Our journey to Primal Quest 2006 began in September 2005. Robyn Cantor (our 44 year old team captain and only member of our team to previously complete a Primal Quest race), Randall Huebner (a 56 year old great grandfather), Gayla Harris (a 56 year physical therapist and partner at Dynamic Health Center), and I (Richard McCormick, 52 year old chiropractor, Dynamic Health Center) submitted our application and money to Primal Quest. In September, we were notified that we had been accepted as a team in Primal Quest 2006. That meant we really needed to begin preparations, physical training, organizing, purchasing, and borrowing gear from our other adventure racing friends. We had 8 months to get ready for the longest adventure race of our lives.

We had a great deal of outside assistance. Documentary film producer Chris Elley produced our Primal Quest video. The folks at Primal Quest liked it so much they asked permission to use it to pitch to their sponsors. Thanks for the great job Chris. Check out Chris "first big documentary Bar-B-Que, A Texas Love Story".

Our two alternates were great in their support and their efforts. Tammie Killebrew underwent finger surgery for an infection from another race and still managed to train with us. Paul Murphy, while getting his new business up and running, continued training and racing. We were fortunate to have two outstanding racers commit to being our back up in case an injury prevented one of us from doing the race. Fortunately, we all made it through the training in good health.

Ryan Amey and the good folks at Bicycle Sport Shop were again so helpful to our team. Ryan helped us with gear (often ordering quickly so the items would be here in time for the race). He kept us in riding condition. We would not have been able to pull this off without his assistance. Ryan even arranged for a night with a great bike mechanic (Jason) to teach us how to manage our bikes in the field. It proved to be very valuable, as we had to replace one of the derailleur hangers at the first bike build station. A special thanks goes to Hill Abel (Bicycle Sport Shop Owner) for his assistance.

Mark Alexander and Skyler Tanner at Efficient Exercise took our team on as a project and helped us build up our strength. If you have not tried their method of strength training, you are missing out on a great exercise regimen that will really build your strength. Every time I would go up one of those mile long inclines on a bike, I would be thanking Mark and Skyler.

On to the race:

On the morning of the 22nd, we loaded busses to begin the 4 1/2-hour trip to Moab. We met some really cool teams that we would run into periodically throughout the race. We especially befriended a team from Brazil. They were really friendly and fun to hang out with.

Once we got to Moab and the Red Cliff Lodge (race headquarters) we had to find our gear and begin the check-in and skills tests. This took almost the entire rest of the day. While we are a very organized team, it seems that our organization can get in our way. There were a few items that I knew we had, but could not remember which box I last saw it... so much for organization.

The organizers did not have the horses there on the 22nd so we had to wait until the 23rd to complete our check-in. We drove into Moab each night courtesy of team 24/seven (Pete was great to loan us his truck to haul gear and to go to dinner), an adventure racer from Austin Darran Wells (who was volunteering with NOLS), and the race sponsored shuttles. The dinners were great in this small little desert tourist town. On the 24th we continued packing our food boxes and getting our packs ready for the first three day leg. This was more nerve wracking than anything else. We were anxious and nervous that we would not be ready and rested in time. It took us much longer than we expected and we did not get the naps that we were so hoping to get. So much for prior planning prevents poor performance. There was a big dinner for all the teams followed by a pre-race meeting. It was great getting all the racers together. It was also great listening to Don Mann, the course director telling us that only 30 percent will finish the entire course. He also warned us of the many pit falls that will be coming our way, of which temperature was number one. As it turned out, he was right, 28 out of 90 teams finished the entire long course.

DAY 1

At mid-night we all loaded onto school busses for a 4-hour trip to the starting line. When you are crammed into school busses, two to a seat, and you throw in 40 pound back packs, it is rather difficult to sleep. Suffice it to say, we began the race in sleep deprivation. When we arrived at the starting point, Gayla and I went to get our horse saddled. Robyn and Randall went to get the GPS tracking radio unit. We met up and walked two miles to line up. We had the good fortune of getting a great horse. We do not know her name, so we called her Wanda. When the gun went off to start the race, pandemonium set in. Horses were running, riders were being bucked off and there was mucho chaos. Several teams lost their horse. There was a large time penalty for losing your horse. Calm Wanda carried Gayla for the first 2 miles. Then Wanda was asked to carry all of our backpacks as we walked the rest of that 25 mile leg. We heard horror tales of reluctant horses that were a pain in the rear and really slowed their teams down.

