Gregory Goes There

It’s been a month since Team DART-nuun finished Primal Quest, North America’s toughest adventure race, in fourth place. So team members are probably just about recovered now …

Which makes it a good time to get a little perspective on the race. As they say, time is the greatest healer.

For a little perspective on who these folks are, DART-nuun, which is sponsored in the backpack arena by Gregory, has 10 team members and is heading into their sixth years as a team. They actually break the group into two different teams, one that focuses on big, long adventure races (like Primal Quest), and another that focuses more on 24-hour-style races and North America more specifically, though there are people who cross over and compete on both teams.

They’ve placed well in most of North America’s top adventure racing events. But as Team Captain Cyril Jay-Rayon says, the great thing about adventure racing is that “no matter how good you think you are, you always get surprises out on the course that keep you humble.”

In the case of Primal Quest, the surprise – or one of them – was trekking. You expect trekking in adventure races. This time, though, there was a lot more trekking than the team expected. Jay-Rayon estimates they trekked more than 200 miles in the six days and change it took them to cross the finish like. While that’s “only” 33-plus miles a day (and an estimate in any case), that doesn’t include the mountain biking, orienteering, climbing, paddling and riverboarding they also did during those days.

For the team, the amount of trekking was somewhat disappointing, if only because they expected a lot more mountain biking and consider cycling one of their strongest disciplines as a team. But Jay-Rayon thinks the course setters had to improvise a bit due to the amount of snow in the Montana mountains in June, which was a lot more than normal after a big winter in the Rockies.

Because of the length of the race and they amount of gear they had to carry, they used Gregory’s classic Advent Pro pack for this race. Although much larger than the packs they usually race with (often the Gregory Iso), Ray-Jayon said the Advent Pro worked perfectly because they were carrying everything from numerous required layers to climbing harnesses to snowshoes for travel across the deep snowpack, so they needed the space yet still wanted a package that was overall very light.

The amount of trekking – and constantly traveling across snow and dealing with numerous river crossings – led to a lot of foot problems for the team. (One team member’s feet were so swollen he had to slide open and cut holes in his brand new cycling shoes so he could ride.)

Nonetheless, they accomplished their goal of placing in the top five, and they actually crossed the finish line third out of 53 that started the race. Another team received a bonus for good orienteering, which bumped DART-nuun to fourth in the final results.

While they accomplished their goal, Jay-Rayon says the race was more challenging than the team expected. So – looking to the World Championships in Brazil at the end of October, their next big race – he said they’ll “re-double” their training efforts. Yikes!

What it all comes down to, though, is teamwork.

“When you go this deep you see some things in yourself that you’re not always necessarily pleased to see,” Jay-Rayon says. “Everyone thinks they’re superman at the start, but this kind of race shows you why it’s important to have a really great team.”