2009 Primal Quest Team getting ready

Written by Cyril Jay-Rayon
Created Date: Monday, 29 June 2009 21:29

With this year's mighty Primal Quest (PQ) expedition race in the Badlands of South Dakota just around the corner, we are entering our final phase of preparation. The team will be comprised of 3 DART veterans as well as a new addition from Brazil, a land of world-class adventure racers. The team will include Ryan VanGorder, Aaron Rinn, and myself Cyril Jay-Rayon. Joining us for the first time will be Tessa Roorda, one of Brazil's top adventure racer who finished 8th with her team at last year's World Championships in Brazil.

Although we've never raced with Tessa, we've trained with her a lot (well, at least I have) when she worked in Los Angeles last year and we had the challenge of competing against her at the World Championships last year. She's definitely a world-class athlete like our regular women on the team and we feel that despite never having raced together, all four of us share the same racing mindset, goals and abilities. We all look forward to racing together.

Despite feeling comfortable with each other's abilities, we would have liked to race or at least train together before the race but it will not materialize since Tessa is in Brazil. You can't replace the experience of having raced together as it develops team cohesion. Still we're confident that our combined experience will make up for this less than idea situation.

Until now, we've been communicating only occassionally but as PQ approaches, our communication frequency will intensify not only to work on logistics but also share with one another the training we're doing and motivate one another.

Aaron and Ryan live in Seattle so they've been training hard together and keep themselves well motivated. One example of their PQ specific training include a lot of time on foot on uneven terrain. See Ryan lastest posting on this. In the coming weeks they will increase their PQ specific training.

We haven't heard from Tessa in a few weeks but that's not unusual for her as she often dissappears into the Amazon to work on some biology research project. We hope when she resurfaces that she'll have found a new herbal ingredient that will give us the edge during the race ... well, we can always dream. When she's back near a computer, she'll blog about her training.

As for myself, I've spent the last few months training for 2 mountain bike races and succeeded in winning my last one at Laguna Seca near Monterey, CA. Now I'm switching my training to all forms of running from trails, to beaches, to off trail rocky terrain. And, of course a lot of paddle training.

We'll also include all forms of PQ specific training like rope work, navigation, and caving.

Look for our next PQ related blog postings as we get our heads around what will be needed to do well at PQ.

Keep Exploring,
Cyril