Following the horse trek leg, we took a short hour nap and then headed out on foot, carrying all of our gear on our backs. I was amazed at the amount of sand on this course. Gayla, who has never been prone to blisters, began developing a really nasty one on the back of her heels. The next trek leg did not help her. In fact it made it much worse. By now it was late afternoon. We followed a wash to a road that took us to the first check point of this leg. Randall did a masterful job of navigating through most of the race. We found the first two checkpoints without any trouble. When we got to the second one, Gayla's heel had become quite painful. We stopped and tended to her heel before continuing. We were traveling with several teams and I was perplexed about the next point. I checked with another team only to discover that we had mis-plotted the point and that we had another 8 miles to get to the next checkpoint. That was the longest 8 miles of our lives. Randall had begun to slow down from lack of sleep. It seemed like we surely had gone far enough, but there was no point to be seen. We were now traveling in a wash in a cluster of about 7 or 8 teams. We decided to take a short 30-minute snooze. We woke up to the sound of a team returning from the checkpoint. We had another half mile to go to the point. This was the first time that I realized just how big this race was and how the 1:40,000 scale on the map was really deceiving. Navigation by "faster teams foot prints" was good to do and the time estimated for the distance traveled could almost be doubled. This race was HUGE! We went by a water stop and refilled our bladders then continued to the next transition area. We were very careful to empty our shoes and socks from the build-up of sand. I am sure that this habit helped us remain relatively blister free, except for Gayla. We arrived at the bike transition the morning of the day 2.

DAY 2:

We found our bike boxes and quickly began assembling bikes for the next leg. I use "quickly" rather loosely as we are never quick in transition. Robyn had to show great patience during these transitions as she was always the first one ready to go &. In my haste to put on a derailleur, I stripped out the threads on Gayla's hanger. Luckily, Randall remembered that we brought several spare hangers and he quickly replaced the hanger and mounted the derailleur. We knew that at the end of this bike leg, there would be a white water swim. We also knew that there was a 6:00pm cut off for that leg. If you were not in the water by 6:00 then you had to wait out a 12-hour dark zone. With that in mind, we set out on our first of many bike legs. This leg was very flat for the first part, mostly jeep trails. Then came the sand, lots of sand. It seemed like we were walking 1/3 of the time pushing our bike through the sand. I was grateful to be riding a 29-inch wheel bike, they traveled better through the sand than the 26ers. It was beginning to get hot (did I tell you that it was hot most of the time the sun was up)? We had a particularly steep rise, up and over, on our way to a much-needed water stop. We ran into fellow Austinite Tom Lane racing with Ultimate Adventure (a group of Marines who also race) on the way up the hill. It was great seeing Tom many times during the race. The water stop could not have come at a better time. Volunteers sprayed us down with cool water and then served us chilled Gatorade and water. Randall particularly liked the toast-em Pop-ups. After cooling down we had a long bike leg on the road to Green River. Robyn was feeling a little tired, so we hooked her up to a tow and sped on. We arrived in the small town of Green River and stopped at a convenience store for something cold to drink. We still had seven more miles to go, so we loaded up and rode to the next transition area. When we there, we were told we needed to got in line for the van taking racers to the white water swim section. We saw fellow Austinite Beth Reyburn on her way out to their paddle leg, they were well ahead of us. In the van, everyone put on their wet suits. Once we got to the swim location, we made a mad dash to the water's edge (OK, we walked very quickly carrying a bunch of gear). We got into the water with 30 seconds to spare to beat the 6:00pm cut off. We were quickly off paddling our way down a cool river. Along the way we saw a friend from Louisiana David Bogle. It was neat how we would run into other racers that we knew from racing in Texas. We stopped several times to put on more warm clothing as the sun was going down. At 9:00 pm we got out of the water and walked about 1⁄2 mile to the transition. We then got into our gear box, broke down our bikes and put them into the bike boxes, then went to sleep for 3 hours. This was the first good sleep that we had gotten in 2 days of racing.

