Monday, August 31, 2009

More PQ Pictures








Primal Quest Badlands - 2009







Primal Quest Badlands – 2009

After years of racing and a number of expedition races I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into when I signed up for Primal Quest Badlands. The beauty of adventure racing, however, is the unpredictability of the whole sport. Not only do you not know the course, but there are always dozens of unforeseen challenges to confront. This race was no exception. While the actual race was certainly brutal (600 miles and around 124,000ft of elevation change), illnesses, injuries, weather and equipment problems made it one of my toughest races ever.

I will try and lay out the basics of the race here, but I should preface everything by saying that this was an intense experience and it is tough to convey even a small portion of what you experience physically, emotionally and mentally. There are constant, critical decisions being made that can make or break your race – some personal, some must be debated and agreed upon by the team. That whole mental component of adventure racing would be impossible to detail in anything short of a full blown novel. There were also countless annoyances and discomforts: bruises, cuts, dust, aches, blisters, sunburn, hunger, thirst, cold, exhaustion . . . the list goes on and on. Getting through the race really is a process of managing and minimizing suffering. However, the flip side was even richer. While I’m sure I have already forgotten half of it, there were great moments of euphoria as well. We constantly encountered amazing vistas, wildflowers, woodland creatures, beautiful sunrises, scented breezes, good laughs, good camaraderie, and deep, deep satisfaction. Also, the race was just damn long: ten days non-stop. It is hard enough to remember what I did a week ago normally, let alone when you are racing hard ~22 hours a day.

This year Primal Quest, a race that is known as the “world’s most challenging human endurance competition”, was set in South Dakota. At first I was a little disappointed by the location, but now I think it was a near perfect venue. The Black Hills, Needles, Grasslands, and Badlands worked together to provide amazing scenery, wildlife and diversity to the race. South Dakota also has really lenient access laws that allowed a huge portion of the race to be completely “cross-country”, which means we were in remote wilderness with no trails or roads at all. Because of this factor, navigation became a huge component of the race. The disciplines for the race were trekking/running, mountain biking, spelunking, swimming, flat water kayaking, river kayaking, rope work (ascending, rappelling and high-line traverses), and foot/bike/kayak and cave orienteering. This was also one of the longest adventure races ever held at approximately 600 miles. The race would continue, non-stop for ten days.

I was racing with professional Team Tecnu Extreme / Staphaseptic this year. It is always a bit dicey to jump into an expedition with teammates you don’t know all that well. You are literally within 100 meters of them for 10 days straights in very stressful environments. As you can imagine, it often does not go well. After a week of sleeping an hour or two a night some people can be a little bit less than chipper! However, our team dynamics worked out marvelously. This contributed not only to our success in the race, but more importantly, to our enjoyment of the whole experience.

I was racing with Charlie Kharsa, a super experienced white-water river guide who also happens to be the strongest pound for pound hiker I have ever known. He probably weighs less than 150 lbs, but I can say with certainty that he carries more weight than 95% of the racers out there. And he does it with a smile! Charlie also has a never weakening focus on the goal at hand. He was the real task master for our team. Mark Richardson was the third male on our team, he is a very resourceful firefighter from California. In addition to solid navigation and endurance, Mark has expertise in everything from white water rescue, wilderness first aid, plant and animal data, bike mechanics, and rope work. He was a true asset to the team. Melissa Griffiths was our fourth teammate. True the stereotype, she is a nails tough brit. In addition to rocking the course physically in every discipline, she kept our spirits and determination high. She was the real heart of the team.

The day before the race was jammed with gear checks, skill certifications and packing. Also, in a cruel maneuver, the race organization didn’t give us the maps of the course until the evening before the race starts. This meant that we spent the whole night before the race trying to plot a giant course on over 12 poster sized maps. Like most teams, I imagine, we got to the busses for the start at 3:00am with less than two hours of sleep. This may sound dumb, but that map work is much better done before the race than with a hazy sleep deprived brain five days into the race.

