Adventures in pain
<p>JEROME A. POLLOS/Press Sophie Hart, washes her faces as she cools off alongside her Team Seagate teammate, Marcel Hagener, during one of the transition stages of the Expedition Idaho race Wednesday at Farragut State Park.</p>
<p>JEROME A. POLLOS/Press Team Thule's Stuart Lynch replaces his mountain biking shoes with hiking shoes before heading out on the next leg of the 420-mile Expedition Idaho race.</p>
<p>JEROME A. POLLOS/Press Team Seagate pedals toward the transition area at Farragut State Park after riding mostly rugged singletrack terrain for nearly four hours from Lakeview.</p>
FARRAGUT STATE PARK - For teams in Expedition Idaho, they've been asked one question several times in the opening days of the 420-mile race.
How's the course?
Organizer Dave Adlard loves this particular answer:
"It's pretty damned hard, but it's the most fun I've had being beaten to death."
Adlard, running on just two hours sleep since the six-day adventure race began Sunday, chuckled as he waited at Farragut State Park for the first of 13 co-ed teams to arrive.
"It feels like we're almost done, yet we're really only halfway through," he said Wednesday afternoon.
Soon, the first-place team rolled in on their mountain bikes, completing a four-hour ride from Lakeview, over Bernard Peak, and down a single path and through the park.
Team Thule, with a nearly three-hour lead, includes Jacky Boisset and Myriam Guillot of Font Roneu, France, Stuart Lynch of Bristol, United Kingdom and Albert Roca, of Paqueres, Spain.
"You've never seen such a display of athleticism," Adlard said.
Thule completed a 50-mile bike trek with numerous steep climbs in 7 hours, spent eight minutes in transition, then knocked off a 47-mile trek on foot in 13 and a half hours that included bushwhacking and a 20,000 foot overall elevation gain.
For some teams, it took more than 30 hours, Adlard said.
Next, they returned to their mountain bikes, covered 126 miles with a 50,000 foot elevation gain in 23 hours, with only two 45-minute naps, then canoed 25 miles.
Lynch, his legs marked with red scratches from hours of running and hiking through mountainous terrain, said things were "not too bad."
"There's a lot of big hills out there. Really big hills," he said.
Boisset, team captain, was suffering from digestive problems that began when he drank some bad water at a previous race.
"Jacky's not good," Lynch said.
"I need antibiotics for my stomach," Boisset said.
But there was little time for rest. Pain is part of adventure racing.
Their next challenge was "Survival Quest" at Farragut.
Teams had to complete nine challenges, ranging from communicating verbally how to solve a puzzle, building a raft, and starting a fire without matches or lighter.
This stage, expected to take several hours, was the "fun" part of this weeklong journey and a break from the grueling grind taking a toll on many teams.
"It's something different, a little bit more mental challenge," Adlard said.
While Thule and Team Seagate of New Zealand are far in front, others are struggling. One team had to drop out when a member crashed on her mountain bike on Thompson Pass, injured her ribs, and had to be airlifted out.
The Idaho team was lost, then found. A few, still in Montana on Wednesday, are nearly a full day behind the leaders.
Adlard said Boisset is an example of how strong the elite racers are in Expedition Idaho.
"He's been suffering, but you'd never know it to look at him," he sad.
Nick Ross of Team Seagate from New Zealand, felt strong after biking into Farragut and preparing for the next stage. The course, he said, was "tough but pretty spectacular."
He said in most adventure races, there are difficult and easy sections.
"There's no easy stations," he said.
Ross, 31, expected Seagate to make a run at Thule's hold on first and challenge for the top cash prize. They've been taking it "pretty conservatively" because of the heat and altitude.
"We've been trying to race within ourselves," he said.
Adlard said with the field spreading so far, tracking teams and getting gear - bikes, kayaks, paddles and supplies - to and from transition areas has been "a lot of logistics.
"It's pretty non-stop," he said.
So far, teams have faced mountain tops, dense forests, cliffs, lakes, rivers of North Idaho and Montana, all while trying to find checkpoints on a map they were handed minutes before the race started Saturday.
After Farragut, teams were headed back toward their starting point at Silver Mountain. There are still miles of adventures before the finish sometime Saturday afternoon.
"Ironman's motto is the ultimate endurance test, Not even close," Adlard said, smiling.