Racing With Paranoia

Posted by Grant on 17. August 2009 19:37

In my post yesterday, I commented that the current PrimalQuest race leaders, Orion Health, were going to have a challenging time leading the race for the full duration.  Racing in the lead can be more stressful and it allows trailing teams to learn from your mistakes and apply constant pressure.  This post from the Orion team's support personnel shows an example of this playing out (note that "SCB" in this quote stands for Salomon Crested Butte, the team running in 2nd place):

"Having refreshed themselves with a good sleep at Crazy Horse SCB set off in pursuit of OrionHealth.com and by two thirds of the way through the trek appeared to have clawed back an hour or so to reduce their deficit to approximately 2.5 hours.  OrionHealth.com continued to move steadily however and had the confidence to move off tracks into open terrain to ensure they took the most direct route to their destination.   Eventually SCB appeared to slow as the long time on their feet and the energy expenditure in pushing to catch the team ahead no doubt began to take its toll."

The Orion Health team had no way of knowing that SCB made a push to try and make up ground on them, but I'm sure they were thinking about it.  And once the transition area hears about the strategies of teams (via race communications, media, or somebody out there with a remote-enabled laptop), you can be certain the Orion Health support crew filled their team in at the first opportunity -- gossip spreads like wildfire on an adventure race course!  Orion will be racing with paranoia as their constant companion, and you have to applaud the Salomon Crested Butte team for working to apply pressure on them.  Equally applaud Orion, however, for taking this all in stride and continuing to lead out the race.  Orion won the AR World Championship in 2008 so I should expect nothing less from the Kiwis.