TREK
As some kind of joke, the race started with a 27 mile “marathon” over mostly rolling grasslands.
I guess this was just to give you perspective. The “marathon” was only 4% of the total race distance. After a rifle gun start, we settled into a comfortable shuffle and made our way through the first half of the segment with no issues. We ran the flats and downhills and power hiked the uphills. We still had on decent size packs and were often on uneven, offroad terrain, so we were not exactly “running the marathon.” About 18 miles in we were hopping a barbed wire fence. I went to grab the top wire and someone let go of it at the same time. It sprung up and sliced/punctured the palm of my hand. This would turn out to be a huge annoyance over the next 10 days, especially in the paddle and mountain biking segments. After the bleeding stopped, I filled the hole with super glue, slapped some duct tape around my hand and we continued on. Over the next ten days we would cross at least 100 fences, from short to giant, barbed to electric. It simply became a way of life when you are traversing cross-country. The last ten miles of the “marathon” were rather uneventful except for an exceptional headwind. It was so strong we actually formed a pace line to help ease the struggle against the gale. Melissa also had an unfortunate encounter with some poison ivy that would turn out to be an annoyance days later.

We wrapped up the 27 mile run (which would be the easiest miles of the whole 250+ trekking miles in the race by far) and began plotting for the next discipline, which was a ~17 mile orienteering course. We also had to shoulder our full mandatory gear that we would need for the rest of the race. This meant bulging packs and slower paces from here on out. At times it seemed crazy to be forced to carry a storm shell, fleece, thermal layer, base layer, thermal gloves, and thermal hat when it was over 100 degrees out, but there were also quite a few times when I had on every stitch of clothing with me. The winds died down and were replaced by a light drizzle, which eventually led way to sun and heat. After about six hours we left the orienteering course to begin a mountain bike leg. There was a caving section down the course that we wanted to make sure to do during night so as not to burn any daylight while we were a mile under the earth!

MOUNTAIN BIKE

In this race we were forced to assemble and disassemble our bikes at each transition so that they could be transported for us in secure bike boxes. Who ever thought that being able to mount and adjust a derailleur quickly would be a great race skill? Anyway, after about 30-45 minutes of sorting gear, eating and assembling bikes we were off on what would turn out to be an almost three day ride. We had a bunch of moderately technical singletrack climbing for the first ten miles. About 90 minutes in we noticed that I had a large tear in the sidewall of my tire. The tube had not punctured yet, but that was just a matter of time given the plumb sized bulb sticking out of my wheel. Unfortunately, I was using slime tires, which make it difficult to let out a bunch of air and then reinflate. The stem often gets jammed up with the slime. So after I took the tire off to put on a clif-bar wrapper/tape/super-glue patch for the sidewall, we had to use a fresh tube. Not a big deal at the time, but down the road this would become a huge issue. There were a few really nasty climbs on this section that forced up to push our bikes; steep grades on very loose boulders. All in all, though, we made good time and got to the caves about an hour after sundown.

CAVES

The caving section was exciting in that none of us had ever navigated through a complicated cave network before. However, as we entered we heard that a few of the teams in front of us had gotten lost and found it to be quite frustrating. Crawling through the caves definitely did slow things down a bit. You had to move slowly to keep from cutting yourself to pieces on the sharp rock. It was also often slick and wet from water and bat guano. Also, there were a number of worm holes where you could only go one at a time anyway, so the idea of passing others teams was simply out of the questions. We definitely got turned around a few times and did a fair amount of backtracking before we fully understood the 3-D nature of the map. Luckily compasses work under the earth! Anyway, after three hours of crawling around with the bats we were more than ready to get out of caves and back to the fresh air. We got out at about midnight and had been pushing hard since the 5:30am race start. Add that to the lack of sleep the nights before the race and we were ready for a cat nap. We curled up on the ground for about 90 minutes of rest. Apparently my snoring meant that my teammates may have gotten only 60 minutes of sleep!

