I chuckle at the last question, because I have yet to find the answer. I have attempted however, in these last 4 races, to seek out any reasoning I could find as to why we still do it. As I blink my eyes in the post-race medical tent in Park City, Utah, having just completed the World's first off-road ironman distance race, I am content in knowing that I fulfilled a lifetime dream of completing an Ironman race. To cover the distance of 2.4 miles swimming, 112 miles cycling, and 26.2 miles running all in one day, and in a totally off-road event at that, was the culmination of a lifetime of training and racing for me. It was a way to say, "O.K., I'm done now!" But yet, somehow I'm not. The drive within me still has a hold. Even as I sip the warm soup my friend Jen has brought to me in the medical tent, I am thinking of future races.

As I fly to Lake Tahoe, now on my way to the 450 mile Subaru Primal Quest 10-day adventure race, I'm looking at a canyon - the river snaking its way through and the sun is now setting, reflecting a brilliant glow off the eroded chasm walls. It must look like heaven from the river below, staring up at the steep walls, layer upon layer of differing hues. Now, miles and miles of seemingly untouched land expand before me, a desolate brown in color, except at the lowest points where the water winds its way along. I think of spending a few weeks in these canyons to explore, and then realize this too many seem strange to others... the willingness to trade all we have in the city for a piece of desolate land for a few weeks.

Wow - now a distinct ridge has formed and separates the east from the west. The land to the west is an orange clay color that falls away into waves of canyons. Each of these canyons running west is heading for something bigger; and now the canyon walls grow deeper and rockier. I am amazed at how much detail stands out from high above in the airplane. Off in the distance, I can see Lake Powell where all of these canyons are heading for. The earth below turns a magnificent red and as we fly over Lake Powell. I can see hundreds of tiny boats anchored in unison by the marina.

Not far past the lake, the red soil rises up in a huge fault line running north/south. The red fades to orange, then brown, now gray, and finally, the gray succumbs to clouds that obscure my view to the land below. My mind drifts back to the Ironman in July and what it was that stands out to me about the race. I am encouraged that I no longer think of it in terms of mile marker to mile marker, but rather as an experience.

I think of arriving for a 5K run on 4th of July morning with all the locals of Park City and my hosts, Mark & Alice Sunday. They run with their children, Jake & Jared, in the baby stroller as my friend Kent and I run solo, blending in with all the colors of hundreds of locals dressed for the holiday. Our times and places are quickly forgotten and replaced with breakfast on Main Street followed by a hometown 4th of July Parade as seen from our perch on the curb outside the restaurant. Little Jared's squeals of approval and Jake's wandering into the parade himself give me all the more feeling of "home". Watching the firework's from a hill overlooking the city at night and dinner on the patio of Mark & Alice's house high on the mountain in paradise are a special treat. The days leading up to the race are spent on practice rides with 5 of my friends... taking an entire afternoon to meander through sections of the racecourse. Evenings are filled with quaint little restaurants in Park City or overlooking the valley from our mountaintop headquarters with a home cooked meal on the patio.

I am slow to remember the high anxiety parts of this race... the many trips to the grocery store for our race day food items, the wild goose hunts to multiple bike shops all over Deer Valley, Park City, and Salt Lake City to repair my broken rear shock before the race, pre-race check in, packing our Feed Zone drop bags and our Transition area drop bags (multiple times) with the right calorie/electrolyte mix for race day. In fact, those thoughts are a distant last place to the Gondola ride to the top of the mountain for a summer music concert, the trail running right out the front door in a secluded forest, watching the Tour De France each day on Ti-Vo to wind down, the post race massage to rid my muscles of any memory of the race, and finally, the post-race margarita party at the Sunday's house to erase any remaining pain.

So, perhaps on the surface, I have found my answer. Big races like this are a time of sharing life changing or life impacting experiences with others, and a way to get the most possible out of a 24 hour time period. Hmmm... I can't let this one go so easy. I'm not convinced this is the answer.

