February 16, 2006

By Anna DeBattiste

“What do you mean by ‘weak’?” my doctor asked me. “You mean you feel fatigued?”

I shook my head. “No, I mean I can’t keep up with anyone. I can’t run as fast as I used to, or bike as fast, or lift as much weight. And it seems pretty sudden.”

Dr. Oberheide looked at me for a moment as if considering whether I might be having a spell of hypochondria. I know the look.

“I guess it would be a good idea to do a full blood screen,” he said finally. “I’ll send a nurse in to take a sample. If you haven’t heard back on results by this Saturday, give me a buzz.”

On Saturday, I called from a chairlift in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

“Everything looks fine,” he said. I felt vaguely disappointed. “Sometimes there’s no telling what causes these sudden drops in performance. You did turn 40 this year, didn’t you?”

I tried to tell myself I was being ridiculous. Did I actually hope to hear that I had cancer, or that after years of Advil and Chardonnay, my liver was finally failing me? Or was it just that I hoped to hear that I had something treatable, as opposed to a bad case of aging?

I decided to call my teammates and see what they thought about this business of getting old. Luther had turned 40 earlier this year too. Blain was 41, and Russ was 46. Maybe they had some insight for me. I called Luther first.

“Do you ever think about how long you’re going to feel like racing?” I asked him.

Luther always looks on the bright side. “I sure don’t see any reason to quit in the near future,” he said. “I tend to train more efficiently and race smarter as I get older. You know, when I retire from the military in 18 months, I plan to do this full-time, for as long as I still have fun at it.”

Just what I needed, an optimist. I wasn’t going to get any sympathy here. “But you don’t feel any physical effects as you get older?” I persisted.

“Travel gets me more than aging does. Not having access to a gym, eating out all the time, gaining weight; that’s what really disrupts my training.”

I nodded. I could relate to that. Having taken on some consulting work in mid-2005, I was now on the road most weeks. That’s it, I thought. I’m not getting older, I’m just traveling too much. I felt a brief sense of relief at the idea that there was an easy answer. But then I realized the problem: it’s only because of my travel job that I can afford to race this year. There must be other answers out there. I called Blain.

“When do I say enough?” he mused. “Good question. I see a lot of elite racers our age retiring now, the Murrays, John Howard, Robert Nagle. I tend to think about my own retirement during a long race, but those thoughts go away at about the same rate the blisters do. I guess I won’t quit until racing no longer feels like a compulsion to me, or when race directors stop managing to design courses that I think are awe-inspiring journeys. I think the main thing for me is that when I quit, it needs to be on my own terms.”

Quit? Who’s talking about quitting? I felt panicky for a moment. Is that how my questions sounded to my teammates–like I was looking for reasons to leave the sport, to stay on the couch and eat bon-bons? Good lord. I figured I’d better call Russ for a good dose of humor. As the oldest member of our team, he would surely put things into perspective for me.

“Being a Master is much harder because of all the gear you have to pack,” Russ told me. “You know, like Poli-grip, Metamucil, a walker, Depends undergarments…”

“Seriously!” I protested.

“OK, seriously, I was way more competitive at 23 than I am at 46. Probably about twice as much. I have nothing to prove anymore except to myself, and that’s probably the biggest difference. I need to finish a race, but I don’t care when other teams pass me. In fact, it gives me someone to talk to.” He chuckled.

“But how do you deal with feeling weaker?” I asked. “How do you keep your enthusiasm for the sport when you start to feel like it’s all downhill from here?”

“Feeling like your body has ‘left the building’ doesn’t make it all downhill, really. It just means you have to focus more on the mental challenges of the sport, and the emotional rewards you get from it.”

I thought about that for a moment. Is that what Luther meant when he talked about training and racing smarter as he got older? Is that what Blain meant by keeping things on his own terms? Maybe they had something there.

I’d like to tell you that my conversations left me feeling better about my age. Probably about the best I can say is that I understand the importance of shifting one’s focus to stay motivated by the things you can control, rather than obsessing about the things you can’t change. What’s that old saying? Something about having the strength to change what you can and the grace to accept what you can’t. If my dog Tango could talk, she would probably tell me that it means you should keep on jumping for your treats, even when it makes you fall down.