MOUNTAIN BIKE

We jumped back on the bikes at about 2:30am into a nasty network of gravel roads, cat tracks, trails and deer paths. We made a few wrong turns and ended up doing hours of unnecessary climbing. As the sun came up, we were back on track. The next eight hours would have a ton of hills. Some rideable, some impossible. We made a few more wrong turns, but ultimately pushed through in the right direction. We rode hard all day long to finally roll into a mountain bike orienteering course just before 5:00pm. Just as we were going over the maps for this section the weather started to turn south. Rain and wind gusts motivated us to keep moving to stay warm. We also knew we would be climbing into the mountains (6-7,000ft) that night and were a bit concerned about a bad storm up high. After just a few hours in the bike orienteering course we started a gradual climb to South Dakota’s second highest point. This normally wouldn’t have been a bad climb at all, but the rain had turned some of the trails into an impossible muck. Not only could you not ride up them, you couldn’t even push your bike up them. The mud would stick to your tires to point where there would be no clearance against your frame and your tires wouldn’t rotate. We ended up spending hours carrying our bikes or pushing them in the grass along the edge of the trails. This really slowed our progress and sapped our energy. After reaching the highpoint, as darkness fell, we were descending a dirt road, but couldn’t ride it! Pushing your bike downhill after hours of pushing it uphill was more than frustrating. After a few hours of this our patience started to grow thin and we attempted to ride a few of the segments. We knew the danger this presented to our derailleurs, but just could resist. Sure enough, Mark’s derailleur got jammed in the clay/mud and twisted right off. The severity of this situation took a while to sink in. We had at least 80 miles left on this bike leg alone. Even if we could fashion a single-speed, this would absolutely crush our race hopes. For the time being, however, it didn’t make much of a difference as none of us could ride our bikes anyway. The rain and mist didn’t leave and we had all become quite wet and cold. We eventually dropped to a gravel road that was ridable, but we were all pretty wiped out from the effort. It was too cold and wet to stop without some kind of shelter, which we didn’t have. But we were able to find some dry wood at the base of the larger fir trees. Also, there was a bunch of dry old-man’s-beard like moss clinging to the trees that turned out to be rather flammable. It was about 1:00am at this point and we decided to try and warm up a bit and see what we could do to salvage Mark’s bike with a clearer head and warmer digits. The temps were dropping down into the lower 30’s and we couldn’t stop without shivering to work on the bike in our current soaked condition. The fire was a true lifesaver, but not really enough to make us really comfortable. We tried to dry off a bit and warm up, but I don’t think anyone really got much rest. I was curled up next to it in my mylar bivy sack. I was so close to the flames, trying to get warm, that embers from the fire kept landing on me and melting my bivy sack to my clothes. In a few hours, my sack was turned into swiss cheese. I was also taking hot rocks out of the fire to put by my feet, but these ultimately melted the sack as well. With all this melting going on you would think I would be warm, but the cold ground and the side of me away from the fire overpowered any heat I received and I ended up shivering violently. After an hour of shivering we all decided we had to just get moving. It was really difficult to shorten Mark’s chain because the mud was so clingy and thick you couldn’t even make out each link. Think about dry gum all over the bike. Plus the cold metal made your fingers quite clumsy in no time. Eventually I was able to shorten the chain to what I thought would work for a reasonable gear ratio, however it turned out to be just a hair too loose. We tried several dozen chain-length and gear ratio combinations but we just couldn’t find anything that would hold as a single speed. Eventually we hit a few that we thought would work but they were so tight that they ended up busting the links open in the chain. After hours of back aching effort, we resigned to just walk the bike on all the flats and uphills for the next 40 miles. We tried pulling Mark, but even with a three-person train in front of him you just can’t pull that kind of dead weight up a hill. All in all, the loss of the derailleur probably cost us at least 12 hours not to mention the additional effort of walking miles and miles in bike shoes.

However, the adventure racing gods were smiling on us. Around 12:00 the next day we were able to swap Mark’s bike for another bike. This was critical, because there was a shortcourse cut-off three hours later that we never would have been able to make if we had to walk/run the next twenty five miles. We hammered the next few hours on what was mostly singletrack and were making good time. It looked like we were going to miraculously make the cut-off despite the mechanical issues earlier. But then Charlie got a flat tire. Despite slime tires and Teflon tape, we had worked our way through all of our five spare tubes over the previous two days. We threw a quick patch on Charlie’s tube and raced on to beat the cut-off.

We had decided to risk a shortcut through a very twisty, narrow canyon that would drop us off on a main trail to the next checkpoint. There was no real trail in the canyon, but there was an old abandon railroad bed. I have no idea how a train ever could make it through such rough terrain. We bushwhacked and zigzagged across the river at least a dozen times. The cold water actually felt great on my tired legs, but it also kept the patch from properly sealing on Charlie’s tube. This was an amazingly cool section with huge twisting walls boxing us in on each side and a roaring river beneath us. We finally hit the main trail that would take us straight into the next checkpoint. We had about four miles to go and twenty minutes left. We didn’t really have time to wait for another patch to dry on the tube, plus it was only leaking slowly, so we began a crazy circus show. Charlie would sprint in front as far as he could make it before the tire was inoperable and Mark or I would rush up to him with a pump in hand and furiously pump away at the tube until he could ride again. We must have repeated this process at least six or seven times. It was exhausting for us all, but after a tremendous team effort we cruised through the last bit of singletrack and sprinted our way to the checkpoint, just two minutes before the shortcourse cutoff. These cutoffs turned out to be a major part of the race, we ultimately were one of only ten teams to make all of the cutoffs and to complete the full course.