July 2003, Mountain Extreme Triathlon, Park City, UT
(2.4 mile swim, 112 mile mountain bike, 26.2 mile trail run)

I awake at 3:00 am to eat breakfast and drive to the transition area for a 6:00 am swim start. It is dark, but I can see the faces of all my friends milling about, preparing themselves for the task at hand. I have new goggles, and though I have practiced the course twice now this week, my right eye leaks profusely from the instant the gun goes off. In addition to my waterlogged eye, the 1st lap of the 2.4-mile swim my stomach is sick. Just when I think I can puke, a familiar face swims up next to me and takes a breath on the same stroke as me. In the midst of the thrashing bath of flailing arms and legs, I catch a glimpse of Kent as we both crack a smile. The lake water slips between our teeth as we each take a breath before turning our heads downward back into the rhythm of the swim. My uneasy stomach disappears, and I leave the water and dash to a changing tent.

Kent and I leave on bikes together. It is nice to have a friend for the start of the ride. Kent quickly finds his climbing legs and disappears from me on the first big climb. I hope to find my legs soon. The first 25 miles or so goes quickly, though it is uphill. It is all sweet single-track trail, and the beauty outweighs the pain of climbing. I hit a rock and feel a jolt run through my upper body. With all the time and effort spent fixing my rear shock, now my front shock has broken. Go figure. My upper body takes a beating for the next 80 miles, but I am more than happy to not flat and make it to transition again, despite the broken shock.

I leave for the marathon run in 4th place in the pro-women's field, but quickly reel in the two women in front of me and pull ahead. They are temporarily walking, due to getting dehydrated on the biking section. This race is not only fitness, but also a race of who can keep the proper nutrition in their bodies for 18-20 hours. I am wearing down at the end of the first 13-mile loop, and though I am now in 2nd place, I do not have the energy to respond when the two women pass me back at mile 13. I have to stop for more water and my headlamp, which will light the way for the last 13 miles of the run.

Discouragingly, my headlamp burns out within ¼ mile and I am reduced to a walk to wait for a runner behind me who has light to show me the way in the single track. Unfortunately, he is on his first lap, and he is walking, so I am obliged, but happy at the same time to now be walking. I settle into our hurried walk pace, and accept my relegation back to 4th place again. My electrolyte balance gets out of balance somewhere, and I begin to get a distended stomach, and land myself in the medical tent after the race is over, but happy I have reached my goal of finishing, and of breaking 20 hours by 50 minutes..

August 2003, Beast of the East, Brevard, NC
(275 mile adventure race including mountain biking, trekking, orienteering, ascending, rappelling, and canoeing)
Team: Joe DeSena, Shaun Bain, Matt Battiston, Kathy Duryea

The next month, I couldn't sit still, so in an effort to answer my question as to why I adventure race, I headed by car to North Carolina with my teammate Shaun to conquer the Beast of the East with two other teammates I had never met before. Team Captain Joe's secretary called our cell phone once we arrived in North Carolina to inform us he might not race, and she hoped we hadn't left Texas yet. Lucky for us/him, Joe did arrive on race day, with a shopping list of items he had left behind at home. "Well, at least he is here!"

We ran into our support crew, Chance, at the local Wal-Mart. He saw Shaun's expedition loaded Trooper in the parking lot with Texas plates and figured it had to be us... who else would haul two Kevlar racing canoes all the way from Texas? We also met Rocco, Joe's personal assistant, who would also be part of our support crew. "No cigarettes for Rocco!" Joe told us. He is kicking the habit.

After one of the most disorganized pre-race mapping and check ins I've ever had, we still managed to finish one of the most tedious races I've ever done in 3 days and 6 hours. The race started with biking, where we were off to a quick start. At the top of the climb, we left our bikes, and I left my headlamp as well, and then went on to a marathon trek at night on the wet, grass covered trails of the mountain. Realizing I forgot my headlamp, Joe offered up his and the words, "Well, at least it's dark". After the trek, we had to find 3 orienteering points at night. We missed one, so we got penalized. To add insult to injury, we also got penalized for breaking open our emergency radio to let race headquarters know their point might have been miss-plotted... though it wasn't. There were about 10 other teams looking for the point with us and no one could find it.