February 16, 2006
By Mike Bitton

Outside Pacific Northwest adventure racing circles, team DART probably sounds like a gang of grease monkeys that can’t get over its Mopar fetish. In Washington and Oregon, though, DART is synonymous with dominance in multi-sport endurance races. In 2005, it won the Pacific Northwest Adventure Racing Championship for the third year in a row, and captured first place in the Explore California adventure racing series. This year

DART even made a worldwide impression in October 2005 when it placed 5th out of 35 teams at EcoMotion in Brazil. Much of the international field was stunned. This continuing success has led to a not-surprising amount of interest from sponsors, and the team recently picked up nuun, a growing electrolyte supplement company, as a big sponsor. As the company points out, nuun is optimal hydration made easy. nuun takes a back-to-basics approach to hydration: simple, sugar free, soluble tabs stored within a portable tube. Each compact tube contains 12 tabs; supplying 1.5 gallons of electrolyte hydration. That’s enough to keep you out there racing for days with a minimum of fuss. Just drop a tab in your water bottle, or race bladder… by the time you’ve tied your laces or put on your pack, you’ve got a complex electrolyte drink that recharges your mind and body. nuun’s flavors are light and refreshing. The low acidity reduces stomach irritation and the hypotonic solution is more efficiently absorbed than water alone or most sports drinks on the market.

So who is this team DART?DART is a team of nine athletes who rotate in and out of the lineup depending on race venues and racer availability. For the 2006 Primal Quest, DART will be team captain Cyril Jay-Rayon, Ryan VanGorder, Matt Hart and Jen Segger.

The men live in Seattle, and Segger hails from British Columbia, Canada. Jay-Rayon generally handles navigation, while VanGorder, Hart and Segger act as engines capable of pounding away mile after mile. Hart qualified for mountain biking’s ultimate 2005 suffer-fest: the 24 Hours of Adrenalin World Solo Championships in Whistler, B.C. Segger ran the 2005 Marathon des Sables in North Africa’s Sahara Desert, where she covered 150 miles in just seven days.

The 2005 adventure racing season featured many DART victories. In addition to the Explore California series, the team won the three-race TRIOBA adventure race series in Washington, and the four-race Wicked Adventure Racing series in Oregon. It also took first place at Raid the North in Nelson, B.C., Canada.

Countless things have to fall into place for any team to win consistently. Not every race went as DART planned in 2005. Consider the team’s disqualification in April at the AdventureXstream Moab in Utah. After having thought it had beaten legendary team Nike/Balance Bar to take first place, DART was disqualified for taking an out-of-bounds route.

And how about the team’s disappointing performance in June 2005 at the X-Adventure Raid’s North American stop in Bend, Ore.? With the course set in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, DART should have had something of a home-team advantage. Instead, it placed 21st out of 52 teams.

The bitterest loss of all in 2005 may have been DART’s second-place finish at the final TRIOBA race of the season in Washington state. Just two minutes behind team Mergeo.com, DART literally watched the winners cross the finish line before them. DART still had the points to carry the series, but there’s a new monkey on the team’s back, and that monkey will likely haunt DART throughout 2006.

There is no question DART is physically strong. But can the team also be savvy enough to make a good showing against the world-class competition at Primal Quest 2006?

DART’s 2004 Primal Quest finish (racing as dirtworld.com) was an impressive 11th out of 60 teams. Not bad, considering it was the first expedition-length race for most of the team’s members. But Jay-Rayon is the only remaining member of the team from that race, making the others newcomers to the expedition-length format of PQ.

Hart said DART’s 11th place finish at Primal Quest 2004 proved that a Pacific Northwest team can make a good showing in an international field. Eleventh place this time around, though, would be a disappointment, Hart said. “We’ve been improving so much, I think we’re capable of a strong performance at PQ06.”

VanGorder also exudes confidence about DART’s odds of a strong finish at PQ06. He predicts a top-10 showing. “We are moving beyond figuring things out,” VanGorder said. “Not to say we are not constantly learning, but I think with a healthy team we will have the ability to perform well.”

Segger said she looks forward to the challenges of PQ06, because the race will teach DART how to be a more efficient and competitive team. “You have to race against the top teams in the world if you’re going to get better,” Segger said. “It’s the only way to improve. I think we’ve been making a great name for ourselves in the sport, and I look forward to proving ourselves at Primal Quest.”