It was great to make the cutoff, however the cruel part of the whole situation is that the endless bike leg was not over! We would continue riding for the remainder of the day and much of the coming night. Given our full expedition weight packs and the rough terrain we had been covering we all had sore asses! After nailing the first checkpoint we were cruising along a very well maintained trail when Charlie got another flat. A full blown nail was sticking out of his tire. Does that really happen? I guess so. The hole was too big for the slime to fix, but another issue with slime tires is that they are hard to patch because you have this viscous goo all over the hole and it is tough to get a dry spot to adhere the patch. We went through four or five patch jobs and at least 90 minutes trying to get his wheel fixed. Normally this wouldn’t be that big of deal, but after days of racing with little to no sleep and dealing with tire problems, mud and derailleur problems for the last 30 hours this definitely tested our patience. Everything just gets harder as the race wears on, and little things like trying to get a patch to seal to a tube can become a real chore.

We eventually rolled on and tagged the last bike checkpoint in the dark (at the top of another mountain of course) and rolled another 15-20 miles into the transition area where we would grab our trekking and climbing gear and head off the next leg of our adventure. After days of non-stop riding with hefty packs none of us were sad to disassemble our bikes and pack them away.

CLIMB/TREK

We tried to grab 120 minutes of sleep before heading out of the transition area, but it was still bitterly cold. I was tired enough to fall asleep, but I woke up shivering twenty minutes later. All I had was a thermal sheet and we were lying on the cold ground with no insulation. I actually did some pushups to warm myself enough to fall back asleep for another precious twenty minutes. This stupid process repeated itself for a bit over an hour and then it was time to move on as the sun was coming up.

While this was the first true trekking leg, we had already put a lot of time in our feet. We hiked the bikes quite a bit due to the derailleur issue and unrideable trials, we walked/crawled the caves, and of course did the marathon and foot orienteering course to start the race. This next leg had some rugged off trail navigation to the top of the highest peak nearby (of course) and then we would head over to the Needles area for the ropes course, followed by much, much more trekking. I don’t know what the total mileage for the leg is (maybe 50-60? with plenty of hills). Before we left, we realized there would be an opportunity to buy more food about a third of the way through the trek, after we bagged the big peak. We discussed this, but in the chaos never really made a group decision about how many calories to bring. It made sense to not carry as much weight up the big peak and just buy food later, but this is not quite how it worked out.

We chose a more direct attack route on the peak rather than following a ridge, who knows if that was the faster route? We then hopped logs and virtually slid a few thousand feet down to a road that would lead us to a trail and the climbing site. We should have stopped to get food on the way, but we were in a hurry to get the climbing area and no one really mentioned a need for more food. We climbed up Little Devil’s Tower and got the basic directions for the ropes course. We would first have a ~300 foot rappel followed by a 200 foot ascent, then a Tyrolean traverse to a 150 foot free climb, followed by two more high-lines and then another 200+ foot rappel. A world class ropes course to say the least. I had been looking forward to this for some time. We zipped down the first rappel in no time and made our way over the ascent. The wind was really howling so once you got 100 feet or so off the ground you didn’t have to worry about overheating despite all the work involved to jumar. About two thirds of the way up I noticed that one of the wire loops that connected a chock anchor to the rope had frayed open. Everything was triple anchored, but I still thought they would like to know. After a quick yell, they inspected the site with binoculars and shut the course down below us temporarily. I was glad our whole team had made it past that point. Asides from Charlie losing his rappel gloves in the wind (which could mean quite a bit of rope burn!), the rest of the course went smoothly for the team. I think we made it through the whole series in about three hours. It was odd, but given the extreme sleep deprivation, it was hard to get excited about the exposure after the first ten minutes. I basically ignored the 300 feet of empty space below me and just went about my business in a very casual manner. I might as well have been manipulating anchors in my living room.

