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