January 31, 2006
By Anna DeBattiste

Tango, my elderly, mixed-breed dog, has been our team mascot for almost four years now. It isn’t because she trains with us, or because she’s a trail dog, or because there’s anything about her that would reasonably remind you of adventure racing. It started out simply because I was sitting at my computer one day, racking my brains for a team name to enter in the Lake Tahoe Primal Quest lottery, and time was running out. Tango was sitting patiently at my feet waiting for her walk, and it popped into my head that Team Tango had a certain ring to it. Not that any of my teammates have ever agreed with me on that point. They’re usually afraid that everyone will take us for Latin ballroom dancers.

Now that I think about it, Tango got her name in a similar haphazard fashion. It was May of 1990, the day of my 25^th birthday. My boyfriend at the time, Richard, had gone to the store to get last-minute supplies for my birthday party. I was sitting on the lawn at my family’s New Hampshire lake house, drinking a beer and shooting the breeze with neighbors when he returned and dumped a puppy in my lap.

“Happy birthday,” he said with a grin. “I tried to find a pay phone to call you, but the old farmer who was giving away puppies at K-mart said he wouldn’t hold her for me, so I took a chance.”

I was furious. We already had one dog, and had discussed getting a second one several months ago. We’d decided it wasn’t a good idea, with both of us just out of college and unsure where we might be living a year from now. I couldn’t yell at Richard in front of all these neighbors, but I vowed I would corner him later.

“She’s adorable!” said one of my neighbors, lifting the wriggling puppy out of my lap. I was seething, but I had to agree. She had German Shepard coloring, and a little pug nose. Every time someone took her out of my lap, she struggled to get back to me. It seemed she had already decided something.

My best friend Kevin, a pilot, set about the task of naming her. He went through the phonetic alphabet from the beginning: “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie…” When he got to the letter ‘T’, I stopped him.

“That’s it!” I said without hesitation. “She’s Tango.”

Richard never got yelled at. By the time I got him alone, I had already fallen completely and irrevocably in love with my new dog, and she with me.

Tango will be sixteen in April of this year. She has arthritis, and she’s deaf, and she can’t really climb stairs anymore without my help. Last week, our vet told me that Tango’s heart rate was abnormally low, and she went in for an EKG. Now we’re waiting to see a cardiologist to find out how bad the news is. But Tango has moments of gladness when I know she still wants to be here with me. She’ll spin in a circle when I carry her in from the snow and she feels the warm air hitting her face, and catches the smell of her home-cooked chicken and rice breakfast. She still jumps for a treat, even though it usually makes her fall down. People may scorn me for clinging to her little life, but if she can have a pacemaker without too much risk from the anesthesia, I’ll do it.

We humans like to say, “Life is short”, repeating the cliché as an excuse for anything from “Eat dessert first” to “Let’s defy our spouses and spend ten grand and ten days racing through the wilderness”. But is anything really as heartbreakingly short as a dog’s life?

January 17, 2006
By Anna DeBattiste

One of the challenges of the 2006 Primal Quest is its early start date. For a September race, I’ll usually plan four months of 24 – 72 hour races leading up to PQ and presto, instant training. With the race in June, however, it’s hard to get in a lot of races beforehand. I live in the mountains of Colorado, where trails are snow-covered until late June or early July. There’s plenty of snowshoeing or cross-country skiing to be done, but that doesn’t exactly get you ready for long-haul biking or paddling. Besides, heaven forbid that I should have to get out there all by myself and have actual training days. It never works. With no teammates beside me for distraction, I’ve always got some kind of excuse for cutting the day short. I have errands to run. I’m too cold. My dog is lonely at home by herself. There’s a glass of wine with my name on it somewhere, calling me.

Pondering my dilemma this fall, I got the idea to go south in the spring for a tune-up race. I called a few local teammates and pitched the idea of a four-day Costa Rican race in April called Between Two Continents, Between Two Oceans. They liked the idea, and we registered a team.

That left me with an even bigger dilemma—how was I going to get ready for a four-day race in April? Now we’re talking about trying to bike and paddle in January and February. The good news about living where I do, however, is that the Front Range (the Denver/Boulder area) is only an hour and a half away, and while it may be snowy and cold during the winter down there, it may also be 60 degrees and dry on some days. We had such a lucky day last weekend, so off I went with my Costa Rica teammates for a day of biking and hiking.