After the climb we were repacking our gear and looking at the maps and we began to realize how little food we had for the mountainous 40 miles of trekking we still had left. We managed to buy some scraps off a guy in a parking lot, but we were still desperately short.

The next section involved some difficult navigation. Trails and roads on the maps generated in the 1960’s simply no longer existed. We decided to just follow a bearing for miles through the trees, swamps and hills until we could get a reliable handrail. This technique worked out well and we made our way straight to the next checkpoint at around 10:00pm. By now, we knew how bitterly cold it got at night, so if we were going to sleep for an hour or two tonight we figured it would be best to do it in early evening before the real cold set in. We crashed at the checkpoint for ~90 minutes and then took off for a long, cold, dark walk through the night.

At this point I started to feel an odd ache in knee. It had started a bit on the last bike leg, but with navigation, technical riding, and everything else going on I had not paid much attention to it. However, I discovered that over the several day bike leg my seat had slipped down almost two inches. This had put some serious strain on my knees. They felt OK as I packed up my bike, but they were feeling it now that we were trekking in earnest. I felt like a complete idiot for making such a rookie mistake.

We walked through the night with just a few quick stops for foot care. Luckily, my feet were in awesome shape. I have battled with blisters in the past (even to the point of complete maceration, or the loss of all the skin on the bottom of your feet), but this entire race I never even got one blister! This was a real blessing as I had some other issues to deal with. My feet definitely got sore and bruised from the constant pounding. Also my toes went numb from the swelling and pinched nerves, but that stuff is unavoidable and minor compared to blisters.

At about 4:30am we rolled into a campsite that may be our last chance to find some food. There was only one guy awake. We asked him if he had any spare food he could sell and he just quietly said “no” and walked away. I don’t really blame him. At this point we were four stinky, filthy, cross-eyed racers hiking at 4:30 in the morning and trying to buy food off of strangers in the middle of the woods. We were on our way out of the camp, completely dejected and dreading the impending starvation when the dude’s wife chased us down and told us to come over to their camp. She then loaded us up with luncheon meat, sardines, bags of tuna and some nuts. Not exactly fine dining, but we were absolutely thrilled. The luncheon meat did taste like cat food, but it was damn delicious cat food at that!

The trek kept rolling on through the morning. We skirted buffalo (who were in the rut and quite frisky), prairie dogs, antelope, deer and some beautiful country as we made our way out of the mountains and into rolling grasslands. We hit another checkpoint, climbed a giant buffalo fence and hiked through endless hills and prairies to the next transition area by Wind Cave.

MOUNTAIN BIKE

The next bike leg should be fairly routine, it was less than fifty miles, a net loss in elevation and basically just a way to get teams to a giant reservoir for a swim and kayak segment. However, it didn’t turn out that way for us.

After assembling our bikes we reviewed the maps to verify our route choice. We were under the impression that a nearby highway (with glorious pavement!) was illegal to travel on because it was forbidden during the previous trek. Because of this we had a long, bushwhack filled course plotted. However, as we began our plotted course we soon discovered that the route we planned was virtually impossible. The trails and roads we identified on the map simply did not exist. Plus the terrain in front of us was unridable due to sand, cacti and other vegetation. Primal Quest is known for ridiculous, tortuous segments, but we really doubted that they wanted us to carry our bikes for twenty miles. We reviewed the rules of travel and concluded that the highway was now open to travel and was simply closed for the previous trek. Maybe this was obvious, but with our hazy, sleep deprived brains it really did not seem clear. Anyway, after about an hour of riding uphill the wrong way, we were on course and hammering away to the next checkpoint. Along the way we startled a herd of pronghorn antelope. These dudes can run 40MPH for four hours straight! I don’t know why you would ever need to be 160 miles away from a certain predator, but they can do it! Anyway, the herd took off at full speed straight towards a barbed wire fence. Most ducked the lowest wire, but a few of them hit the fence and bounced backed with a wicked recoil. It sure looked ugly, but they adjusted and regained their run like nothing had happened.

