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We spend a lot of time dealing with those human dynamics, talking about issues. One of our old teammates used to call it 'having hand-holding sessions.' So if we were to spend, for example, a 48-hour training weekend, we’d learn technical skills, we’d go out and we’d move it around and push the endurance limits, but ultimately I’d always schedule, as team captain, I would always schedule three or four hours at the end of that session just to deal with human dynamic stuff. Okay, how did the weekend go? What worked? What didn’t work? How did people feel about it? What could we change? How could we help each other out better? How could we work more efficiently and cohesively as a unit? So we like to have hand-holding sessions, and I think they're real productive.

How do you form a team that can carry itself through such an emotionally and physically draining experience?

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So much of what makes this sport what it is is the team element, and you talk about it, you read about it, you hear about it, and still people who are new to the sport don't really quite understand the team aspect to it. It is all about team. It's not about, 'I'm a stud athlete.' It's not about, 'I can do this, and I can do that.' It really, really is about the team. What can we do collectively as a team? And that's the biggest hurdle that people have, particularly coming from endurance sports, which are typically solo-based sports. Ultra running, ultra cycling, triathlons — those are all solo sports. And coming into this sport, you've got to check your ego at the door. If you don't, stay out, because it's all about team. If you can't figure out a way to contribute to the team in energy, in emotion, in technical expertise, whatever, then you're being counterproductive to the team and actually, you're a hindrance to them; you're a liability to the team.

How does the team maintain its cohesiveness when you're actually in the race, under all the pressure?

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Pretty much end of day three seems to be the cracking point. It seems to be the period at which all the veneers of civility are stripped away and you really get to the core of who people are, for better or for worse. And it's kind of managing that; it's understanding who you are as a person and what your limitations are; what your lowest lows are because you're going to see them and your teammates are going to see them. But it's understanding those ahead of time and understanding how you react in these lousy situations that really makes or breaks an adventure racing team.

All of us can move it around; all of us can ride our mountain bikes and climb rocks and paddle and all that, but when you do it day after day after day for seven to 10 days on little sleep then the fabric of your psyche starts to unravel and if you can't manage that then the fabric of the team, the braid that holds the team together, starts to unravel too. And that's the key to making a good team, to keep that fabric together and it doesn't mean ignoring it, it means looking at it for what it is and addressing it and figuring out a way to keep it all together.

With your experience, what would you say makes for a good adventure race?

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Every good adventure race I've done, and most of them have been good ones, don't just test us as people, don't just test our athletic abilities; they don't just test our endurance capabilities, they test our mental strengths, our mental tenacity. Because, again, the body can do a lot of this. The physical stuff really does become sort of background noise to all the mental stuff, all the slings and arrows that we're subjected to emotionally and mentally. People come into this sport and they think, 'Okay, I'm a physical stud and I can do this and I can do that, physically.' That's great, but you've got to be able to do it mentally and emotionally, and that's really what makes for a good adventure racer and a good adventure racing team.

In looking at the early footage we were drawn in. I just finished Endurance, the mental torture they experienced and the mental fortitude in just surviving, though not on that level, I see parallels.

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There's a saying, I think it goes, 'pain is mandatory, suffering is optional.' And it's the attitude of, hey, something's optional. We can get through this. This isn't a big deal. Yeah, it hurts. Yeah, it sucks. That mental side of it, the positive spin on it is also, I think, what makes for a great adventure racing team. You know, this too will pass.

And if you can take that attitude into it, back to what makes for the good races, typically just when you think you're through the hardest point, that you've really kind of pushed over the hump, suddenly bam! some mental challenge is there. And the race directors, if they know how to design the course, have designed something and it just will really, really twist you psychologically. And you can either let yourself get down over that, or you can rally as a team, laugh at it, and say, 'You know what? If we get down on this, the race director's won. We're not going to let him win.' And you cruise on. And we take that attitude into it where we just say, 'This too will pass.'

How about you personally, is there a component of the race you're better or worse at? What would you say are your strengths and weaknesses?