The truth can be painful, especially when it has to do with facing up to one’s physical conditioning. If you’d run into us that day, you’d have noticed three men, peddling casually in a pack with enough spare breath to chat about football games and the weather, and trailing far behind, a lone, pathetic-looking woman gasping like a hooked fish and occasionally managing to squeak, “Wait up, you guys!”

In desperation the next morning, I went to my boss at the Copper Mountain Ski & Ride School and demanded the next three days off, which were graciously given. I packed up my bike and my dog and headed out for the four-hour drive to Moab, my usual training grounds for getting out of the snow in the spring and fall. I’d never been there in the winter before, but the weather report said it would be sunny with temperatures in the high 40’s or low 50’s.

The weather report lied. On my first day in Moab, road-riding through Arches National Park, my friend Julie and I threw our bikes on the ground every half-hour and ran in circles, shaking frozen fingers and lurching unsteadily on frozen toes. We talked about the possibility of a car offering us a ride if we were seen walking our bikes down each hill. Julie tossed out occasional sarcastic comments about what a great idea it had been for me to invite her along. Misery loves company, so I answered, “You’re welcome”. On day two I was alone again, and decided that I couldn’t possibly be expected to suffer the same temperatures on my bike. I went hiking instead, and found a dozen good reasons to quit early and retire to the bar for a glass of wine.

Day three warmed up a bit, and I found a pleasant, sun-lit canyon to ride in. On top of Hurrah Pass that afternoon, I sat on a rock with an inspiring view of Dead Horse Canyon Park spread out before me, and had a stern chat with myself. No one had done this to me but myself, I pointed out. No one stood over me with a stick and said, “You have to plan an impossibly early season this year whether you like it or not”. I had chosen this. It was supposed to be fun, for god’s sake! Then I made some resolutions. There would be no more drinking in the bar with my ski clients every day. Days off were for riding and running in the Front Range, not for terrorizing the mountain with my ski instructor buddies. Winter was effectively canceled this year. I would pretend it didn’t exist. And one way or another, I’d be ready to race in June.

In which Gary Robbins gets through the holidays without beer and learns the perils of shaving cream

January 10, 2006

By Gary Robbins

So I just spent the better part of half a day taking my house apart, or rather putting it back together. My girlfriend and I live in a town home complex and somehow managed to get into a home decorating competition over the holidays. I would like to tell you that I was an innocent by-stander who was pulled into this contest, but I feel you would all know otherwise. My girlfriend, Donna, and I only bought here seven months ago. What better way to show our neighbours love over the holidays than by challenging all of them to a Christmas light showdown. Donna and I were on a limited budget, due to a certain race that I am taking part in, and we acquired most of our decorations at the dollar store. For just one hundred dollars we were set.

The contest became a two horse show, between my direct neighbour and us. We eventually called a truce and declared it a tie. This was only after I nearly killed myself on the roof while installing a ten-foot-high homemade tree of lights, and decorated and placed a second (real) tree on our lower roof, complete with presents and a Santa Claus, and hung lights and candy canes from every possible corner. Our neighbour countered with a homemade bent over Santa mooning us, a light projector on the side of his house and light strands outlining his truck in the driveway. I was told that this complex has never seen so many units decorated before, so it was nice to help spread some Christmas cheer. My neighbour and I were still trying to up each other until late Christmas eve, before we finally agreed to share a drink and start plotting for next year.

I am deathly afraid of heights, and my girlfriend could feel the ladder trembling as I was installing all of our holiday lights. While on the roof I nearly broke down in tears and had to concentrate on deep breaths for most of the experience. Today, while removing these decorations, I paid off my teammate Mark Fearman, with beer, to get up on my roof and take the stuff down for me…I had already proved to my woman that I was man enough (i.e. dumb enough) to get it up there in the first place.

My fear of heights has not stopped my from bungee jumping, sky diving and the occasional cliff jump, but those simply involve closing your eyes and taking a leap of faith. I can not climb a rope more than 15 feet without starting to freak out. When it comes to our fixed ropes section of PQ, I will spend most of it staring at the rock and concentrating on my breathing. I’ll have to look at pictures of the views at a later time, in fact I would not be the least bit disappointed if we ended up doing this section in the middle of the night…with no headlamp, or light from the moon. Just a repetitive motion in a big dark room not five feet off the floor…that’s what I’ll be telling myself.