I was the only member wearing leg gators to protect my shins from the brush, so Shaun told me to go first through the tall scratchy stuff. Lucky for me, he trampled through anyway... I hate being the one to find the snakes. During our stay in the North Carolina jungle of brush, while bushwhacking in places where a machete should have been mandatory gear, Shaun fell through an oversized uprooted tree stump (again lucky for me that he went first). Joe laughed at him, and said, "Well, at least you fell!" I think he fell about 10 feet.

While taking a brief nap with the morning sprinkles dripping on our gortex hoods pulled tightly over our heads, and still looking for checkpoint 3, Joe woke to a crazy looking green bug staring him in the face, and we both were brought to our feet in a split second when we heard what sounded like a bear trample through our bed site. "Well, at least there is wildlife out here!"

After the orienteering, we trekked to the rappel site for a 500 ft. rappel that was less than fun with the new "Petzl Stop" device we were required to use to slow us down. "Well, at least we're rappelling!"

Then we made another trek down to the fish hatchery and back up again to the bike transition. Our bike section was rather uneventful, other than Joe again having to shine his light in my path because of my poor lighting system, only to find a rut in his path and a great place to crash. I felt bad.

Our bikes carried us to the river for a great canoe down the French Broad. I paddled with Matt in my canoe who sat in the front and shouted out directions for me of left & right to miss objects in the water. We had a fast paddle, but a tough time keeping up with an even faster Shaun & Joe, only to receive a time penalty because the boats we brought all the way from Texas were too "fast". Next came a great rolling bike loop through the hills followed by our first 1.5-hour sleep cycle. Though Joe was the most motivating during the day, the short sleep cycle brought on an entirely new Joe, "Anyone wanna quit? I could stay in my sleeping bag if anyone else wants to... just say the word."

And then, a hike that went on forever, covering about 35 miles, only to be told by various volunteers that there was no water for the first 10 miles, when the reality was, there was no water for the last 10 miles. So with our packs reversed in the order of carrying too much water early on and not enough water later on, it proved to be disheartening at the least.

It was Joe's turn now to fall off a small cliff while leading the way and bashing his shin pretty good. Shaun passed by, not really knowing Joe had fallen. "Well, at least two people have fallen!" I thought as I waited for Joe to climb up from the fall. "Well, at least we are hiking again!" said Joe. "At least we are still climbing," said Joe a few miles later. "At least we aren't sleeping anymore"... a few more miles later. "At least we are getting dehydrated"... a few more miles later. "At least we are rationing our food now". Matt, who has said 5 word phrases prior to this hike, now says up to "three word" phrases at a time. We ran across some mountain bikers who offered up their remaining food and then later, two backpackers who gave us all their food and Gatorade (they were finished with their hike).

After missing the checkpoint cutoff that had to be changed twice because no teams could make it, we were transported by our support crew, Chance, who informed us how bad we all stunk, to our next transition area. I came to the same conclusion when I attempted to put the correct race bib back on after taking mine off, only to find out that they all stunk the same. After some medical attention to Matt's feet and mine, and a dose of pretnisone for the poison ivy that was already breaking out on my hands and arms, and being questioned by an over zealous volunteer who wanted to know if we were sane, we convinced ourselves to skip checkpoint 13, which was already signed off on by the over zealous volunteer, and proceeded to checkpoint 14. After missing the entrance to checkpoint 14 on a fast, fun downhill, we were questioned by a sheriff as to where we were headed, and he then explained another route up to the checkpoint (the back way). One more hike later and we were at the base of the rock, which earned us an early morning slippery rain soaked ascent up the face, which was actually more fun than the rappel only a day ago. And I, who waited until we were on the ledge at the base of the climb, sighed to myself "Well, at least you waited until there was no where to hide to go to the bathroom on this ledge!"

