500 miles away from last year’s race headquarters at the Big Sky Resort in Montana, and nearly 400 days after the conclusion of Primal Quest: Montana, final preparations are underway for the kickoff of Primal Quest: Badlands Presented by SPOT.  Though the course is still hush-hush, it promises to take racers through the scenic and brutal Black Hills, the legendary town of Deadwood, and even past the familiar presidential faces preserved for posterity in Mount Rushmore.

Today, racers are running the administrative gauntlet before the race starts – check in, gear check for all the mandatory equipment, skills certification for the ropes and water courses, medical approval, and of course, pick-up of all the clothing, nutrition, water bottles, and other items donated by Primal Quest’s generous sponsors, including Merrell clothing and shoes, Zanfel, Headsweats, Hammer Nutrition, GU, nuun, ShaveSecret, and Raw Revolution.

The locals are getting into it too – two mountain bikers had been tracking Primal Quest activities and were not only snooping on the small ropes course set up today to check racers’ skills, but they were also looking forward to the influx of racers to the regular Thursday “Summer Nights” event, a weekly block party in Rapid City that looks to be a party of newly epic proportions.

The pre-race briefing starts in under an hour.  Racers will receive maps and their race passports in preparation for the exciting start tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn.  Stay tuned for the latest and greatest news and information – the SPOT tracker map goes live at race start so you can follow your favorite teams.  Photos are already live on www.flickr.com/primalquest, with more on the way.  On your mark, get set…..

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Primal Quest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.