Primal Quest Montana

My team, New Mexico Red or Green, finished Primal Quest Montana 2008 in 26th place. Not bad, considering our goal was simply to finish. We are an amateur, co-ed team of four people (Vicky is the sole female on our team) and we started preparing for this expedition length adventure race almost a year ago. Little could we have imagined we would have done so well. Vicky is the only one on our team who even had multi-day race experience prior to going into PQ! Instead of rehashing the whole race this blog post is going to highlight what helped us successfully pull off this epic adventure race and do it with such a highly ranked finish for us.

First, prepare to plan ad nauseum. Two of my teammates are engineers and their process oriented approach to over thinking every last detail spilled over into the whole team. I think we were all a little prone to being OCD so it didn't take much for us to plan and plan and plan. This planning touched every area and those will be discussed.

We had four major areas of focus; fitness, nutrition, skills and team work. Let's start with fitness. First, we found a training plan which was tailored to the exact event we were planning for. The plan we chose was developed by Danny Suter of Boulder Performance Network. Danny has completed numerous expedition length adventure races and is a personal trainer. His resume fit exactly with what we needed. We bought his plan via trainingpeaks.com and were able to log our own workouts and track teammates workouts for the added accountability, although not much was needed. In addition to the training plan we contacted Danny and went to Boulder for additional training with him. The whole team bought into not only his training plan but his race strategy as well. Danny includes much of his race strategy into the training plan as additional documents. Let me just say that we often quoted Danny and totally did what he told us to during the race. We started "embarrassingly slow" as Danny told us to and eventually we overtook teams that didn't race smart or with such good advice. Prior to starting Danny's training plan we were all responsible for achieving a base level of fitness. I used the advice and plan of a local trainer, Patrick Morrisey

Nutrition is the next major area of focus and this is very individual so I will share my own experiences here. I am 6 feet 3 inches tall and I struggled to maintain my normal weight of 170 pounds. In fact, when I left for PQ I weighed 168 pounds. For those of you who are not of this body type, some of this may not apply. When I trained at home I relied heavily on Hammer products. This company provides probably the best all round healthy supplement line around. Their focus is on higher intensity sports but their products can be used for any sport both in the training period and during the event. During training I was able to approximate how many calories I needed per hour. I bought most of my product directly from Hammer and joined their "autoship" program. For the most part they are good to deal with but the terms of the "autoship" program, which provides free shipping, are a little confusing and can be cumbersome. I chalk it up to them being a small, growing company without all the kinks worked out.

My diet in general would probably be classified as "Mediterranean" which included lean protein (poultry and fish), lots of whole grains, nuts, etc. I am not a nutritionist so you can find a lot more information about this in other places. I did supplement every night before bed with "Hammer Whey" protein and this did help me maintain my weight.

During the race nutrition is a real challenge and here is what I learned. You can't eat as much as you burn but try by eating early and often!! We were given the idea of making 12 hour food bags by team Salomon/Crested Butte. The food bag will contain anywhere from 200-300 calories per hour for a 12 hour period depending on the caloric needs of the racer, which you should determine during your training. This was helpful in a couple of ways. One, it eliminates any decision making when grabbing food for the next leg you are doing in a race and two, it allows you to more easily quantify how many calories you are taking in. During some of my longer training sessions I determined that what worked best for calorie intake was real food. Hammer and other product lines that are similar have limitations in longer, lower intensity races. So, my food bags had a variety of food. The one downside to having real food is the weight of the food itself...after all you have to carry this stuff with you. However, I would eat the heavy stuff early then all I had to carry was the trash. Some of my favorite foods on the trail (much more non-Mediterranean) were Cheetos, barb-b-que potato chips, pop-top spaghettios, beanie-weanies, plantain chips, any snack foods from Trader Joe's, tuna salad in a pop-top with crackers, pop-tarts, cheese nips, etc. Also, be sure to include sources of protein in whatever form. This is a hard thing to come by while racing and according to the experts you need protein for any activity in excess of two hours.

