The Subaru Primal Quest 2003

By Matt Dalziel

(Story starts on evening of 4th night, with our team in 4th position after a 30 mile flatwater paddle, a 26 mile rollerblade, an 110 mile MTB, a 26 mile hike, a tough 7 hour navigation section, with a short ride to a 1000 foot vertical ascent, a 40 mile ride, another 7 hour navigation/caving leg, a 30 mile ride, a 40 mile whitewater/lake paddle and starts in the middle of the longest (42 miles) foot travel section.)

...We'd been racing for around 90 hours, were off route down in the freezing mist of the river and had slept a total of 3 and a half hours when the zombies attacked- It started with me confusing the edge of my headlamp beam with the edge of reality. I avoided the interior conflict by totally forgetting where I was; I’d been told that sleep deprivation and psychosis have very similar symptoms. Tom was in a similar state and Alina and Nigel knew that we desperately needed sleep or the whole race was in jeopardy. A first short nap was abandoned due to cold, yet Tom and I were just as bad, so we slept again for almost 2 hours after surmounting the thermocline. We awoke with mild dementia and knew we were on the mend.

Whilst recovering, our grip on reality was tested once more by the hauntingly lyrical cascade of musical sound that was Team Nokia’s Elina abusing her teammates in Finnish. When we failed to be deceived by this Siren’s song it metamorphosed into a loudmouth American tourist and finally into a psycho turkey. The voice was silenced the moment we ascertained its source, Tom voicing the opinion that Petri had probably just killed her.

In the pre dawn light of the fifth day I made the comment that we lacked the ability to "step on the gas" at critical moments in the race. I think Alina took objection to this and powered ahead up the long steep dirt road after the river bed hike we'd been staggering through only minutes before. "Let's treat it like a 24 hour race" says Nigel. We now started breaking into a trot whenever the track relented a little. We were all keen to finish this race with no regrets- which meant no more sleep, lots of running and riding in a tight disciplined single file.

The last ride was an exercise in torture. 50 miles of uphill, narrow shouldered roads full of hoons and hillbilliies, we passed a serious accident within the first 5 miles and hoped it wouldn't be us. I'd seen squashed cats with more road sense than Nigel, so we had good reason to be afraid. Alina's oval shaped rear wheel was making an impression on her lower body's nervous system, so Tom and I were yoked up like a chariot for the final 5 mile 1000 foot climb. Queen Alina let go the reins with a mile to go and left us all behind in her eagerness to escape the pummeling. By the time we reached Loon Lake for the last hike we were so happy to get off the bike that we set off at a 3 hour run pace down the moonshine single trail between mountain and lake. This was the most beautiful part of the course, we were catching third place team Parallex and knew that NZ team Seagate still had to serve out a 6 hour penalty for illegal travel.

Our scorching running pace was slowed by the necessity to cut across country to pick up a different trail, and our outlook changed from sublime to surreal as we tiptoed through campsites dotted with Kleenex and Sorbent landmines. Perhaps weirdest of all was the OHV (off highway vehicle) tracks that were so extreme that we had to follow the sump oil trail to work out where they went. We once jumped off the track at what we thought was a midnight motocross rider but it turned out instead to be a 2 stroke snorer camped by the creek. Visions of Julius Caesar invaded my mind as we crossed the Rubicon River, and the bizarre landcape of shacks and portable toilets was conquered by well ordered tents, banners and sentry posts.

The 14 mile hike, like many of the others, turned out to be close to 30. I was sure we were losing time, and the fifth guy in the team agreed with me, yet Tom, Alina and Nigel all assured me we were doing fine. On the last 8 miles before the final paddle I was amazed that all my old girlfriends had shacks in the area and wanted me to drop in for old times’ sake. Weren’t they cold in that slinky underwear? Time and again their soft warm skin melted away with the magic words "come on Matt!" During these brief lucid moments I could see Tom stopping suddenly for no reason at all and continuing with a "come on Tom". I was glad I didn't look like that.

Nigel's navigation was so convincing that I sincerely believed he'd lived on this trail- many of the shacks I saw must have belonged to him, I was actually pretty annoyed he didn't show us around. When we hit the suburbs the fog lifted and all I cared about was our place in the field- as we approached the final transition area our support crew shouted out "Is that team AROC?" When we replied, their roar was like mainlining Red Bull, as we learnt that we'd passed Parallex in the night and Seagate still had an hour and a half in the sin bin. This was the emotional highlight for all of us- sure it was nice to get to the stage managed finish line, but in the cold and dark on the shores of Lake Tahoe it was the spontaneous and genuine triumphal cry from our crew that warmed our hearts and banished the sleep monsters. From here we had our best transition of the race and with the rising of the sun we paddled back to reality and the finish line.

Matt Dalziel
Team AROC