I hope Santa was good to all of you, because he was rather questionable to me over the holidays. Officially I received a vacuum cleaner and a sewing machine…or as I have come to appreciate it as…relationship happiness! I guess I have PQ to thank for this one, for when I tried to make a compelling argument for other ‘necessary’ household items, such as a home entertainment system, a new bike trainer (I found my present trainer at a garage sale for ten dollars), or some new music, Donna had but to reply with,

“You are spending two and a half grand on a RACE! We are getting a vacuum”.

“Yes sweetie, what color would you prefer”?

Her mother wrapped up two big boxes, one for each of us, and placed them under our tree. On the big morning, I looked at Donna and insisted she go first.

“A sewing machine! Mom you shouldn’t have”.

I could tell by the similarity of box sizes that I would be going boxing day shopping this year.

“A sewing machine storage container! Mrs. Turner, you really, really shouldn’t have”.

I managed to salvage the holidays, by arising at 5am on December 26th and driving for just over an hour, to line up for two hours, to fight little old ladies with high flying elbows to save twenty dollars on a few items, while putting thirty dollars of fuel into my vehicle to get home.

I was quite happy to go home with a new television, to help with my bike training during hockey games, and some new tools, to over-compensate for what I had actually received under the tree this year.

This was the first time in my entire life that I actually trained on Christmas eve, Christmas day, New Year’s eve, and even new year’s day…I’ll be completely honest here, this is the first time in my life that I wasn’t drunk for the entire holidays…and I learned that making it through without alcohol is a lot tougher than I would have thought. Much respect to anyone else who managed to accomplish this feat. On a positive note, this is also the first time in my life that I escaped the holiday season with a single digit weight gain.

On New Year’s day I was a participant in a 50k run followed by a polar bear dip into the Pacific Ocean. I was born and raised in Newfoundland, which is as far east as you can go in North America, and until you have actually been there for yourself you will never understand why so many people consider it to be heaven on earth, even though it gets some of the worst weather in all of the America’s.

What I am getting at, is that I find it hard to justify calling a dip in the ocean on a day when the temperature hits 10 degrees Celsius, A POLAR BEAR DIP! I’m sure there are polar bears somewhere in Northern Canada that are already organizing a petition against this. Sorry but I have no idea what 10 Celsius is in American? I think the conversion rate from Celsius to Fahrenheit is fixated to the daily exchange rate of the American dollar verses the Canadian dollar, so check with your financial institution for exact numbers.

The run itself was beautiful, taking in the better parts of Vancouver’s Stanley Park and seawall trails. Vancouver would definitely be the only place in Canada where you would get 101 people out for a run and dip on the first day of the New Year. I was content to take 90 minutes off my time from the previous year, which basically equates to ten minutes for each beer I that I abstained from versus 2005. I was the sixth overall finisher, but I think there were only three sober people in attendance.

Team MindOverMountain.com has now officially met each other. After replacing our original navigator with a guy by the name of John Barron, we all got together over wings and beer…I know this seems to be the only theme I am consistent with, but it is still kinda the holidays, so it’s alright!

I was the only member who had met John before this past weekend, and overall our team had a very solid first experience together…we’ll see how it all goes when no one has slept for three days, and we’re lost somewhere in the western USA. Anyone can get along when they are at their best, it is when people are at their worst that you truly get to know them.

John will be a very busy man in the coming months as he is not only training for PQ, but also studying to take the medical school entry exam! After a brief career as a teacher he will be pursuing a new field in the coming years. At least we know that our first aid certification will be covered!

John lives the furthest away, being located on Vancouver Island. The distance is not the issue, but travel costs add up in a hurry. Unfortunately that will mean that our newest team member will also be the person we see the least in the months leading up to the race. Although we are not sure as of yet, I believe that John may be the strongest biker on the team, as he will also be competing in La Ruta De Los Conquistadors, in Costa Rica later this year. John will be the oldest team member at the ripe old age of 39, although I would still I.D. him if he tried to buy cigarettes off of me. He has more total race experience than each individual, however he has not yet competed in an expedition adventure race, which helps to bring our team’s total expedition race experience to a whopping ZERO.

