No matter the sport, every team needs a member who supplies a stimulating spark - especially when the going gets tough. In international adventure racing, characterized by prolonged physical exertion on little or no sleep, the rule applies tenfold.Despite being the youngest and sole female team member of DART-nuun, Jen Segger knows when to kick into alpha mode and spur the rest of her team on. The 28-year-old Quest University athletics co-ordinator and trainer helped her team cover nearly 600 km in less than four days by foot, boat and bicycle and with just over two hours of sleep to place sixth at the Adventure Racing World Championships in Brazil earlier this month.Navigator of the four-person team DART-nuun Cyril Jay Rayon has been racing with Segger for the last four years. He considers her a team leader who inspires by example and her performance at the World Championships, where the top teams are racing in extra-close proximity to each other, only strengthened his belief that Segger prompts the team to do better, he said. "She leads by example, which is good for us because it pushes us even further," said the Californian. "At every transition she was the first one ready looking at us like we were all on holidays or something [] Jen tried really hard to get us ready and anytime a team is near she just goes crazy. She's like a rabid dog, but in a good way."DART-nuun went full throttle from the very opening run across sand dunes and beaches where the top teams pushed each other for about three and a half hours. Pacing early is just not an option when the team is surrounded by such an elite level of competition, said Segger. "You don't pace yourself at the beginning. The sport is too fast now - it's evolved too much," she said. "There've never been so many good teams together before. All the best teams in the world were there and you couldn't let up for a second. You were always either chasing or being chased."Segger suffered from beat up hands during the long kayaking sections but remained healthy for the most part despite grinding the gears through temperatures reaching 42 C. One 60 km paddle leg took about 17 hours against strong head winds along the Brazilian coast and mangrove waterways. "You feel like you can't even stop for a break to shove some food into your mouth. You have to just keep going through it," she said. "My hands were destroyed."The team had to sluggishly mountain bike through sand, navigate about 130 km of trekking sections and hand over control to a crew sailing a classic northeastern fishing sailboat 32 km. The sailing leg remains a matter of much contention because teams' times start to rely too much on other people.Fortunately, the sailing leg didn't affect the results and Segger finished the race satisfied with DART-nuun's sixth place finish among nearly 60 competing teams. "We're really excited about sixth place. It's a great finish and we had a really good race, but still, we look at who we were competing side-by-side with and we think we could have done better still," she said.Segger plans to start training seriously by January for the upcoming season. The first competition on her schedule is a March seven-day solo ultra run in the Northwest Territories. "So I'm leaving the hot behind me and going cold this year."
