Press/Media

Primal Quest: The Super Bowl of Adventure Racing

By Kevin Maurer
Staff writer

Master Sgt. Scott Olson and 1st Lt. Christine Bone keep training regardless of where their jobs take them.

Deployed to Afghanistan? Olson just runs the same loop around his fire base over and over again.

Mortar rounds crash down nearby? Bone races to the nearest bunker and waits for the all clear before pounding out mile after mile.

Bone and Olson — members of Team Enduring Freedom — are training to run Primal Quest 2008 in June. The cross-country race across the rugged Montana countryside requires a co-ed team of four to trek, climb, kayak and mountain bike more than 400 miles. The teams must travel and finish together. Bone and Olson make up half of Team Enduring Freedom.

“I consider this a mission, and I have to finish no matter what,” Bone said. “I won’t lie to you, I am scared. But if I finish, I would have accomplished something not a whole lot of people can say they did. That is a good feeling.”

Founded in 2001, Primal Quest is the Super Bowl of the adventure racing community. It is the ultimate test.

“I know it sounds cliche, but I just want to know where I stand,” Olson said. “How do I measure up against both my personal expectations and against true racing professionals who are at the top of their racing game?”

Members of Team Enduring Freedom have a slogan on the back of their T-shirts:

“To find the checkpoints you have to be good. To catch the leader you have to be fast. To become the leader you have to race.”

Both train every day. They ride their bikes about 200 miles a month and run another 100 miles. Bone also runs a marathon each month.

Olson, a Special Forces soldier assigned to Fort Bragg’s 3rd Special Forces Group, said the hardest part is keeping a consistent training schedule.

“When I miss a workout due to missions, I have to re-do it later to make up for the lost training,” he said.

Boredom is also a killer. Both run the same route over and over at their respective bases.

“I was lucky in the fact that I brought my bike, but logging in 50-75 miles in one shot is about 20-25 times around the loop,” Olson said. “So it’s just as much training my body as it is my head to continue to go back out there.”

Both see adventure racing as an extension of their military training.

“It keeps my map reading skills up and keeps me mentally and physically fit. It keeps me on my toes, ready for anything,” Bone said.

Bone is an intelligence officer, assigned to the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.

The training and competition builds the same cohesiveness and teamwork that they learn in the military. Finishing a race, they said, gives them the same satisfaction as completing a mission.

“It is the essence of Special Forces in a civilian format. I think it culminates what I love about my military life with what I enjoy about my personal life,” Olson said. “You place yourself in a situation where you are hungry, sore, extremely tired and just want to rest, but you can’t. The harder you push and the more you are challenged and challenge yourself, the more fulfilled your life becomes.”

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