Rss/XmlMe 'n PQ
All the buzz surrounding the renaissance of Primal Quest is good. Damn good for adventure racing and for Don Mann.
But it's weird for me. Yeah, I'm the guy you see at the finish line rockin' the mike at PQ and it's tough to say who looks dumber - me or Rick Baraff of the Silly Rabbits.
In July of 2001, I was sitting at the pre-race briefing of the Cal-Eco Kernville, and the local race director - a good-looking, skinny ultra-athlete named Dan Barger - casually mentioned that he was staging an expedition race in Colorado in 2002 with a prize purse of $250,000.
You could have knocked all of us over with a spoon, and I found the news so compelling that I finished the race, went to work Monday and tipped off Sports Illustrated, which wound up running the media's first mention of PQ.
Long story short, my agency wound up working for Dan to put PQ on the media map. And we did damn well, attracting media attention from Checkpointzero.com to USA Today, the New York Times, CNN and lots of acreage in between.
Now we're not working for PQ. That's not bad, it's just the realities of the new management. We wish them the very best, and still have to force ourselves to yank our fingers off the keyboard when we want to step in to help.
Here's the really weird part. A friend of mine in the media called me last week and said he had talked to Don. My buddy had lobbied for an entry into the race even though the registration was sold out. Seems he's putting together a media team for the race, similar to last year. And he wants me on the team (I qualify not because of this blog, but because of my gig as Editor of Competitor NorCal Magazine).
Don sounds up for it, and who wouldn't want to race PQ?
Right? Well, let's just say there are many reasons to balk. My wife, who is a saint, certainly wouldn't appreciate having me away from home for two weeks. My work would suffer. My clients would suffer. My kids would suffer and most definitely my body would suffer.
But something tells me I'll be lining up at the starting line. I'll finally be able to test - on the toughest stage - my adage that it's worse to work for an AR than it is to race one. I've done both, and at least the 18-20 hour days you log as a competitor have the advantage of taking place out in the fresh air.
But I could be kidding myself, and get hammered out of the race embarrassingly early. The only worse thing than that? Your team getting beaten by a bunch of pencil-pushing word geeks.
See you in "the Mountain States"?