After a checkpoint in a semi-ghost town and another 20 miles of rolling hills we arrived at th edge of a table top over the reservoir in the dark. Our map showed a road twisting down the bluff to the water’s edge, but of course there was nothing but faint animal tracks. I was navigating this segment and I’m sure my teammates thought I was nuts as I turned my wheel down the steep slope and began dropping. While we couldn’t see it, I knew the lake was down there and it was at least 15 miles and more mystery roads to find another way down. We unfortunately did get one flat from riding on the open terrain, but eventually, after hopping a few fences, we bushwhacked our way down to a frontage road that circled the lake and made our way to the next Transition Area.

We had a ~5 mile swim in front of us in a pitch black night and it was getting colder by the hour, so we decided to get few hours of much needed sleep and get up at 4:00am to tackle the swim as the sun rose.

SWIM

Like all my previous attempts, I spent an hour or two shivering on the ground. I’m not sure how beneficial that type of rest is, but I know I floated in and out of consciousness so at least my brain got some rest. I did stop moving long enough for my knee to really stiffen up. It was beginning to look like the damage I did from riding my bike with a low seat was going to be more severe than I thought. I had a nasty case of ITB (Illotial Band Syndrome) flaring up. I have had this before so I knew the issues with it, but the downside is that it is damn painful with no real quick cures.

As we put on our wetsuits and grabbed all our other swim gear (drybags, fins, kickboards, etc.) a crazy windstorm began. Some of the gusts were so strong that food and other gear were being blown away. I certainly held onto the maps with an excessive death grip!

Given the crazy whitewater and basically because we thought it would save time, we were going to hike the shore of the lake and then attack the swim checkpoints from the nearest point of land. As we were leaving, one of the officials stopped us and asked if we were going to attempt to swim in the storm conditions. After we said yes, he told us that there was no way to launch the safety boat in the whitewater and wind, but they technically couldn’t stop us from trying to cross the water. Then they said they did have one guy who could help us in terms of safety and the official pointed to a man who literally had on full snorkel gear. He had a full face mask, snorkel and full length diving fins. Normally, this is where you would find this situation rather absurd, but in expedition races like this you encounter dramatic situations all the time. Each day you are near hypothermic, potentially starving, lost . . . or in this case about to swim in a storm too bad for the safety boat to launch in. The thing is you really don’t have the time or energy to get worked up about any of these things. You kind of just let them roll off your back and you keep plowing along like it is the normal course of business. It turned out that the dude who was following us is some type of navy seal rescue diver (Dan Mann the race promoter is a former Navy Seal). We didn’t really need any help as the crazy winds died down shortly after we hit the water. By the time we had hiked around much of the lake and were shooting a bearing to the last checkpoint the water was downright pleasant. This was typical of South Dakota – crazy and random burst of violent weather followed by complete serenity.

Following the swim was a short, optional flat water paddle section. We looked at the future short-course cutoff times and decided that with the time and energy lost in simply transitioning to kayaking (with packing gear, sorting food, plotting points and changing clothes), that it was just not worth the time. This turned out to be the right decision.

MOUNTAIN BIKE / RIVER PADDLE

We had a short (~10 mile?) bike ride to a bridge over the Cheyenne river for the upcoming paddle section. Other than the fact that we had to carry all of our paddle gear (heavy and wet from the swim) and another freak storm of rain and wind, the ride was totally uneventful.

We disassembled our bikes and geared up for the ~40 mile river paddle. We didn’t know what to expect. We knew we were not going to get any help from the current. The Cheyenne was barely a creek at this point in the year. Often, it wasn’t even ankle deep. We were told that this would be an “adventure paddle” which we thought meant we would be dragging our boats on slippery rocks for the next 15 hours. We weren’t too far off the mark. There were occasional “ponds” where the water seemed to simply stop and got deep enough to paddle through for a consistent period, but for the most part we were in and out of the boat every five to ten minutes. This was quite painful on my knee. Another issue was the fact that there were around 40 barbed wire fences that crossed the river that we had to avoid. Luckily they had been flagged by race staff. Without this, especially at night, we would all have been bloody messes. There were some upsides, the scenery was cool and we had crazy carp that would jump out of the water to attack our paddles and bounce off the boat. That was cool.

This paddle never seemed to end. After 12 hours on constant effort it was now 3:00am. We were all quite cold and exhausted. You could tell our delirium was catching up to as we took turns screaming as loud as we could or simply making strange animal noises or any other bizarre distraction from our current hell. We really were in a prison of sorts. We couldn’t stop paddling or you would instantly start shaking from the wet cold, but we were also all too exhausted to keep our eyes open. There were dozens of occasions Charlie and I simply both fell asleep either to wake up shaking or bouncing off a bank somewhere. We were actually really lucky that we didn’t fall asleep and float right into a barbed wire fence. I know for many teams that this paddle was an absolute low for them in the race.

