Once again, the X-Adventure Raid U.S. stage proved to be a grueling, fast-paced event. I raced with Team C&D; Zodiac/Blueline--a new team for me, although I knew some of the teammates from previous races. Our race lineup was Chuck, Jason, Amanda and myself, with Jerry and Cathy as support crew.

We traveled to McCall on Wednesday to give ourselves plenty of time to be rested for the race. Our home for the week was a cabin at the Tamarack Resort (strategically located 100 yards from the finish line) complete with kitchen, laundry, and deck with grill and hot tub. The spacious house immediately filled with race gear and bikes, leaving almost no room to move around. Thursday we biked and hiked lightly around the resort. Friday's check-in process went much more smoothly than last year and we had completed the entire circuit, including rappel test, in an hour. After the pre-race meeting, we settled into the cabin for a homecooked meal and started plotting CPs on our maps. By 10 p.m. we had our gear packed, maps plotted and were posturing for bed while Jerry and Cathy loaded the trucks for our early morning departure.

The race started with a canoe section, departing the beach at the north end of Cascade Lake at dawn, with media helicopters buzzing overhead and music blaring from the loudspeaker. The scene was taken directly from the Primal Quest start in 2004.

I sat out the first canoe leg and helped the crew set up the TA, then got comfy in my skates (right!). Our team lagged near the rear of the pack in the canoe, but we made up some ground on the skate leg, moving in a tight pace line and passing teams left and right. I was grateful to be done with my least favorite section and move on to the bike! We peddled furiously over 25 miles of rolling forest roads on a mandatory route through 8 CPs. We rocketed past two teams on a long fast descent only to watch them pass us again as we struggled to nav to CP 5. A wrong turn cost us nearly half an hour and several places, but we still finished 19th of 31 teams on the section.

Next up was a 15k trek ending with a rappel. Two more navigational errors turned our estimated 3 1/2 hours into a 7+ hour ordeal and nearly cost us the opportunity to rappel. The good news is teams who chose to skip this section took our time plus an hour penalty! During the final hour of slogging through soft snow on the mountain, we thought the rappel course was closed. When we arrived and found out we could still do it, we were elated! We zipped down nearly 500 feet on 4 ropes into a spectacular river valley. This was the highlight of the course! Then a river crossing and half mile jog down a dirt road to our support crew who had nearly lost hope of ever seeing us again. We missed the time cutoff for the next trek section--we were greatly disappointed as the course looked fairly easy and fun with several river crossings where racers had to clip onto a rope for safety. Given the late hour, we also chose to skip the last bike section of the day (36 miles with lots of elevation gain on a maze of forest roads that looked difficult to nav) and get good rest so we could go hard the next day.

After 4 hours sleep, we started Day 2 with a 10-mile flat/downhill bike to the canoe put-in on the N. Fork of the Payette River. We had received the "you will surely die" lecture at the pre-race meeting, and despite my whitewater kayaking experience, I was nervous about traveling in a big red inflatable "canoe" in Class III rapids. We watched the boat in front of us flip on the second rapid which had a huge wave that filled our boat with water. We had no time to bail before hitting #3; we were so low in the water and unstable, then came in slightly off line and went over. The safety kayakers at the bottom of each rapid must have had quite a time watching boats flip! We had better success for the remainder of the 9-mile run, stopping twice to empty water out of the boat. The last rapid was the biggest and we were encouraged to scout it. The officials must have known no one would, because they had a guy standing on a rock just upriver shouting instructions to go middle left. We did and then saw the glassy tongue of water dropping steeply then a massive wave curling back. We dug in hard. Jason shouted at us to dig harder. We did. We plowed over the first wave right side up. We must have been too excited at having made it and lifted our paddles out of the water; we were slowly leaning sideways... The second swim left us cold at the takeout and we rushed to change out of wet wetsuits and into dry bike clothes.

The next bike stage was only 20 miles, but finished at 8300 feet, over 3000 feet higher than it started. My legs felt like lead. The first few miles rolled up and down. Chuck and I took turns on tow and we rode in a paceline on flatter sections. We passed a couple teams including a pro team from Canada who stayed with us and eventually passed us back. Then we hit a CP and began the final grind uphill to the start of another trek. I could only climb in Granny. My legs were so dead. We drank a lot and choked down gel and electrolytes. Jason towed Chuck and pushed me at the same time (he's a pro mountain bike racer). Near the top it got steeper and I thought I might fall over and not be able to get back up. Nearer the top, a van came down the road yelling that the cutoff time for the trek was in 10 minutes. Somehow I managed to give it one more gear and we sprinted toward the finish, determined to make the cutoff. We punched into the CP with 1 1/2 minutes to spare.

We changed shoes, took full bottles from our support crew and punched out for the trek. We ran about 50 feet where Jason turned around and gave me a huge hug as we whooped. We were so excited to have pulled off such a feat! Then we stripped off bike shorts and put on tights and jackets (we were now in the snow at 8300 feet), drank our recovery bottles, then started down the mountain. The mass of footprints in the snow made navigation unnecessary until they abruptly ended in a marsh. We scouted from a hilltop but were unable to see the trail. The GPS told us we were east of the trail, so we traversed west. Then it said we were west of the trail so we traversed east. It said we were right on it, but we couldn't find it. After an hour of trailhunting, we decided to bushwhack and beelined down the mountain hoping to break out on a forest road that would take us the rest of the way. All the way down, I thought about how tired I was and that I didn't think I could make it through a 3-hour lake paddle at the end of the trek.

We finally hit a forest road, but there were more roads than showed on the map. After following one the wrong way for half a mile, we cleanly navigated the rest of the way to the CP where our support crew was in a panic because the race officials were talking about sending a helicopter to look for us. The course sweepers had arrived ahead of us and had not seen signs of us on the way down and thought we were lost.

The canoe course was closed (darn) and we had to drive to the take-out to run the final section to the finish line. Chuck, Jason and I shuffled off as hard as we could go on the trail from the lake to the resort lodge. I had to pee, but decided to wait until the finish line. About halfway up the trail, Chuck said "I have to stop and pee." Jason joined in, and we took a team pee in the trees alongside the golf course. What a finish to a hard two days!

Nike won (of course) and we finished 27 of 31 teams. There were two other Portland teams there that also finished near the bottom of the pack, but it was a great showing of local racers! Now I have a year to say "I won't do that race again."