Hello PQ Community,

We are pleased to announce the team will be racing Primal Quest Badlands!  PQ is our marquee race for the year, and we look forward to giving it our best shot.  To that end, we’ll update this blog weekly with postings from the team about training, preparation, and other races we compete in along the way.

We began our journey into adventure racing about six years ago when most of the team raced as Team Crested Butte and Travis Macy was their rival on Team Salomon USA.  Since then, we’ve been lucky enough to do well in a number of domestic and international races and finished fifth in our last PQ in Moab.  Travis, who finished second at PQ Montana, joined the team this year.

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It has always amazed me at how quickly my body can get used to being lazy.  It has been officially a month since the injury to my right ankle, albeit only two weeks since I saw the doctor.  Now in my PQ obsessed mind, when he said to give it a month of rest, I surmised that he meant since the injury, not from when I saw him.  At least that is how I am justifying the level of soreness I have impressed upon myself in the last week.

I can just hear some of you now, “Now Todd, as a medical person, you should know better than to push yourself so hard so fast.” I hear you loud and clear because it is the same thing I have been telling myself all week.  I was once a hardcore gym rat for many years and so I am pretty in tune with the level of punishment my body is willing to withstand.  I have suffered injuries and have worked through them.  The only problem now is that I am having to train much differently than the days when size was everything.

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PIERRE, S.D. – Training for an adventure race is never easy, and training for one like Primal Quest requires more than just time and energy.

“Training for a race like Primal Quest goes beyond following a detailed schedule. The training requires a mind set to achieving a dream that was never thought possible and that dream becomes paramount,” said Don Mann, Director of Primal Quest. “Orienteering is one skill racers competing in Primal Quest Badlands Presented by SPOT will need to brush up on as there will be more navigational choices than in past races.”

Team South Dakota includes four state residents. Team leader, Paulette Kirby, had much to say about how their training for the event was going, “This is our first experience with Primal Quest and our training is going well. We do as much as we can to train so we enjoy and finish the race. We all understand that we will suffer, but the challenges faced will be as rewarding as ever. We believe we are doing everything possible to meet the challenge and are looking forward to competing against the other teams in August.”

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Team South Dakota has launched their own blog, covering a wide range of topics as they prepare for Primal Quest Badlands presented by SPOT this August. The team discusses their training, gear, and their progress working as a team.

In a recent post they reveal that local television station KEVN, the Black Hills FOX affiliate, has begun filming a regular segment of the team as they prepare. The plan is to continue following TEAM South Dakota all the way up to, and through the race, a great indication of what kind of local coverage we can expect when PQ and all of the teams descend on the Badlands in a few months time.

Check back on the Team SD blog on a regular basis. It’s an interesting and fun read already and will only get better as the race nears.

I have been to Crater Lake National Park several times, but never in the winter time. It has always been on my “list” of places to go and things to do here in my home state of Oregon. As usual, I have to take things just one step further; I have always wanted to snowshoe around its entire 37 mile (60 km) length in the winter time. Now keeping in mind that Crater Lake gets, on average, 44 feet ( 13.4 meters) of snow each year, I knew this was not going to be easy; especially with a bum foot.

I loaded up the car with the necessary goodies, including excellent company in the form of my friend Michelle. Now, Michelle is from Australia and has never seen the magnitude of 44 feet of snow. Well, maybe she has, but just not piled up all at once in one place as beautiful as Crater Lake. I think nothing is more fun than seeing something familiar through the eyes of others. I was not disappointed. Now, just so I don’t embarrass her, we will just say she was excited; very excited. Like “new toy at Christmas” excited. Like “Jack Russell terrier” excited. Like “pull over I think I am going to pee my pants” excited. What surprised me most was not that she was so excited, but by what she was so giddy about. I expected the grandeur of an imploded volcano, beautiful scenery, lots of snow, or maybe even the company she kept would be the source of her effluence. As with many things in life, I was mistaken.

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National Geographic Adventure has posted an excellent article to their Adventure Blog about Project Athena, a non-profit organization co-founded by Robyn Benincasa, of Team Merrell-Zanfel fame, and her friend Melissa Cleary, an excellent athlete with more than 40 marathons under her belt.

The goal of Project Athena is to assist women with breast cancer or other health issues, to realize their athletic and adventurous goals. The organization grants “Athenaships” in an effort to encourage those dreams and to help make them a reality. For instance, in this story, Robyn and a group of very athletic ladies, including two cancer survivors, set out to compete in the Costa Rica Costal Challenge.

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