DAY 3:

After waking, we loaded our boats and began the first paddle leg, a 35 miler. About 3 miles into the leg, we had to portage our boats about a mile. The Necky kayaks weighed a ton (they said only 90 pounds, dry without backpacks &). Thanks to Randall's ingenuity, carrying handles and shoulder straps, we had it better than most teams. The portage took a lot out of us, but we managed to finish the ordeal in about an hour. Once again in the water, we were off, hoping to make up time as paddling is usually our strongest event. About an hour into the paddle, Gayla and Randall began getting sleepy. We tried singing silly songs to keep everyone awake. This was working well for a while. "Vegetables are very good for you & ", "In 1814 we took a little trip &.", and "Old McDonald" were tunes at the top of our list. Needless to say, our paddle leg was less than stellar. Lack of sleep can do this to you. We arrived at the next transition area and found our food box there. Yeah, new food after 3 days. We reloaded with food and water before swimming across a very swift Green River. This was a challenge as we had all of our gear in backpacks as well as our PFD's. After making it across to the other side, we dried off, left our swimming gear on the beach and began another epic trek. The first check point was miles from the river and was "of course" very sandy. Along the way we ran into Tom Lane and we traveled to the checkpoint together. After leaving that CP, we had a great climb up the mesa on red sandstone, commonly referred to as "slick rock". We were walking along a narrow passageway with sheer cliffs on both sides. It was beautiful as the sun had begun to set. We took a little time to enjoy the view. After climbing down from the passageway, we made it to our first rappel. A 450 ft descent down a sheer cliff.

Wow the excitement and thrill. When we got to the bottom we had to climb down a narrow ledge and then into our first canyon. It was dark by then so the navigation was difficult. We would turn off our lights and look up to the top of the canyon to study the curves. We walked about 3 hours then took a little snooze. After finding a natural spring and refilling water bladders, we continued our hike up the canyon. About 2:00am we made it to the part of the canyon where we had to use our ascenders to climb out. This was fun and woke us up. A two hour hike with a small detour took us to the next check point. We ran into a volunteer Julie Cribbsfrom Whiteface that we have raced with in Texas. It was so rewarding to see people out on the course that we knew from racing in Texas. We were quickly off to find the next water stop. Another short hour nap and the sun was coming up. We made it to the water stop after visiting with other teams walking along the same road.

DAY 4:

The day began with us entering a very fun slot canyon. There was much to be learned about climbing down ten-foot drops into the canyon using pressure against both walls. That was fun. Navigating in a canyon can be testy. When it looks like a 7-km trek on the map, due to the winding of the canyon, you can bet it will end up being twice that length. We were traveling with the team from Brazil throughout most of this trek. The temperature was extremely hot (we heard from the race directors that it reached upwards to 115 deg). The heat took its toll on the team (Robyn and I took turns towing Randall during some of this leg) and we had to stop frequently to cool down and clean out our socks. I was amazed at the difference in the temperature when you were in the shade; so much cooler. We were also introduced to the "wag bag" in the canyon. This was a bag that you were to use for disposing of excrement. It worked, but was terrible at stopping odor. As the day got hotter, the smell got worse. We later heard many wag bag horror tales. Oh what we remember about a race. We were running low of water and wondering when we would ever get out of the canyon. Finally we reached the end and found the San Rafael river. It felt wonderful to jump in and cool off. We washed our feet, refilled and purified water then continued to the next point. Several hours later we were back at the Green River ready to swim across again. Gayla was a little tired and scared at this time and had a difficult time getting across, but managed valiantly, thanks in part to our Brazil friend Chiquito. Once we all made it across, we found our food box again. Gayla went to the medical tent to have her heel looked at. She was told that it was no longer a blister, it was now a gaping wound. They doctored her up and sent her on her way with instructions for future care. We ate a good freeze dried meal then bedded down for 3 hours.