After our ascent to the top, we made a quick hike down and Joe was able to bum a huge hunk of cheddar cheese off a group of backpackers. It was enough to make 10 orders of nachos, but we had no chips or microwave. We rode our bikes to the river, through a hailstorm. "Well, at least it's hailing!" I heard someone yell through the pelting against my rain jacket. We discovered Matt's jacket was not waterproof. Having fought off the chilly willies, and a tough go at finding the right trail along the river (we crossed 3 times), the water rose so high that it was no longer safe to proceed. We stopped by a campground, were offered some Kentucky Fried Chicken by the Camp host, and then called all the emergency phone numbers we were given by the race director (guess it would have been better to call the new ones the gave us at the pre-race briefing). With no luck contacting the race officials, we plotted a new course (including a stop at Subway), around the mountain on the road to avoid the river, and took the extra 3 hours and a dropping of 3 places in the overall standings in stride. "Well, at least we are getting a scenic ride in!" We arrived at Turkey Pen trailhead, and spent the last 10 or so miles slogging away at carrying our bikes up a trail so steep that no one could ride, and then picking our way down a trail that was often too steep for my poor lighting system to descend safely at night. A few end-overs and screams were in order for me, with Joe and Shaun laughing in the background. Matt is down to "one word" phrases, so I don't presume he is making fun of me.

We reached the finish line at 1:00 am to the roar of about 3 people still awake, and then wandered around the parking lot until we find our support crew asleep in the truck with our now cold pizza. Guess that 3 hour detour around the mountain caught them off guard. "Well, at least we are tired and ready for bed".

The aftermath:
"At least Joe's lips were chapped and had sores so bad that when he put a pinch of salt on them, he learned a new pain tolerance threshold."
"At least we could count on Shaun to eat all the stale food that was left over"
"At least Matt didn't break any records for talking too much"
"At least Shaun's Trooper got an unexpected remodel job. We had to cut the carpet out of the rear end because it was all mildewed and stunk so bad from being used as our support vehicle"
"At least I only saw 4 live snakes, 1 dead snake, and I can say that I believe I am ready to retire from adventure racing after this race."

Late August, 2003, Super Cooper 12 hour adventure race, Cooper, TX
Team: Kip Fiebig, Jason Mittman, Leslie Reuter, Kathy Duryea

Just to double check my thoughts on retirement, I followed up the Beast of the East with another tedious race a few weekends later. My team won 1st, but only 3 teams were able to even finish this unbelievable course out of 17 teams. The navigating leg took 9 hours and was in an uncivilized area of swamp/marsh lands on a new lake built in Texas.

Our team navigator, Kip, did an unbelievable job guiding us through the wilds of this place and getting us to the finish line. We met up with multiple poison ivy groves, ragweed meadows, numerous water moccasin snakes, fire ant beds (that we accidentally stopped in to read our maps), overgrown lily pad swamps from something out of the Jolly Green Giant fairytale, herds of wild boar, brown recluse spiders, zillions of miniature frog gatherings, no water to refill our packs with (other than wild boar infested muck water), overgrown sunflower pastures, and oh yea, a few ticks, and a barbed wire cut to my ear while traveling through a fence, followed by a dowsing in the swamp water. Why do we race? Isn't it for fun?

I catch myself using the same phrases I learned from Joe at my last race. "Well at least we are walking through more poison ivy", "well at least we get to cross another swamp", "well at least you can purify and drink the swamp water when you are forced to", "well at least the ants are biting today", "well at least lily pads make great umbrellas from the sun", "well at least Leslie can pull me across about a kilometer of a swamp as I float along backwards and enjoy the scenery", and best of all "at least we can still win with 2 girls and 2 guys on our team, thanks to Kip, Jason, & Leslie!". See, this is fun!

