. But when you’re in a career with real disaster and real decisions, it puts racing in perspective.” Tom added, “Not being a firefighter, in those few seconds of excitement – Oat and Joel are very calm, and that calms me and Nicole down.”
It seems appropriate that those whose careers are to put their life on the line enjoy adventure races as leisure activity. Speaking of the explorer Sir Edmund Shackleton, who survived an ill-fated transantarctic expedition in 1914, Joel remarked, “It’s my Shackleton experience. Where else are you going to test yourself? And it’s cheaper than therapy.”
Tom jokes that the team is taking a pragmatic approach to the race, “Our number one goal from our training and in getting specific training is to finish. We want to get to the finish line as soon as possible – not to finish first, but to not suffer. But we have little goals, like decreasing our stopped time and wasted time, and while we don’t think we can compete with the top teams, we don’t think we are far from the top 15-20.”
