2015 Primal Quest Tahoe: A list of firsts

Olof Hedberg is here giving us the details about Primal Quest Tahoe 2015. He raced with Journey Racing and had an epic experience! Read on…

So – It has been two weeks since we finished Primal Quest with (under the circumstances, fantastic 3rd place finish.

There have been two race reports out from other Journey team members. Both provide a much better and more detailed summary than I could ever give.

Katie’s can be found here:

http://www.myjourneyracing.com/race-reports/primal-quest

Fletchers can be found here:

http://fletcherhamel-ar.weebly.com/recent-news/whatever-it-takes

So instead of writing up something that has already been done better, I just want to reflect and list of some “firsts” for me in what I would like to call……

Things that happened in PQ that I have never done before:

Start a race with fever. 

This is a horrible idea. No one should ever do this. I don’t recommend it to anyone. If you do it – have a frikking good reason for it.

Do a 49h bike leg – that ended with 8h of “hike-a-bike”

This is long. About as long as it sounds.

Get to within 1 inch of being bitten by a rattle snake as he strikes. 

Luckily I speak parseltongue so he called it off during the last millisecond. Still by far the most scared I have been during an adventure race – EVER! Only thing that can rival it are avalanches and climbing desert towers.

Do a 1200ft, partially overhanging ascent (on a rope)

That is also extremely long. It is also extremely beautiful. Check out the cool pictures in Fletcher’s race report.

Do a 1200ft ascent in a G-string (mountaineering) harness

This scratches your hip bone skin until they bleed pretty bad. When you start a race with a fever – you have bigger issues than bleeding hip bones, so you really don’t care.

Walk around campgrounds asking for food

We quickly figured out that we got the best results from using talkative Julian and beautiful Katie as the people who asks for food. We struck “gold” (or in this case turkey, watermelon and grapes) at one camp ground and it made it possible for us to move a lot quicker during the last 10h of that leg.

Try to jump a barb-wired fence and completely fail.

I’m glad my legs aren’t 3 inches shorter. I’m glad PQ had the best medical crew there is. I’m glad my teammates are the quickest I have ever seen bandaging up a man who is fainting. I wish my leg would look better by now – but it still looks like shit.

Borrow a bike during a race

I have raced on a borrowed bike before – but have not had my bike break during a race, then after about 3h of walking, find a guy with a bike out in the woods to switch bikes with for the next 7 days. Phil – you are a race saver!!!!!

Rappel with a borrowed bike

“I don’t always rappel with a bike, but when I do I like to go first”

Racing with Journey

Thank you guys for letting me join the team. Julian, Katie and Fletcher – the experience we shared will be with me for the rest of my life.

Finishing Primal Quest

I hope this was the first of many PQs for me. Hard to imagine a better course!

Pictures of us doing some of the shenanigans that made up PQ2015 can be found in my facebook album here: https://www.facebook.com/olof.heberg/media_set?set=a.10153537527582698.1073741832.593662697&type=3&pnref=story

Thank you everyone in my life for providing me with the opportunity to live my life epicly. Without your support nothing would be possible.