September, 2003 - and on to the Subaru Primal Quest, 10 day Expedition Race in South Lake Tahoe, CA
(450 miles including flat water kayaking, scootering, mountain biking, orienteering, trekking, ascending, rappelling, white-water kayaking, and caving)
Team: Kip Fiebig, Jason Mittman, Steve Daniel, Kathy Duryea

The race starts with a running beach start into Lake Tahoe. Jason and I have to swim to our boat where Kip and Steve wait 200 yards offshore behind a buoy line that they can't cross. I choose to wear a wetsuit, which proves to be my Savior later in the paddle.

After a salute to our flag that was flown in a rescue of our military in Iraq, and a spine tingling National Anthem, the gun goes off and we find ourselves swept up in the dash for the brisk waters of Lake Tahoe. It is easier than I expected to get ahead of the pack, and Jason and I surface in the top ten by the time we have reached our boat.

The most awesome experience of the entire race is taking off in the top ten, paddling next to the likes of Ian Adamson on Team Nike/ACG, Team Nokia, Team Earthlink and Robin Benincasa, the Kiwi's, Montrail, etc... we are all awe struck. The crystal clear waters of Tahoe pass below us as we attempt to match strokes with the greats. Every so often, I hear Steve chime out from the back, "In Sync" as he tries to maintain order in our boat of chaos. We have chosen not to take our sail... the wind is at a dead standstill.

Two checkpoints later, we are still in the top 13, and none of us are willing to let go. My wrist is beginning to hurt and the tendon is becoming inflamed from trying to push so much water with our wing blade paddles. This leg is 35 miles, and I do not have that much paddling depth in my arms and back.

Then, with 10 miles to go, we feel a "poof" of wind, and then another, and the small ripples on the surface turn to swells, and then to whitecaps within minutes. Each wave we crest we are sent crashing down the backside and I am swallowed up in the front of the boat by the next wave as we slice through it. The water comes clear to my neck as my entire body is submerged on most every wave. I am glad I chose to wear my wetsuit for the swim, and manage to maintain enough body heat to not get hypothermic. Just as my wrist gives out, Jason's shoulder gives out and he too must take it easy. Steve does a great job in steering during this vicious windstorm, but soon it is Steve feeling the effects of a bonk, and so our paddling is slowed as we each take turns at resting. But when our kayak touches land and the cameras are crammed in our faces, we know we have had a great paddle and are contenders in the biggest race of the year.

We have to portage our boats about an 1/8 of a mile, and I see Team Nokia in transition getting ready to kickbike. We have to warm Jason up, who is now hypothermic (he was in the 2nd spot in the boat and no wetsuit). Our super support crew of Mike Drost & Kristi Fleming is psyched as well, and helps us with a fast transition.

Next comes an adult version of scootering. We have purchased kickbikes for this section, which have 700cc road wheels in the front, and 16" BMX wheels in the rear. They are faster than smaller scooters you may be accustomed to seeing on the street. This section is so fun. We are side by side with Sara Ballantine's team, and we exchange a hello as she quickly shows us her uphill roller blading prowess. We are never passed, but are able to pass several other teams along the way of the kickbike. We are so psyched to be so high up in the field.

The next leg is a 112-mile bike ride, and I am elected as the navigator. This is my first time to have to ride 112 miles with all the maps dangling from my neck in the map case, and find it a challenge to keep them from being a pain in the butt. At one point in the night, my teammates need sleep, and so we stop for a 20-minute nap while I plot our remaining route for the biking section (I can't sleep for some reason). With only two minimal blips of going the wrong way, I am excited to come off the bikes and to have moved up into 16th place. We are so stoked. Kristi and Mike have burgers and fries waiting for us, and we fill our bellies. We are now into the start of our second night, and before we head off for our first trekking leg, we attempt a quick 1.5-hour sleep. My sleep cycle is interrupted, or shall I say non-existent... I still can't find it in myself to sleep.

