Moab – In the unpredictable world of expedition-length adventure racing, success – or failure – often is attributed to the unknown variable called the “X factor.”
For remarkably consistent Team Nike, which continued its dynasty as champion of the Primal Quest adventure race Saturday, the variables separating it from the remainder of the 89-team field might better be described as the “M factor.”
Led by team captain and veteran adventure racer Mike Kloser of Vail, Team Nike/Powerblast crossed the finish line of what clearly lived up to expectation as the most difficult adventure race ever conceived at 5:45 a.m. Saturday – just a few minutes shy of six days after the race’s start in the desert near Elmo, Utah.
For Kloser, 46, and teammate Michael Tobin of Boise, Idaho, the victory served as the fourth in four editions of Primal Quest dating to 2002. Teammate Ian Adamson of Boulder joined the “Mikes” for his third Primal Quest victory lap, heaping credit for the victory on Kloser.
But, as the modest and fiercely competitive leader recognizes, adventure racing is a team sport. Team Nike/Powerblast would not have been complete without another ace “M” in the race – Monique Merrill of Breckenridge.
Merrill splits her time on Nike’s six-person adventure racing roster with Sari Anderson of Eagle-Vail, getting the nod to compete in the marquee event in the 2006 competition calendar because of her experience in expedition-length races. (Anderson completed Primal Quest Utah with Nike’s other alternate, Richard Ussher of New Zealand, in 10th place as Team Nike/Beaver Creek.)
Despite a lengthy résumé of podium finishes in a variety of outdoor endurance sports, Saturday marked the first victory in any major adventure race for Merrill. And it just happened to come in what was unanimously regarded as the hardest. With a course winding through nearly 450 miles of Utah desert in temperatures radiating up to 120 degrees, Merrill pulled her weight right along with the men and solidified her reputation as the top female racer in the sport.
“Having a girl who has got it all – the attitude in general, the personality, the perseverance, humor, intensity and ability to bounce back from adversity – you add all that together and it’s Mona,” Kloser said from the finish line at Red Cliffs Lodge, 14 miles east of Moab. “You look at her after a race like this and she looks like she just started. She never looks lost or malnourished like the rest of us. She never looks beat up. It’s amazing. I’ve watched her from the outside racing for other teams and I didn’t realize how fortunate we were until we got to race with her over the last year or so. It’s an incredible component to have on your team.”
Winning team title worth $100,000
Unlike any other professional sport, adventure racing pits men and women on equal competitive ground. There is no such thing as a ladies tee or undersized ball when you are trekking through deserts and mountains, biking sand and slickrock, ascending and descending 400-foot stone towers, kayaking, swimming rivers and snaking through slot canyons. Each four-person team is required to include at least one female, sometimes jokingly referred to as “mandatory gear.”
But as is so often the case in expedition- length races lasting days on end, women such as Merrill pull even – and sometimes even ahead – when the true test of endurance reaches its later stages.
“Those guys are much stronger than I am. They carry a lot of my weight and motivate me a lot and really help me a lot,” Merrill said. “But in a longer race, the woman tends to get stronger toward the end, so that was to my benefit. Day one and two are brutal and it’s really hard for me to keep up, but then it gets easier.”
The reality of Primal Quest Utah, however, was that it never got any easier for any of the members of Team Nike/Powerblast. Even course designers appeared to underestimate the toll their lengthy route would take on top racers who finished a half-day slower than anticipated after suffering through the heat and dehydration of the desert at its summer peak. And in spite of the universal anguish augmented by a scant 13 hours of sleep during 143 of competition, the goal remained to finish first and collect a winning prize of $100,000.
That goal was made all the more difficult for Nike/Powerblast by the fortitude of multinational Team GoLite/Timberland, which chased the leaders until the bitter end before ultimately settling for second place and $50,000. Aside from the orchestrated tie between Nike and the New Zealand team Seagate in 2004, the 22-minute margin of victory at Primal Quest Utah was the closest in race history, becoming so in the race’s final hours after officials granted GoLite a 37-minute time credit because of a course-setting error.
Learning of the time bonus that whittled its one-hour lead to less than half that with fewer than three hours remaining in the race, Team Nike/Powerblast was forced to turn up its pace a notch and sprint to the finish where members waited anxiously to see whether Kiwis Aaron Prince, Sara Wallen and Chris Forne and their German teammate, Marcel Hagener, would arrive within the 37-minute window. The controversial time credit became moot when GoLite ultimately finished 59 minutes back.
“That was something they could have popped on us a lot earlier and we would have raced completely differently,” Tobin said. “Just at the last checkpoint we heard they were going to get a time bonus. So that created a sprint to the end.”
Surviving the heat no small feat
The sprint – along with much of the race – proved most difficult for Adamson, who suffered severe foot pain from debilitating blisters acquired early on after forgetting his size-11 running shoes after a kayaking leg and enduring a sandy 12-hour desert trek in size 9.5 river shoes. But others suffered nearly as much as the combination of exertion and dehydration took its toll.
“It was 128 degrees at one of the ropes sections a couple days ago,” Kloser said. “It was probably 120 or 130 in the desert when we hit it yesterday. Our shoes felt like they were melting on our feet. My team – our team – was basically gone within five minutes of leaving the (transition area midday Friday). Cactus in their feet, cutting the shoes open so the feet could deal with the swelling. The heat, trying to hydrate, eat – it was atrocious.”
Yet, throughout it all, there remained the “M factor.”
“We never really talked about winning for Mona, but I thought a lot about it,” Kloser said. “We’ve all been here before and Mona hasn’t, and we just thought it would be an honor to win one with her. Not just for her, but with her.”
Staff writer Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-820-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
