Musing and Errata on the world of Adventure Racing from the Yak
presented by MPGear.com

Some of you may have noticed a pattern over the last year or so. If you've paid close attention you've noticed that every time the folks behind either the AR World Series or the Raid World Cup issue a press release the other follows suit within a day or so. This doesn't happen every time, but often enough that I've come to expect it. This isn't really surprising. These two series offer differing models for world-wide competitive adventure racing with the goal of crowning a world champion. Makes sense that if your competitor makes an announcement and draws some attention then you want to quickly divert attention back to onto your series. I would do the same.

So on Wednesday Dan Barger and Maria Burton (PQ's mom and dad) announced their latest creation, The Expedition Challenge. No less than 24 hours later news emerged (though not via press release) that Primal Quest has hired the former Odyssey pain-master Don Mann to direct their next event.

Now this could just be a coincidence. On the other hand it could be that given the one degree of separation between Dan/Maria and the Primal Quest of old, that we are now witnessing the first shots in a coming battle for market share and attention not unlike the AR World Series/Raid World Cup rivalry.

I realize that Primal Quest and The Expedition Challenge represent an entirely different model for adventure racing than either the AR World Series or the Raid World Cup. I don't mean to imply that they are competing in the same way. Neither of these races aspire to establish a standard for competitive racing or crown a bona fide world champion. There is a more subtle way in which any expedition length race must compete with every other expedition length race.

By most any standard the world is a big place and a year is a long time. Not so when it comes to adventure racing. You can't hold a 500 mile race a month after another 500 mile race and expect the same teams to attend. Racers need time to recover...physically and financially. You also don't want to hold your race in the same vicinity as another...takes away from the wow factor that is so critical to the marketing/media component of the sport that is becoming more and more necessary every day.

The fact is there are only so many racers in the world that are going to tackle an expedition race. Of those not all have the time or money to make it to every one they might like to. The best funded teams will of course have the luxury of basing their schedules around their competitive goals and the demands of actually training, racing and recovering. Many others will be forced to choose more selectively due to financial constraints and available vacation time.

When Primal Quest first announced a new event in 2006 they said we should expect to see it scheduled for some time in the spring. With the addition of the Expedition Challenge to the existing lineup of Raid World Cup and AR World Series qualifying events and championship races, the docket for 2006 is getting crowded. Also, lets not forget the other big draws like Patagonia and Hidalgo.

Our little sport is growing. We should all be thrilled that there is a vibrant enough market to support these new events. The competition for racers attendance and spectators eyeballs is going to heat up and with that will come more investment and better races.

If I were Primal Quest...I'd announce a date and open registration yesterday :-)