We head up the ski mountain and pass Robin Benincasa and Team Earthlink who are heading back down, dropping out of the race because of a flu bug. We are sad for them, but once again rejuvenated to be so close to the leaders. The guys are great and each carry some of my food and clothing so that I can travel as light as possible with only a Camelbak and my mandatory gear. I finally become sleepy, and the guys allow me to take two 20-minute naps on the climb up in the cold night. I hook up to Kip and let him pull me as not only am I now sleepy, but also low on food stores. Then comes our first navigation mistake. We come over a saddle and see lights. I say, "There's the checkpoint", but at the same time, we all think it can be a house (in retrospect, why would there be a house up here in the national forest?). We start descending to the light, but run across a trail that heads off into the distance. Steve spots a circle of water in the same direction as the trail shimmering under the moonlight and thinks it is the lake (because we can't see the lake hidden in the trees in front of us... just the light). Kip doesn't really think it is the right lake, but he allows himself to be convinced that it is based on what the others say.

And so, we set out on our 7-hour scenic journey to the wrong lake down in the valley, only to have to hike back up to the lake we had originally been standing so close to. The hike down is not uneventful. I pass my "bonking time by using my mind to turn all the tree stumps and abandoned campsites into witch faces, and voodoo camps. I see one witch flying her log airplane too near the ground and ask the guys to take notice. Jason sees the same flying witch, but assures me it is just my imagination playing tricks on me.

A quick nap (2 minutes?) in the dead of the night on the shore of the lake is enough to motivate me to get out of the witch doctor's camping area, and before I know it, we are back at the top of the mountain again, looking for the evasive lake. We hook up with Team Leatherman/Stray dogs (Marshall Ulrich & Adrian Krane's team) and they help us find the lake. We find out they have left the last transition in 51st place this morning and our hearts sink, realizing we may now be so far back in the pack.

In our haste to get on the road again, we fail to fill up our Camelbaks with water at the lake, and because we are now traveling on a ridgeline for 5-6 hours with no water, we are forced to fill up in a water puddle on a 4-wheel drive jeep road. This might take the cake of having to drink the swamp water at Super Cooper only a week ago. We make up time by bushwhacking down every switchback we can, and in sticking with the theme, take one last bushwhack down a power line to the lake and make up 15 minutes on the team in front of us, coming out in front of them. The guys applaud my choice of route on the last bushwhacking section.

The next leg is classic orienteering where there are 8 checkpoints to find in any order. We must find 5 to proceed with the race, and if we skip any of the other 3, there is a 2-hour time penalty per checkpoint.

We tackle checkpoint A first, and then head for B. We take a road to checkpoint B instead of a bearing. Most of the roads out there are logging roads and are shown inaccurately on the map. Turns out that the road we think we are on is not the one on the map. Anyway, 2.5 hours later, we have to give up on this point, which causes us to go for the point that is now furthest away in order to get the minimum of 5 points. There are some close points, but they are high up on cliffs or down in hard to get to rivers and it is now dark. Kip is getting frustrated with the inaccurate maps, and turns the navigating over to me for a while. I have no choice but to take a bearing and follow it, as it is now dark and I know we can't rely on the roads. The bearing works, and as I plow through anything in my way in route to the each checkpoint, we are all excited to see them start clicking by. After we have captured 5, we vote to leave the rest and take the time penalties, and get off the orienteering course and on with race. Our transition crew is a welcome sight, and they of course, would like to know where the heck we have been. We have lost another 7 to 10 hours on the leading teams!

We all get some medical attention for our feet, except Kip, who has perfect feet. We attempt another sleep cycle, of which I am only able to sleep 15 minutes, and then head off on bike to the much anticipated 1000 ft. ascent.