DAY 5

We got up around midnight and began the next 47-mile paddle. Sleep monsters again effected our speed. We arrived at the take out at 9:00am. Upon our arrival we were told that the race committee had made a late decision and due to the problems that teams were having in "Hell's Roaring Canyon" they had set a 6:00am cut off time. Since we had not arrived in time, we were "short coursed". This means that we were told to skip that section and were told to climb out of the canyon to begin the next leg of the race. We were disappointed, but later seeing the helicopter rescuing racers from the canyon, we were glad that we did not have to do that section. Instead we had to climb up a two-mile stretch of road that had an elevation gain of 2000 feet. It was hot, steep, and very hard carrying all of our gear. After many stops, we finally made it to the top. There, our bikes greeted us. This is a welcome sight after being in the boat for many hours and on our feet climbing out of the canyon. We assembled our bike as a light sprinkle began to fall. This felt good in the 100-deg temps. We were rolling towards to Gemini Bridges, when we encountered muddy roads. This was really a surprise since we had been stuck in sand for so many days. We made it to Gemini Bridges in the dark. It seems like we were always in the dark when we came to treacherous footing or rappels. Gemini Bridges was a natural rock bridge. All four team members got to rappel at the same time. We could see each other on both sides of the bridge. This was a really cool moment. When we got to the bottom, we had to find our bikes. While we were rappelling, the volunteers sent our bikes down a zip line to the bottom of the canyon. When we got there, we found a nice sandy place to lie down. We slept for several hours before beginning again.

DAY 6:

We began with a looooong bike ride. We rode out of that canyon and into the mecca of mountain biking, the slick rocks of Moab. I must say that when you are in the middle of a long race, these trails did not seem very scenic. In fact they seemed hot, dry, and steep. Maybe on another day I would have enjoyed their greatness. For us today the golden spike trail, gold rim trail or poison spider trail seemed desolate and long. We found the water stop and were told that there would be water at the next checkpoint. Hours later we made it to the next checkpoint. Guess what? No water! They gave each of us half a bottle of water and told us a big transition area was an hour away. There were many teams around us at this time, each suffering from lack of water. We cooled down under a small tarp with 3 other teams huddled together to get out of the sun. Finally we mounted and continued. The hour-long ride turned out to be two hours. We ran out of water about an hour into this leg. Dry, tired, and hot, we finally made it to the water stop. Our friend Julie was there to greet us and cool us down. Robyn got a little queasy after downing several bottles of cold fluids and had to lie down. Randall, Gayla and I hopped inside a truck with the A/C on. A short nap and we were up reloading for the ride into Moab.

It took us a little while to get going, but we were off to town. Our next checkpoint was Denny's.

We decided to pick up a different map at the local bike shop. One of the workers in the bike shop recognized our Bicycle Sport Shop shorts and commented favorably. We doctored Gayla s foot (it was looking better by now). A Denny's breakfast tasted great at 6:00 in the afternoon. Rested, well fed, and somewhat cleaned up (we washed the red dirt off our faces and arms), we headed to Pritchett canyon on our way to the cooler climate of the La Salle mountains. We entered the canyon and found it to be almost unrideable. (They later started making teams wait until the evening to pass through this canyon due to high temperatures). We got off our bikes and pushed them for the next 8 hours. We came to the end of one canyon and had difficulty finding the passage out of this canyon so we decided to get some sleep. We pulled out our bivy bags (after several nights they did not smell so good), found a nice rock to lie on and snoozed. I will say that Randall won the award for the first person to fall asleep, wow, he was quick.

DAY 7:

After an hour or so sleep, we were awakened by another team passing by. It was Tom Lane's team. It seemed to be the theme for this race. When we were stumped, Tom's team came to our rescue. We were soon off and pushing onto the next leg of our journey. We came to a fork in the road and chose to go right. Again, on the map it looked a lot shorter than the reality. After many hours, we came across a checkpoint that had surprisingly been set up as the "Gatorade oasis". What a blessing! Cold drinks!

