I have been following the Primal Quest Badlands 2009, which is a six to 10-day 600 mile bike, run, hike, cave, climb, swim, and paddle race. This year the event is in the Black Hills and Badlands of South Dakota.
The route takes the 32 four-person coed teams through the Black Hills National Forest, Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park, Angostura Reservoir, and Badlands National Park. The fastest teams will travel almost non-stop, day and night and will finish in about six days. Other teams will take as long as 10 days to complete the course.
It began on Friday with a marathon, just to get everyone warmed up.
The race attracts a wide variety of participants from all over the world. While the $11,500 per team entrance fee may scare away some, the teams come from as far away as New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Spain, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, and Canada.
I am pulling for the only team from South Dakota, called appropriately “Team South Dakota”. The four members of the team are, from left to right in the photo (and with links to each of their profiles):
- Eric Hansen, firefighter with the Rapid City Fire Department
- Gary Haven, Nurse Anesthetist
- Lisa Gustin, Occupational Therapist
- Andrew Busse, helicopter pilot for the South Dakota National Guard
You HAVE to be for a team that has a firefighter and a national guard helicopter pilot. Many (or all?) of the Blackhawk helicopter pilots for the SD National Guard are qualified to use a water bucket to drop water on wildfires, and they are used frequently on fires within the state. So with possibly 1/2 of the team having a connection to fire, it’s difficult not to be pulling for them.
Gary Haven was quoted in the Rapid City Journal:
“Since we don’t have any experience at this level, the goal from the beginning has been to just finish the course as a team,” said Haven, team captain. “If we do that, it would be considered a huge success.”
As this is written, they have moved up from 17th to 15th. In an international field of 32, that’s not bad for a team with no similar experience. Many of their competitors appear to have major corporate sponsorship, since some of the names include company names such as Subaru and Tecnu and other less familiar organizations.
The main web page for the race is HERE, and the leader board with the map is HERE. If you go to the main web page, a video with audio, over on the right side, annoyingly plays automatically. You can stop it by clicking the pause button.
One cool thing about this race is that you can follow the progress of all of the teams thanks to satellite technology. Each team carries a SPOT satellite transmitter, which updates their position every 10 minutes. You can see the map showing everyone’s location HERE.
Team South Dakota is team #36, so look for #36 when you view the map.
We have written about the SPOT devices before. In fact I know that the Laguna Hot Shots are on the east side of the La Brea fire right now by accessing their SPOT page.
There are several locations where the public can view the racers, including the campground in Wind Cave National Park, Angostura Reservoir, Crazy Horse, and Badlands National Park.