Adventure racing is a multi-sport activity and as such there are numerous skills which need to be learned and mastered to some degree. One of THE most critical skills in adventure racing is navigation! You can have a VO2 max greater than Lance but if you can't navigate then you will move faster than anyone else in circles. The best way to learn navigation is to practice. Usually there are ample opportunities for this. Our local club, the New Mexico Adventure Racing Club, has a sprint race series every year. These sprint races are usually 2-6 hours in duration and at least in our club are very low key and have a small number of racers. Since one of the club's main focuses is to educate the community about adventure racing there is ample help in learning whatever the skill. Check you area for clubs, sprint races and the like. Another source of practice navigating is local orienteering clubs. Our local club is the New Mexico Orienteers Club. Our local REI has some good classes also. There are online resources for some of the basic classroom type information you will need. I cannot emphasize enough though the need for actual practice navigating. So seize all opportunities! And if you have the chance to go do this with people who are good at it, jump on those chances also!!

There are a whole host of other skills which you need to possess. Two of the most basic skills are biking and trekking, or moving per-ambulatory as fast as possible given the terrain. If you don't know how to ride a bike you may want to find another pursuit but all things are possible. So rest assured that if you can do these two things you have the majority of the skill set in hand. You can always learn more about them and get better at them also especially the mountain biking. If you don't have a bike or need to upgrade then let me suggest some tips. First, don't get in a hurry. Keep in mind that your local bike shop (LBS) is like a used car lot. Often they are not interested in selling you the right bike for you but the right bike for them. Ride a lot of bikes. My teammate bought some nice new wheels and kept telling me he was going to take his time and ride a lot of bikes. He kind of took his time but to my knowledge he only rode a couple of bikes. I think he got a good bike that suits him but I think he over spent for what he got...sorry Steve. But all in all this is a very personal decision also so I defer to the man who is going to ride the bike. You should be measured for your mountain bike just like they do for the road bikes. If a shop won't do this for you move on to another one. You can also do this online at www.wrenchscience.com for free. Doing all of these measurements gives you a starting point and with impartial advice from experts you can tailor the information to what you need. If you are going to spring big bucks for a bike, something in excess of $3500, you should increase you carbon footprint...carbon fiber is the way to go. I have a carbon Trek fuel which is a cross-country bike but when I upgrade it will be the Ibis Mojo SL. In the Mojo you get the light weight of a cross-country bike but the big travel of an all-mountain ride. It is the supreme weapon for the all round riding required in adventure racing. Ride a demo at the closest shop you can. Enough of this, get a good bike!

Trekking is a skill which you can improve upon. We all need practice walking. Trust me, Steve the billygoat, used to woop me and I closed the gap a little when we went to PQ. The gear item you need to put some thought into here, shoes. I tried a few. I finally settled on the Inov-8 Roclite 320s. These are great shoes but again this is a personal decision so find your local shops and try on a bunch. Don't go to the Albuquerque New Balance stores, they sold me the wrong size and wouldn't give my money back after I had worn them. Not too many shops carry Inov-8 products so try zappos.com since they have free shipping to and from you if you want to return them. As an aside, I shouldn't really be pimping Inov-8 since I asked them for sponsorship and they didn't send me as much as a free t-shirt or a bumper sticker...you guys missed a golden opportunity to have a sponsored team at PQ! But a good product is a good product. I am not as impressed with their packs though. You need some real racer experience and feedback Inov-8. They have some really cool gaiter sock but they are not so good for longer races, think sprint, 12 and 24 hour races.

You other skills, white water and flat water paddling, riverboarding and fixed ropes ascending and rappelling require specialized training and expertise which I do not possess. However, I will tell you who we used for our training. For riverboarding we trained with Shane Bolling at Rip Boards. Shane not only trained us but we bought his boards which I think are the best. We did our ropes training with Allan Aiken who works for Suntoucher Mountain Guides here in Albuquerque. Allan rocks (pardon the pun)!

Lastly, but certainly not least is teamwork. This is probably the single greatest area of failure for teams outside of injury and illness. There is no room for egos on an adventure racing team. Everyone has to become selfless for the better performance of the team. We all have our issues but maturity must prevail. Things that seem trivial annoyances while training can become race ending disasters. Train as much as possible together so the team can work out all of those issues. I must say, since we did not get a chance to train as a whole team ever, the maturity level of my teammates was high. Except for a couple of very minor issues we work so well together. I was impressed.

I hope you find these thoughts helpful. Feel free to comment. I welcome them...most of them anyway.

Citizen Racer