Just as the sun was coming up from a long brutal night we finally hit the exit point. As we were dragging the boats up the steep muddy bank we all began shaking uncontrollably from the cold. We checked in, stripped off our wet clothes and fell into a delirious sleep.

TREK

I’m not sure how much later (maybe 2 hours?) we started packing and getting ready for a monster trek (~75 miles) that would include the notorious Badlands. My knee was not getting any better; I could barely hobble around between our gear bins. Luckily the first 20 miles of the trek were not too hilly. I also got some military issue 800mg ibuprofen from a friend earlier that I was popping like candy. Also, my team really came to the rescue. Mark did an excellent job taping up leg to support my knee and giving me a deep tissue massage. Charlie took the weight off of my back. I had been on the other end of towing and weight sharing many times in the course of adventure racing, so I knew they were happy to do it, but I still felt a little bad for adding an extra burden to my teammates at this point. Things loosened up for me on the flats and after an hour or so I was taking big, smooth strides again. We were totally off-trail for the next twelve hours simply following valleys. We stopped once to try and get some water, but the streams were so full of clay and silt that it clogged the filter in seconds. We were working off of a 1:100,000 scale map in this section which made accurate navigation difficult. We lost an hour or two by going up the wrong valley, but were back on track when night fell. The problem was this was a completely moonless night, so we couldn’t even make out the silhouettes of distant mountains. We knew we had to go east to get closer to the checkpoint, but didn’t know exactly how far and pacing was impossible on this terrain due to giant ditches and rolling hills.

At this point in the race, we were all so tired that anytime we stopped for more than a few minutes, there was a decent chance that someone would fall asleep. We decided to try and get some rest and clear our heads before making a potentially long, mysterious trek through the night to the next checkpoint. After 90 minutes of shivering (sound familiar?) we headed east over steep terrain. We eventually did get close enough to see the checkpoint across a large valley, but we also had run into a band of cliffs. Rather than battle the maze of hills, we hunkered down and waited for sunrise. The daylight confirmed that we were where we thought we were, so we simply picked the easiest path down and across the valley to the next checkpoint. It turns out that there was a 7:00am shortcourse cutoff at this checkpoint that we were unaware of, but luckily we made it there with just a few minutes to spare! We were in 10th place at the time and it looked like no other teams would make it through. So now our race was down to 10 teams as all the short course teams would be ranked below us. (It turns out one other team would be let through on the long course, but they got lost in the Badlands and were shortcoursed eventually anyway).

With a surge of energy, we ripped off the next flat 10-15 miles quite quickly (with a little stop at a tiny convenience store in the middle). We could now see the jagged peaks of the Badlands looming off in the distance. Things were going quite well until I started to have some gastro-intestinal issues (which I now know were the result of a giardia infection I caught early in the race). Our leading theory as to the cause of my problem is that because I was putting NUUN tablets (an electrolyte additive) in my water before the iodine had 30 minutes to take effect, the iodine tablets had been neutralized by the NUUN. In rather short order, to put it nicely, I “lost” several gallons of fluids. This was going to be an issue because we were heading into a terribly hot and rugged environment, with no potable water. Staying hydrated was critical to not only a quick team pace, but simply for health and safety. Let me just say that Giardia sucks. Giardia on day 8 of a 600 mile expedition race in the middle of the Badlands REALLY sucks. This just was not turning out to be my race.

Luckily, and with the help of a few pills, my digestive system calmed down. However, I was already quite dehydrated and it was really heating up. I was doing my best to rehydrate, but with the 90-100 degree temps and constant exertion it was tough to get caught up. I was not sweating at all and felt a bit lethargic from the lack of fluids and stomach cramps. Mild heat exhaustion was setting in.

This was amazingly beautiful and bizarre terrain. It really looked like it came right out of a Dr. Seuss book. Mark did a great job of navigating us through the maze and canyons and peaks. Just as the sun was setting, we finally made our way through the last chain of peaks and slid down a steep face on our butts to freedom! This was fortunate because apparently no team had been able to get out of the Badlands at night.