We are now into day 7, mid morning. The La Salle Mountains loom larger as we get closer.

To get to the mountains, we have to ride down from the mesa country across a very dry valley, then begin up into the hills. It seems that we have been on our bikes for 3 straight days now. I have become one with my Gary Fisher. Fortunately there were very few butt irritations. Robyn had her usual discomfort, but the rest of us did very well. Thank you chamois butter and desitin. We began the climb up a bald hill that was just the beginning of the climb. The dirt jeep trails were at least not sandy here, so we could actually ride for a while. Several hours later, we found ourselves on a real paved road heading to the mountain transition. It seemed to go up forever, coming back down it only took 5 minutes (how the mind plays tricks on us in the middle of a race). As we neared the TA, a photographer stepped out and began filming us. This was not unusual, as there were photographers all over the course. We all rode by the photographer and Randall yelled, "Kip". Our friend Kip Fiebig had driven to Moab to see his adventure racing friends. What a spurt of energy he gave. We took longer than usual in the transition. There was a cool stream that we all got in. It was so refreshing. Kip took pictures and shared wisdom, since he is a veteran of many expedition length races. We also saw Dave Poleto, a racer from New Orleans whom we have raced with in the past. His team decided that they would try to do the mountain section. We made it to this TA before the cut-off time, but were advised to skip the mountain leg (a 30 something mile leg up and down, in the skree, up to 12,000 feet, through cold streams, took the winning team Nike 33 hours to finish). We talked about the pace that we had been keeping the past 2 days. We decided to pass up the mountain section and take the time penalty, in order to finish the race. If we had done that leg, there was a possibility that we would have not finished before the time cut-off on July the 4th. We ate again, got our blisters tended to and left, again on our bike. We then got to ride down hill for several miles. On our way we saw a really nice field of grass under some big poplar trees. This was such an inviting spot that we decided to lie down and sleep for a few hours. We were next to a cottage. The owner of the cottage came out to see if we needed anything. We just asked her if it was OK that we slept there for a few hours. She graciously agreed.

DAY 8

After a few very restful hours of sleep, we got up around mid-night to begin our ride into the second mountain transition area. This leg was mostly on roads but all of it was up hill. After several early morning hours in the seat and pushing our bikes up the steepest sections, we reached the TA. This was a very beautiful area with lots of wildflowers blooming. The Aspen around the large clearing were so serene. This was a very emotional time. Memories of my father and the great hunting trips that we took were flowing through my head. Gayla and I took some time to remember, thank, and honor him; I am so blessed to have had the times in the woods with my father. This was the first TA that I actually ate a toast-em pop tart. It tasted so good. Full of food and fluids, we hopped on our bikes again. The next checkpoint came relatively quickly. As those who ride know, for every downhill, there is an even bigger up hill awaiting. We found them. To get to the Kokopelli trail, we skirted along the edge of the La Salle Mountains. This was seemingly all uphill. The map did not show the paved road turning into a dirt road. It did! To add to our confusion, the road veered to our right when it should have gone straight. We got sucked to the right because it was the better-maintained road. About a half-mile down hill, we ran into Tom Lane's team coming toward us. They told us to turn around, as we were going the wrong way. Thank you Tom. We rode back up to the next trail intersection and were joined by several other teams. After studying the map, we took the straight, but less traveled trail, and began the best part of the entire race. Several hours after that turn, we began going down hill into a really cool canyon. In this canyon a small stream was flowing. The water was not safe to drink, but rolling through water and flying down the canyon was so much fun. It is amazing how fast you can go downhill as compared to going uphill. Three days up, half a day down &..

