Onward (Day 1)

The 13 hour Trek begins...  Team Nike ACG/ Goretex was the only crew to spy a Grizzly on this leg.

Transition Area 1 (TA1)

Ken prepares for leg 2...

A 50K trek through the Montana wilderness.

Primal Quest Montana is under way

The first leg was a summit of Lone Mountain followed by descent back to Transition Area 1.

The Team looks strong.

30 minutes to race start

Team photographer Hlavs signing on for duty.

I'll continue posting shots from the course as often as I can obtain an internet connection.

Where the Wild Things *REALLY* Are

… he sailed off through night and day

and in and out of weeks

and almost over a year…

When Max traveled by boat to the place where the wild things are, it turns out he was just entered into a sleep-deprived hallucinogenic state. This is according to a study done by the same group of Harvard Medical School research scientists that show up to study the tendacies of adventure racers at expedition-length races like Primal Quest (no joke, except the part about studying Max).

To us racers, true sightings of wild beasts are a rare and fleeting privilege. Sure, they are something to be wary of, but normally nothing to fear. We are immersed in their habitat for days, traveling through the night, frequently off-trail. As good as the opportunities are for a chance encounter during an expedition AR, for the most part the wild things we experience are wildly hallucinated versions of the real deal. Don't get me wrong, the imagined, one of a kind beasts that we concoct sometimes bring about the same effect as seeing, say, an 800 pound Grizzly bear.

Due to a genetic defect, expedition adventurers actually crave the kind of hallucinations that give us the uncontrollable urge to crap our shorts. That's why race officials require racers to carry a waste disposal, or WAG, bag as mandatory gear. If you don’t turn a full WAG bag at each TA, you are sent to the medical tent for evaluation, where they determine if your bowels are suitable to continue on with the race.

Here are a few of my personal favorite hallucinations from previous expedition races:

- The big green poodle on Baker Lake (PQ04) – actually a tree stump with moss growing on it

- The boy with the grotesquely contorted head (PQ04) – a tree branch

- Miscellaneous bobbing heads, including a witch-like woman and Ronald Reagan (PQ04, PQ06) - who knows what caused Ken to see the Gipper

- Giant pictographs of various monsters in Hell Roaring Canyon (PQ06) – just natural patterns in the red cliffs

- Two dead cows bloated to the size of Macy’s Day Parade Balloons (PQ06) – Oh! that one turned out to be real

I was reminded the other day that if I see a Grizzly Bear and it appears to be suspended in air, its probably just another cool hallucination … but I’ll keep my gigantic, mandatory canister of pepper spray handy, just in case!

Introducing Team Nike ACG/ Gore-Tex

The following introduction was composed by one of our major product sponsors, Backcountry.com, to be published in their company news letter and athlete web pages. The Backcountry goat has been proudly displayed on the top-of-the-line technical gear they have provided to our team since our inception. They are truly our one-stop shopping place for on-line adventure gear!

SHAMELESS PLUG: Please shop backcountry.com, but please visit our team website at www.nextepicadventure.com and then click on the Backcountry link to start shopping so we can send our love along with your order. Thanks!!

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The Team

Since 2005, the Nike ACG / Gore-Tex team has been competing in everything from Primal Quest races in the desert to long-distance snowshoe races in the mountains. These diverse and dedicated athletes combine expert-level knowledge of navigation, mountaineering, canyoneering, and other sports with top-notch fitness to create a team that holds their own on any course. Perhaps the most impressive of all, the Gore-Tex / ACG team always seems to cross the finish line with smiles on their faces while other teams stumble across like the walking dead (if they make it at all).



The Members

Julie Leasure

As the team leader, Julie stokes the flames of motivation when everyone needs to get fired up about a difficult section of a course. Julie has completed more marathons and adventure races than most people can comprehend, so she has plenty of experience to draw from when the clock passes the 24-hour mark and endurance becomes more of a mental game than a physical one.


Kenneth Meyer

As the team’s main navigator, Kenneth has to keep the entire team on course through canyons, over mountains, and across vast stretches of desert. It helps a bit that Kenneth happens to have a photographic memory that would make most scholars jealous. You’d never hear him say “did we already pass that rock?” In addition to being a human compass, Kenneth also possesses an ability to suffer for days on end without a single complaint.


Michael Dawson

While Michael’s official title is the co-navigator, he’s best known as the high-mountain pack mule and all-around Sherpa. Michael has no problem taking an extra helping of gear on steep, grueling terrain in order to make the rest of the team faster and help everyone across the finish a couple hours early. A vast knowledge of mountaineering, canyoneering, and backcountry skiing helps Michael compete in a wide range of conditions and terrains.


Peter Courogen

With over 25 years of adventure racing experience, Peter tends to get labeled as the competitive one—an impressive title considering his teammates. Peter has a strange ability to kick it up a notch when he feels another competitor nipping at his heels, even if he’s been on the go for more hours than he can remember. Peter has spent most of his life competing in running, biking, and multi-sport races.

My Primal Quest Dedication

Primal Quest 2008 kicks off in Montana in less than a week, 500 miles, 100,000 vertical feet of punishing foot, bike and water travel through some of the rawest wilderness in the lower 48. This will be the third PQ Expedition Adventure Race for my teammates and I, and perhaps our most difficult.

The question us multi-day adventure racers seem to get most often from friends and family members who have never participated in a race of this magnitude is “What keeps you going for that long??”. My quick answers are usually responses like “hallucinations” or “the fear of having to go back to work early”.

