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It was my major goal for this year – finishing Primal Quest. The organizers claim that it’s the most challenging human expedition race. So far I can judge that – it’s true. We came to
Well, back to the race. It started with a marathon through the prairie – followed by further foot orienteering. After that we faced numerous kilometres of gorgeous single trails and unforgettable cave orienteering. The two hardest sections for me were the long trekking stages which were both about 100k long. Due to wrong shoes I got blisters everywhere, changing socks, insoles and using body glide didn’t really help… Finally I got awarded “worst feet” from the medical staff after the race – sound really painful, but fortunately the human body shots down the pain after a while – thanks, I appreciated that a lot...
The highlights of during the race were definitely the amazing rope section. We faced a spectacular 100 meter jumar, 3 very exposed zip lines and 3 80-100 meter rappels.
Another unforgettable experience was when we biked cross the prairie right in between wild hordes of buffalos and many other animals – looked like in Madagascar 2 – no joke! – There we also chased a huge buffalo down a single trail – it was a bit scary in the beginning but it seemed that our bad smell banished the bull hehe
Later in the race when we biked back from the (also) amazing
Once all of them passed, they just seem to stare at us – chilling feeling when hundreds of reflective eyes are concentrated at you….
The end of the race caused us some problems – we lost our Roadbook while repairing a flat and all together we lost about 3-4 hrs by looking for it. Without that we might have ended up in 5th spot, but actually we are also really happy on the 7th. It’s more about getting to the finish and that’s what we did.
The days after the race are now quite special. The body is stuck in deep tiredness, plus that blisters all had to be opened and disinfected. Also both legs swell up and take some time to get back to normal. All of us walk around in robot style. I’ve still not gotten back the feeling in the tip of three fingers and also some of the toes are not 100% fit. I guess, it might take a few more days before I can get back to normal…
My goal before the race was to get to know myself and my team mates better – I’d say that I did so. I got to know many things about myself. For example didn’t I know that I could sleep while walking, paddling or being in the water. I almost fell asleep during biking, but fortunately nothing bad happened. Furthermore could I figure out that my body works pretty well even if I just had 2hrs of sleep. I assume that’s because of the orienteering job I did all the way. So I had to pay attention and be focused. During the end of the first long trekking I could work with my pain threshold. Blisters in combination with my shin tendinitis made each step remember able. I just told myself – you just made 5minutes with the pain and it didn’t get worse, so you’ll make another 5’. I continued several hours with this tactics. It worked, yeah
Coming to the finish was really nice. Lot’s of people were cheering for us and shared our happiness, both at home via our blog and in
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