Primal Quest ® | Expedition Adventure Race ®

‘Adventure’ category expands as additional cutoffs announced

Intricate planning goes into course adjustments

June 29, 2006

By Stephanie Bruce

During the pre-race meeting, a dramatic trailer of this years’ Primal Quest was shown to the racers. Swooping landscapes and dramatic music pulsed as CEO Rich Brazeau and Course Director Don Mann described the philosophy of the race and what racers should expect. The crowd cheered as Don explained the hardships that the course held for them, and murmured to each other as he announced that he expected thirty percent of the teams to finish. But to take this statistic at face value would be to underestimate the intricate planning that race management put this year’s event.

Mann had a tough job on his hands. “When we were planning this race, we wanted to design a course that the top ten teams could do in no less than five days, but we also wanted it to be possible for amateur teams to complete it in ten.” This creates a bit of a dilemma. Create a course that is too easy and the top teams will finish it in 3 days and be disappointed in the course design. Create a course that is too difficult and amateur teams will drop out like flies and be disappointed in the course and/or underestimate their ability or will. The answer lay in creating certain “bail-out” options for slower teams.

While the course is laid out as a point-to-point design, several sections of the course loop out and back onto one main route throughout the race. These canyoneering sections were looped purposefully not only to connect different legs of the course, but also to create these possible bailout sections. Racers were told of a cut off at 4 a.m. of day four (Wednesday, 6/28), and those not making the cutoff would be designated to the “Adventure” category of the race and would forgo the first canyoneering section. What they weren’t told was that there were two more possible cutoff dates that would be used as needed.

At 6 a.m. of day five, Mann and race management enacted the second cutoff for teams reaching the end of the kayaking leg, TA7. Teams who didn’t make this cutoff time were told to proceed directly to TA8 and the mountain biking section, and to skip the second canyoneering leg of the race through Hell Roaring.

Since the three original short-course teams had skipped the first canyoneering section had made the second cutoff, “all teams in the “Adventure” category will have done one of the two canyoneering sections,” said Mann, explained the genius behind the plan.

One additional cut-off has been announced to a small number of teams: they must make CP25 by 4 p.m. Friday in order to continue. That will be the approximate time the winners will finish the 450+-mile course, but is only 276 miles into the race.

The purpose of these cutoffs are not to punish slow moving teams, but to give them a greater chance of finishing, while giving them the opportunity to participate in all the disciplines of the course. It means teams will be in the heat for the same amount of time as the higher ranking teams, and also gives the volunteers, who sit all day in the sun waiting for teams to come through, a shorter time to be out on the course at early checkpoints.

The depth of planning that was put into this brutal race shows the depth of experience of the planners, but more importantly, grants every team in the field a full Primal Quest experience.

The teams that missed the first cutoff and are racing the Adventure category as full four-person teams are:

Racing With Giants
Stinkyfeet/Kiltracers
Ultimate Adventure

The teams that missed the second cutoff and the second canyoneering leg as full four-person teams are:

Balanced Athlete
Pedro's Boulder
Too Much Fun Club
NEMO
Golite / Spirit of Louisiana
Terra Brasil
Enviromark / Orthopaedic Specialists
Bulleit
Dynamic Health Racing
WickedAR.com
Terra Trekkers Adventure Racing
Mandatorygear.com
B.O.A.R
Nads/Synovus
GCAR/Moosejaw
Don’t Look Back
Climb for a Cause

The teams missing one member and racing unranked on the Adventure course are:

MPGear.com
Deliverance
Cure Leukemia.com
NanoMed

Related Teams

‘Adventure’ category expands as additional cutoffs announced