Truth is, most of the time we are pre-occupied with staying on-course, concentrating during technical section or rehearsing for the next technical section. Sure, a lot of the time voids in between are filled with visions of spooky sleep monsters, which seem to lurk around every bend in the trail starting at the end of Day Two. But more often, I get through the mentally difficult “down-times” by reflecting on the people who have inspired to do these suffer-fests in the first place.

Here are some of the ordinary and extraordinary people that I have been touched by, the ones that keep me going through day and night during multi-day adventure races, and to whom I dedicate this race:

· To the unidentified boy in the baseball cap near the finish line at my first marathon (see the picture at right). He may not know it, but his encouragement played an important role in helping at least one struggling stranger eek out a qualifying time for Boston. Just knowing that someone gives a crap is a powerful motivator!
· To Brent, who showed me and many others close to him that being true to one's passions and consistently testing one's personal limits can coexist with fierce devotion to one's family. He lived to the limit so others could learn from his example, and he always did so with compassion and a broad smile on his face

· To Marc, whose enthusiastic conversation about ultra-endurance sports during our chance meeting pulled me through my first 50 mile trail running race. It was hard to beleive that he was overweight as a kid and was later severely injured in a car accident. Seizing his accident as a window of opportunity, Marc not only recovered from his life-threatening injuries, but he used the tragic event to transform his life and the lives of countless others through ultra distance competitions. Ironically, while he was just about to cross the finish line with what may have been a Marathon PR, Marc was stopped cold by a weakened heart, and the ultra-sport world lost one of its greatest ambassadors.

· To Nellie, whose epic survival story of enduring two frigid nights through massive internal bleeding, hypothermia and dehydration salvaged the year 2006 for me following the loss of my dear friends Brent and Marc. She has shown me that a person who truly wants to live is capable of enduring great hardship. After her dramatic rescue, she faced a bleak outlook, including months of slow and painful recovery in a wheelchair. Yet, true to form, Nellie persevered through hard work and, exactly 3 months after her accident, entered a 12-hour adventure race as a solo, under the name “How’s This for Rehab?”, and beat most of her competition (all men) in the process.

· To the woman who sat in the seat next to me on my flight to Boston a couple weeks ago. Waking up early every morning to get in her run before another stressing 12 to 15 hour work day as a microbiologist, she still finds the energy on weekends to enter, and frequently win, road races. Never mind the fact that she suffers from the effects of a potentially-crippling neuro-muscular disorder, a condition that makes routine tasks such as removing a cap from a water bottle a struggle.

· And, finally, I dedicate this race to my wife and savior, Tami. While I am away training and racing and traveling for work, she is back home leading her own expedition adventure race team of sorts: motivating, navigating and towing three unruly boys with lots of special needs through the wilds of everyday life.

Adventure Racer seeking Like-minded, Trustworthy Training Partner

When I moved from rolling hills of New England to the Wasatch Mountains of Utah 10 years ago, one primary objective was easy access to the vast riches that the Rockies offered an outdoor addict. Of course, it didn’t hurt to have a weekday job to help support my addiction. Another important benefit of my day job was revealed the moment I entered my office cubicle for the first time and saw a poster mosaic of Colorado’s 14’ers that belonged to my cube-mate, Ken Meyer: I had scored a built-in, personal adventure guide that saw the mountains as the same gigantic playground that I did!

Immediately, we generated a tick-list of adventures to knock off together, some small after-work forays and others long-weekend destinations. In the past ten years, most of our original projects have been accomplished, but countless others have been added.

Here a few memorable experiences that we have had together in the backcountry:
- Sharing an impromptu snow cave on the summit of Mt Rainier to escape icy, 80mph wind gusts;
- Spooning in various cramped sleep quarters, including the back of Ken’s Forerunner, cheap motels, soggy tents, and under a surreal canopy of scintillating stars.
- Chasing mountain goats on, yet, another knife-edge ridge at 11,000 feet in the Wasatch
- Hucking cornices into chest-deep champagne powder in the Cottonwoods backcountry
- Re-defining each other's mt biking limits in Little Creek, Gooseberry, Porcupine, The Octal.
- Suffering in epic 120F heat with our AR teammates Peter and Julie at PQ06-Utah
- Semi-assisted self-arrest on the Black Dike glacier on Grand Teton (I can never repay you for saving my bacon that day !)
- Heaps Canyon, a very emotional day with our canyoneering buds, Jared and Brent, for so many reasons
- In the Grenadiers with Jared, desperately searching for a fallen comrade that lived and loved the same way as we aspire to …

Then came the day that Ken delivered the blow to our perfect partnership: he had accepted a job back East, accepting an offer to pursue an adventure of a different kind. My initial self-serving feelings of betrayal have subsided, and we have since pledged to continue racing and planning future epic adventures together. I am sure Ken will milk the Adirondacks for all they are worth. And, as for me, I have a pretty deep support group of like-minded co-workers and friends to help fill the void left by my perfect backcountry partner.

Its all good.

Team Nike ACG / Gore-Tex: Serious Training

When Peter (AKA "Mr Metric") pulls out his clip board and stop watch before a training session, it can only mean one thing: its time to fake an injury!

Here's what its like the rest of the time...

Shipping up to Bozeman

Team Nike ACG / Gore-Tex is getting excited to ship it up to Bozeman, down to Big Sky, out to Yellowstone, over the Crazys, through the jaws of a Grizzly, down a Hallucinogenic hallway and where ever else the PQ08-Montana staff of Mann-iacs want to ship us off to during yet, another epic 500 mile (dare I say?) -- Suffer-Fest !

Bring It !!