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Robert Nagle
Robert, this is your second year in a row competing in the Eco-Challenge competition. Last year you and your team won the event. Are you excited and looking forward to this one? Nagle: Very much so. One quick correction, this is our third year doing the race. We were also in Utah, and once again we finished a day ahead of everyone else but we didn't have a complete team, so we weren't officially ranked. So last year was our first victory, and in fact we had a very good year last year, we were lucky enough to win most of the major races in the world. We're looking forward to going down to Cairns, I think the competition in Queensland is going to be quite strenuous. MZ: Do you have any changes in your lineup? Nagle: There are two changes, one has been forced on us by the organizers. We went from five people with two support crew to five people unsupported, so, first of all, our support crew can't be with us, and we're disappointed not to be racing with them because they've really contributed so much to us in the past. Ian Adamson, with whom I've raced a lot in the last few years, we decided that Ian would race with an Australian team since Ian is originally from Australia. Other than that, the three men that were on the team last year are racing together with a change in the woman who's racing. Keith Murray's wife, Andrea Murray, is replacing Bev Prince. MZ: This venue in Australia is very geographically and climate-wise very different than last year in British Columbia. What do you expect to find down there? Nagle: I expect we will have a lot of variety. It is going to be quite wet in spots, but we'll have some dry, hot conditions. Fortunately, it's winter down there right now, and the extreme heat that you can encounter in summer won't be present, but I still expect it will be quite warm. I think some of the more interesting terrain will be in the canyons, and I think that's going to be quite wet and quite exciting. The rain forest is going to be pretty challenging, the bush will be quite difficult to navigate, and then of course we've got the amazing ocean that pounds the beaches there. That's going to be quite tough. So it's a huge variety of terrain, which we like, makes for a really interesting race with lots of different challenges. MZ: How has your team trained for the event this year? You're scattered around quite a bit. How often do you get together and do you get together just for events? Nagle: We only get together before races, it's not practical for us to assemble to train. We're fortunate that everyone on the team is relatively experienced in the individual disciplines and is a strong solo competitor, and the fact that we're raced together for several years now means that we have less issues to work out than many teams. So we know each other's style, we know what we need in terms of equipment and we know individually what we need to do to prepare. We generally just get together the day before a race. We use the Internet quite heavily in our preparation, because it's the only sort of low-cost way that we can get together all the equipment that we need, all the food supplies that we need, and run through our preparation adequately beforehand. MZ: What part does physical expertise play in comparison with tactical experience? Nagle: I think that very much depends on what your objectives are for racing. The two elements leapfrog one another as you sort of push yourself further and further to the fore of the field. Mental conditioning and the psychological test of the race, both individually and with respect to teamwork... those are both really critical elements to being successful and finishing an Eco-Challenge. But if you want to try and push yourself further and be amongst the leaders of the race, then you need to have excellent all around athletic skills and really strong endurance. Then if you really want to win it, the mental part comes into play once again. You have to think a little smarter and race your own race. That can be quite a difficult thing to do in an environment like this. There 's a tremendous tendency to react to what other teams are doing, to push yourself when another team is pushing itself. You've got to understand the conditions you're in, know where your strengths are, and run a clever race. And then, of course, luck has to be on your side, too. MZ: Last year there was some controversy over the course in British Columbia because of several factors, weather being one, and the length of the course. Only three teams officially finished the course. They had to airlift several teams, leapfrogging in order to finish within the time limit. Do you think that course was really too difficult? Obviously, you guys won, so it couldn't have been that difficult, but for the competition as a whole, do you think it was good or bad that the course was a difficult as it was? Nagle: I think that most of the teams that had good race experience didn't find the course excessively long. The weather played a bit of a factor in slowing some of them down, but I think were it not for the storm that came through, teams that had had experiences with Raid Gauloises (the first adventure race) or Southern Traverse or other races in the past would not have had trouble completing that in the time frame that was available. It was definitely a challenge for many of the teams that came to the race as novices, and it was a pretty harsh introduction. The state of adventure racing right now is such that it's hard for teams to gain experience without going to one of these big races, and I'm glad to see that that seems to be improving. There are more and more races springing up that are shorter in duration, maybe a little less strenuous in their testing that give people a chance to practice the skills and experience what adventure racing is all about and help prepare them for these really long, arduous courses. MZ: How do you spend your time recreationally? You must spend as much after work and weekends working on aerobic training. But if this were not an Eco-Challenge here... how do you spend your recreational time? Nagle: First of all, the Eco-Challenge isn't the only race I do. I do at least half a dozen of these races a year, so for me it's almost a year-round commitment, I take a few weeks off a year but I'm training year-round for competitions all around the world. And you're right, it does mean that there isn't a whole lot of additional time left over for other things. But I've always believed that leading a balanced life is very important, and I'm fortunate that my wife has the same enthusiasm for the outdoors and outdoor activities as I do, and so we get to spend a good deal of time together, perhaps with me carrying a good deal more of the load. But I've introduced her to a lot of new sports and new activities, and we both enjoy those very much. I also love the arts, and I spend a lot of my spare time singing and performing and attending dance performances, both of which are passions of mine. MZ: Has success in your adventure racing career brought you any unexpected attention? Nagle: One of the things that's been unusual is that some of the younger kids in Cambridge seem to know who I am because they've seen me on the ESPN coverage, for example. It's pretty unusual to have a 15-year-old sidle up to you and exhibit a certain amount of awe. It's a little bit disconcerting at first, but I really react positively to that. I think the sport that we practice has a lot to teach a younger generation, it teaches them a lot about teamwork, it teaches them about making a commitment and sticking with it. It's a long term activity, both preparation for it and the race itself, and where I can, I try to speak to younger groups about that. MZ: Your teammates are all from New Zealand? Nagle: Well, they all currently live in New Zealand. They're actually from everywhere but New Zealand. Keith Murray is a Scot who moved there a few years ago, his wife Andrea is originally from Connecticut and moved there to marry Keith, and John Howard is originally from England, was born in England but moved there when he was two years old, so he considers himself a true blue Kiwi. MZ: How did you get hooked up with them? Nagle: We originally hooked up through the Net. In 1994, Ian Adamson and I started the team to prepare for a set of races around the world. We quickly hooked up with John and then we met Keith through John, and that's our current composition of the team. MZ: Has your success in adventure racing had any adverse effects on your life? Nagle: There's somewhat more of a demand on my time now, and it's quite a juggling act to spend time training and dealing with logistics for the race of which, as team captain, that's one of the responsibilities I shoulder for the team, working with our sponsors and the companies that support us and make our racing possible, working with the media, as well as trying to live a normal life, work a full week and get out and play sometimes as well, so juggling time is a bit more difficult. MZ: You're a molecular modeling researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. That's not exactly located in the heart of the mountains or glaciers or canyons. How and where do you do your training? Nagle: I think the Boston area in general is actually quite good for that because although I don't have huge mountain ranges, I have the ocean right here in my back yard, and I'm just a couple of hours from some good climbing conditions up in the White Mountains and even some good environments for practicing alpine climbing, Mount Washington and its surrounding mountains are quite a good test bed for a lot of the alpine climbers that the United States has produced over the years. Obviously, we don't have any glaciers here, but we do get to practice a lot of ice work, and there's lots of good rock for climbing.
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