The average age of our team is just 31 years, helped along significantly by our youngest member Mark Fearman, at just 25 years old. Although Mark is a solid athlete, his greatest asset is his endearing personality. No one that has ever met Mark will ever forget him, and very few people have ever seen him anywhere near being upset.

Mark and I went for a ski touring training session today, and while I was cursing the foul weather and cold temperatures, Mark kept it in perspective,

“C’mon man, this is fun! This is adventure! What did ya expect, we’re ski touring dude”!

I have known Mark for five years now, and have only heard one story of him being seen without a smile on his face. A few years back while he was sharing a house with his university buddies, he was resting for an early exam. His house mates had gone out to party for the evening and when they returned, they unanimously agreed to sneak into Mark’s room and cover him in shaving cream.

As the cream began to seep into Mark’s ears, he leapt from his bed and chased the main culprit out of his room. As his friend fled for his life, he was forced to lock himself in the bathroom.

You have to understand that I really mean it when I say that Mark ALWAYS has a smile on his face. I’ve actually seen him fall asleep with a smile on his face. When Mark responded to this situation with such aggression, all involved were frozen in fear. Mark ended up kicking the bathroom door in to make sure that he got his point across…he does not like to be ripped from his sleep by shaving cream in his ears, when he has an exam the next morning…so as long as we leave the shaving cream at home, and don’t throw a surprise exam at him, I think we should be fine during Primal Quest.

I already know that I will be the first person on our team to have to bite my tongue due to sleep deprivation. Mark will point out my aggravation and laugh at me, Aimee Dunn (Betty Crocker) will undoubtedly do the same, and we have yet to see what John will be like at his worst?

I have surrounded myself with Aimee and Mark because quite simply, I know they will force me to be a better person when my emotions try to get the best of me out there. Something I have been working on for a few years now, is to do a better job of keeping my emotions in check, and to not let lack of sleep erode my patience so easily. When things go wrong, and undoubtedly they will, I can not seem to let go of the issue until I have yelled a bit, usually with a cuss word thrown in for good measure. Once I do this I have officially vented and it is over and done with. Mark already knows this, John and Aimee, I will now know if you are actually reading my blogs, ‘cause this is your only warning!

Anyone competing in the 2004, Sea 2 Summit (www.sea2summit.com), Squamish to Whistler, two day stage adventure race will undoubtedly vouch for this. Mark and I were competing as a team of two, in our first ever adventure race of more than a sprint distance. We were holding our own, late on the second day. With just 10km to go on the final bike stage, my chain skipped, ripped off my derailleur hanger, and threw the whole set up into my rear spokes! I could not even make a single speed bike with what was left. As each team and individual passed my then prone bicycle, I became more incensed. I had to unleash and did not hold back. It was my first experience with a serious gear related problem during a race, and something that at that moment in time, I could not accept. I believe I heard avalanches on far away glaciers as I shared my disgust with the world.

I sucked it up and we battled through. I would run my bike up the hills, coast down them and grab onto Mark’s pack for a tow on the flats. This was going great, until we crossed handlebars as we were entering the transitional area. We were on the main road, and after about a twenty foot superman slide down the pavement, the traffic stopped in both directions to make sure we were still alive. I don’t think a word was said at that point, not even to the kind people that had stopped to check on us. We simply peeled ourselves off of the road and ran the final kilometre to the transitional area and onto the races final section, a 20km trail run.

Mark and I hammered away and fought back from 20th to 9th, but we ran out of race course. It was not until I decided to try and stretch following the race that I noticed a strange pain in my calf. When I lifted my spandex pants it exposed a gash from our collision on the pavement. I ended up with my first ever stitches, a dozen of them in my leg. Cool, It was all worth it, I had my first official race scar!

The one thing adventure racing really teaches a person is that when things go wrong, it will always make for a good story, and the worse the situation gets, the better the stories in the end! I’ll just have to remind myself of that when we are 500km into PQ and I somehow manage to forget to repack my food, or we run out of toilet paper and are forced to use the ‘organic’ version, or someone forgets the maps…ahhh, too many variables…I guess that’s why we all love it so much.

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Gary Robbins
Team MindOverMountain.com

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