We made it to the last transition area. We broke our bikes down and put them into their boxes for the last time. We had a long trek to the best ropes section on the course. Unfortunately, since we were on the short course, we were told to skip this section. Darn! On this trek, we had to follow the flagged trail. Since the sun was going down, we put on our headlights and forged onward. The trail was not marked very well, so it became more of a squint and hallucinate endeavor to follow. We got off trail early and then learned the technique that served us best. If there are no footprints on what you think is the correct route, then you are not on the trail. We had heard along the way that if you sleep before midnight, that one hour's worth of sleep was worth two hours if you slept later in the night. We decided that we would need one hour of sleep that night, so we laid down just off the trail and went to sleep. Upon arising, we were ready to get the final leg over with. We hiked around a large mesa to get to the checkpoint on the backside. It seemed like we went around that mesa about 5 times before we made it to the checkpoint. Finally we saw a figure ahead with a red light on her head. I do not know if we were hallucinating at this point (you never really know after the first day), but that woman was the most beautiful being I had ever seen. It is funny how perceptions change. She told us that we had a half-mile hike straight up and that we would see a sign once we got near the top. We were to take the left route. The thought of the hike suddenly made her beauty dissipate. So much for mind games. I am glad it was dark and that we could not see below us.

This was the hardest, most dangerous section that we went through on the entire race.

The steepness of the trail and the loose gravel that we walked on really slowed us down. I was only glad that we could not see how far down the fall would have been. This was treacherous. It was difficult finding firm footing to take little short rests. Once we got to the top, we had to walk around the spires on which the ropes course was set. There were a number of teams sleeping in very peculiar spots as there really wasn't any flat places to lie down. (A little side note. When we left the last transition area we saw a team (GCAR) that we race against a lot in Texas. They had left the transition area before us. It is again funny how after you have been racing for 7 days, the competitive spirit can push you forward. We were determined to beat them to the finish so we actually picked up our pace.) There were a couple of 20-30 foot drops that were very steep. The race directors left ropes with multiple loops tied the length of the rope. We had to climb down these steep sections using only the ropes. It was like rappelling with out a harness. It was fun to negotiate once you found the technique that worked best for you. On the second such section, we saw GCAR. The race was on. We went down the section rather quickly, then passed GCAR on a very steep slippery section to the top of the next mesa. We were moving much better this last day than we had the entire race. The sun was beginning to rise on our last day. From the top of the mesa we could see the river and the point that was our last checkpoint. We then scrambled down the mesa to the wonderfully sandy wash. We even found the energy to actually run the first part of that wash. Wow this was fun!!! We got near the road to the river and we saw another team ahead of us. They saw us and decided that they should also run. We must have looked like idiots, running down a dirt road after another team in 100 degree weather at the end of 8 days of racing. We threw our boats in the cool water and began paddling. If you catch the currents just right you can gain a lot of ground. If you do not, you lose a lot of ground. Since we do not do much river paddling, we saw the other team pull away. Oh well, at least we are still ahead of GCAR. We made it to the take out point and had to pull our boats to a truck. There we saw Randall's wife Pat. What a welcome sight, a clean, non-stinky beautiful rested woman cheering us on. Randall almost turned a cartwheel with excitement. The last 100 meters we carried a US flag and sang the Eyes of Texas. Crossed the finish line 8 days and one hour after we had started. We did it!

The next two days involved re-packing boxes to be shipped home. We went into Moab and took showers, naps and ate a real meal. That tasted great. It is hard to express the feelings one has after completing your first expedition race. There is the feeling of satisfaction having completed the race. Then there is the feeling that you now must return to "real" life. When you are racing, that is the only thing that is on your mind. Barring any injuries, you really are not thinking about your body and the aches and pains that it may have. In fact it almost seems that as long as you keep moving the aches and pains can not catch up with you.

The last night of the race, there was a big bar-b-que for all the racers and volunteers. They also had a live band for dancing. It was a last time to visit with the friends that you made during 10 days of racing. This is an incredible group of athletes. Most of the racers are not professionals so it is great to hear their stories about how far they had come to get to PQ. It is with honor that I include our team as being equal in our skills, endurance, and perseverance to the many other talented teams that we had the pleasure to race with. I am very proud of our team!