Subaru Primal Quest Adventure Race Update

July 11, 2002 (12 noon; Mountain Standard Time)

Greetings:

It is 92 hours into the SPQ race. I have not yet heard from the support crew, but I am guessing that they have been up all night again. The website updates have been incredibly slow (about 20 hours behind), but the Team Santa Fe GPS tracking came on line at CP17. Up to this point the GPS tracking for Team Santa Fe has been very inconsistent in its performance, not having any coverage from CP13-17. So based on the GPS information that just became available, here is what I knew, with a few speculations thrown in.

Team Santa Fe reached CP19 this morning about 6:30 am. This is the put-in for the kayak section, a kayak section that the leading teams said that you need 4 strong kayakers to properly negotiate. I don't know if they have started down this section yet, but their strategy is typically to rest before a major move.

According to the GPS readings, they arrived at CP17 at 2:30 am. This is at 146 miles into the race. This is a transition area to the second mountain biking leg. They were presumably met by the support crew there for a switch to their mountain bikes and made a 4 hour ride to CP19 (157 miles into the race). CP19 is the next transition area where the support crew likely met them.

Now, for a few more speculations.  It took Team Santa Fe over 21 hours to go from CP13 to CP14 in the mountains. The support crew mentioned that they were going to see if they could find a mountaineering cabin and rest on the porch. They may have done that to get a good nights sleep. I will find out what actually happened when I talk to the crew.

As far as the rest of the race, 3 teams have finished. The winning team Sobe/Smartwool from New Zealand finished in an incredible time of 75 hours and won the $100,000 first place prize. The second place team was Montrail from the US came is 7 hours later, winning $50,000. The third place team was Team GoLite, probably the prerace favorite to win overall, from the US and they won $25,000. Remember, these are professional teams. For instance, Team Montrail spent a month in Telluride getting acclimatized before the race.

Common themes among the finishers and the folks that dropped out are the difficulty of the course, the problems with altitude and the breathing problems associated with the smoke residue in the air after the recent fires. The Nokia team member that dropped out developed pulmonary edema, a very dangerous problem. Many of the team members have had to have some respiratory treatments at the aid stations. There were also the general dehydration and altitude sickness problems. Obviously, this was a very tough venue.

When I find out more from the support crew, I will pass it on.

More later
Darrell Henry - Team Santa Fe e-mailer


PS. A new update just came up, and it lists Team Santa Fe as 29th place at
PC15. 19 teams have now either withdrawn or are travelling unranked due to
loss of a teammate.