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Technically and physically, I'm pretty strong and pretty proficient. But I think my biggest asset to the team, my biggest attribute to myself, is just my ability to push through some of the pain and just almost literally pick it up, pick up the pain, put it on a shelf, and say, 'Okay, I'll come back and revisit you later, maybe after the finish line. Right now we've got a task at hand and we've got to push forward with it.' And I think I've got an ability to do that well.

My weaknesses...god. You know, part of what I look for now in teammates is not 'what are your strengths?' but it's 'do you have an understanding of what your weaknesses are?' I've got a lot of weaknesses, I think, in that inevitably I've got that, what we call sometimes an Eco-demon, that little guy that sits on your shoulder and says, 'Go ahead, quit. You're tired. Lay down. You're hungry...' And sometimes I listen to him. I don't listen to him for very long, but he can kind of creep into the fissures of my mind on occasion.

What weaknesses do I have? God, I'm sure I've got a thousand of them. It's just hard to pinpoint any one or two. I guess if I were to say what one of my weaknesses is, sometimes I get pretty serious when I'm out there. At the same time I can just laugh and roll and giggle about stuff, but there are other times when I get pretty serious because I'm pretty focused and can be pretty intense. I'd like to think that I'm a carefree, fun-loving guy, but I can also be pretty intense while I'm out there.

Is that your competitive spirit then? What's the focus?

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My goal is not to win. My goal is, the focus is, anyway, for us to operate as efficiently and methodically as possible. If we do that well, we will win. But the focus is not 'let's stand on the podium;' the focus is 'let's operate as well as we can.' And that is my competitiveness. It comes through against myself and, the team against itself.

You can't focus too much on the other teams. Now that doesn't mean that we don't look at them, we don't know what's going on in the rest of the field, because in essence, the race does become this big seven to 10 day strategic chess game. But a lot of that is us kind of countermoving with ourselves. And then, trying to understand some of the psychological implications of doing some of the things we do, and how they would affect some of the other teams. And so I do look at that also, but first and foremost it's our team, and then okay, then how do those moves affect someone else? And there is so much strategy involved with this sport. There's so much....First and foremost, above all else, let's get to the finish line. Let's get four worn, sorry butts to the finish line.

What has been the most dramatic occurrence during the past races? The best or the worst experiences?

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Every one of these races is so long and is packed with a cornucopia of experiences. There's so much that happens, day in, day out, for seven or 10 days, because we're going twenty-two, twenty-three hours a day. We're literally moving forward that period. But each race has its own unique experiences to it. I think inevitably what would stand out for me are some of the lowest moments that we've experienced together, and on the flip side, some of the highest moments, too.

Last year in Australia at the Eco-Challenge, I had physically and emotionally the lowest moment I've ever had in an adventure race, and that was when I crashed over the side of a bridge. It was day three and we were in the top two or three of the teams, and I had a pretty bad crash, ended up breaking a couple ribs, got a concussion, had a bone chip in my elbow...
On a bike?
On a bike, yeah. And it really pushed us through some mental and emotional lows as a team also, not just me physically, not just me emotionally, but the hardest time I had was how we dealt with it as a team. The benefit was that ultimately, we were mature enough and we were experienced enough, and we cared for each other enough to pull through it, but we hit a pretty big trough collectively as a team.

How do you feel about racing in Morocco?

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Every Eco-Challenge has been in a really unique environment with its own unique micro environments and micro climates and all that, from Utah to British Columbia to Australia. And suddenly now we're in northwest Africa, where we've got the Sahara Desert, we've got the high Atlas Mountains that go up to thirteen and a half thousand feet, we've got the Atlantic Ocean, we've got cedar forests, we've got everything. And all embedded in this culture, this Moroccan culture with the ancient Berber tribes. It'll be fascinating, and I can only use my imagination at this point and do some research and try and understand exactly what it's going to be like. But true to every other Eco-Challenge, you just don't know till you finally get there.

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