We lucked onto an old, maybe abandoned barn and were able to get two hours of great sleep without shivering! It held in the day’s heat quite well.

At around 11:00 PM we took off to tackle the remaining 25 miles of trekking before the final 100+ mile mountain bike ride to the finish. This last part of the trek was just a death march. We were jostled awake a few times by two rattlesnake encounters and a short navigation error, but mostly we just hiked endlessly. It was great to see the last transition area. I knew my knee could hammer out the last bike leg and I was starting to taste the finish line.

MOUNTAIN BIKE

We assembled our bikes for the last time and ate as much as we could. Over the course of the race I had broken both of my bottle cages so I had bike bottles duct taped all over my frame. We had 24 hours to get the finish line and only 100 miles of biking to go – no problem right? Well, apparently there were some real challenges in this last leg. Some teams even got lost for several days trying to navigate through the maze of trails.

With determination and a little of bit of fear we hammered out of the Transition area. The first segment was ~50 miles and mostly on gravel roads. My stomach was feeling better and now that I was properly hydrated I had my energy back. The ride started with a series of steep hills adjacent to the Badlands parks. This was amazing terrain, but the views could only distract you so much. It was getting hot as we were out there in mid-day heat. At one point Charlie checked his bike computer and it read 108 degrees. We did have an occasional tailwind, which really helped. As it turns out, we did amazingly well on this section and put in the fastest split time of any team.

At the next checkpoint we were back mixed in with a bunch of shortcoursed teams. It was good to see other racers, as we had been totally on our own for several days. We passed a few teams at the checkpoint and kept on rolling. We were now on an abandoned railroad bed that was partially grown over. It was dusk and the mosquitoes were out in full force. This really motivated us to crank even faster, but we kept hitting fences that we had to jump which gave the blood suckers plenty of time to catch up to us. As night fell, we hit an unmapped road that we would need to take. After over 24hrs of constant navigation Mark gave me the maps for a well deserved break. The next 20 miles were in an area that didn’t have any mapped roads. To assist us, race management had crudely traced in a suggested route which only loosely followed that actual roads. This is the area where a number of teams had become seriously lost. As we entered the area I could see why. There were faint and significant roads everywhere and none of them were marked. We caught up to and passed a number of teams who were riding in all different directions. One team was up on a hill simply yelling: “Help us! We are lost!” We basically followed a cardinal direction on the largest looking road we could find and it ultimately delivered us to the exit point. We walked and pedaled up and down hills all night watching a distant lightening storm. Just as we were descending out of the hills the storm was on-top of us. With each lightening flash I would begin counting to see how far away the strikes were. A few times the flash and boom were basically simultaneous. We spread out so that if any one of us was hit at least the others could respond and rescue. We also debated whether it would be better to be on our bikes (with rubber tires below) or simply away from the bikes. At least the excitement of the storm kept us awake as this was going to be another sleepless night. The storm came with a little rain and we started to get the same mud problems as before, but luckily we hit a proper gravel road only a few miles later.

Now, all we had left was a long ride back to Rapid City and the finish line. We got a few more flats along the way and I think we all rode a few miles while sleeping, but we finally hit concrete and the main road into Rapid City. We were only 8 miles from the finish! We hit the last Checkpoint before the finish line and realized that they had devised a special course for us to follow to the finish line; a special demonic course that is. We were forced to climb every big hill around the city on our way into the finish. I guess this was supposed to create drama in case there were any neck and neck finishes. For us, however, it was just more endless hills. They did eventually end and the finish line finally came into sight – what a beautiful view! We crossed the line with big smiles, hungry bellies and 10 days worth of stink, filth and memories.

FINISH

All in all, this was an amazing race. The site was beautiful and amazingly diverse. The course was challenging, but not in a pointless way. I didn’t have my best performance, given my knee and stomach issues, but with great teammates and a good amount of stubborn, stupidity I was able to make it to the finish line for a top ten finish against the best teams in the world. There is always more you can do and mistakes you can avoid, but all in all, I would have to call it a success. I probably lost about 10-15lbs over the course of the race, but with some antibiotics and some rest I should be back to 100% in a few months.

I wanted to thank Charlie, Melissa and Mark for sharing the fun suffering with me and being great teammates, all the people of South Dakota whose hospitality was unbelievable, my friends and family at home for amazing support, and finally all the staff and volunteers of Primal Quest for keeping the dream alive.