The bike ride is a long screaming downhill, which we will pay for later tonight by climbing again, but we don't realize it at the time. We arrive at the checkpoint and leave our bikes on foot for the bushwhacking hike to the base of the ascent. One hour later, in what would prove to be a fast time, we are at the base, and find a long line of teams waiting to ascend the ropes. We are told we must wait at least 2 hours to get on rope. Exposed on a ledge, we sit and try to sleep. Kip does the best balancing act of not falling off the ledge from a sleepy, sitting position. I am given the best spot laying down in a space blanket with Kip's long johns on (I had no warm weather gear for this section because we all thought we'd be off the rock by 3 or 4:00 pm). Then, after waiting 4 hours rather than two hours just to get on the ropes, we are told that Jason and I can't climb without headlamps because it is now too close to dark. So... we get further behind by losing that time in the cue, and the other teams that arrive after 4:00 pm get to skip the ascent all together and hike around if they choose, thus making up the 4 hours of sitting in the cue time on us, plus the 2-3 hours of climb time that our two climbers have to put in while they hike around. This does not seem fair, and is another blow to our already demoralized spirits. To further frustrate things, once at the top of the ascent, it is another 20-30 minute hike to the rappel site, only to find out there is now a holding cue there of an hour because of all the teams that have hiked around the climb and skipped it. At this point, we are guessing we have dropped to 50th or 60th again... surely in near last place????

When will it end? Well, maybe, right after the rappel. The 600 ft. rappel is so long, that the first half of it actually is quite painful trying to pull the rope with both hands through the ATC device while my bare essentials harness is busy cutting into my back from hanging for so long. It isn't until the very end that the rope becomes less weighted and can move freely through the device. Off rappel, we now have to find our way down off the rock face, which quickly leads us into a gully where we find ourselves scrambling down rocks that are often further than I am willing to slide. Jason goes sliding down one so fast that Kip can only watch as he passes before his eyes, landing somewhere below. With only two headlights for the 4 of us, descending on such treacherous stuff is a bit scary, and hardly fathomable to us that the blind racer who is only several hundred feet ahead of us to be beating us down with the help of his guide.

Back at our bikes, we face a 10-mile climb back up the mountain, and I am at least glad to be climbing, because I have no warm clothes. My lack of sleep finally catches up with me in a major way, and Steve as well, as the two of us fight the sleep monsters for the remainder of the evening. It is a constant battle for Kip and Jason to keep us on the road heading in a route that will propel us upward. We both are fighting to stay on our bikes, and weave back and forth along the road, trying not to ride into the sapling pine trees lining each side of the road. I suggest to my teammates that the forest service put Christmas lights on these trees to make a scenic route and charge admission of $9.95 per person, unless you are a car of 4, in which case you get in for free, or if you have kids, it is "two for the price of one". We stop for several 20 minutes naps, one in a helicopter landing pad on the side of the mountain, and another in a switchback. It is amazing what you can call a bed after so many hours of racing. Kip, who has given up his long johns to me, sleeps in bare legs on the pavement... the coldest of cold. I don't know how he does it. Later, the next day, I am told of my hallucinations of the "hot tubbers" on the side of the road that we didn't get to stop and get in with, the pixy dust coming off Kip's wheels, the GPS fishing pole I thought Steve was fishing with repeatedly while we rode along, and the time I thought the guys left me in a dream and wouldn't come back to get me out. It was good laughter in the end.

About ½ mile from the top, and just after sunrise, I feel myself coming back to life. Steve informs us of the severe toe pain he has been enduring and how he can't continue. I am shocked to hear this, because he has kept his pain so much to himself until now, never really complaining to any of us. We can't even take his shoe off his foot to look, as the swelling and pain is too much for him. And so we sit and have a pow-wow, and then decide for Steve's future health, we will not continue on. We break out our emergency radio and give our position to race headquarters, and now are "officially" withdrawn from the race. We wrap Steve in a space blanket until help arrives, and I lay next to him in one of my own to share some body heat with him. Team SteelSports from Texas hikes right by us out of sheer coincidence (their orienteering course crossed our path), and they share some extra food they have. Kip and Jason feed Steve and me like baby birds, and I lay there in my space blanket content in knowing that we had a great race, despite all the adversity we faced after our awesome start.

There wasn't much time for moping around after our race was over. We found the most awesome Bed & Breakfast Inn in Volcano, CA where the owners gave us free roam of the place. There was an old-time saloon downstairs where we were put on the "honor system", and the town of 100 was complete with a little ol' lady named Rose who's daily route of walking included the 30 yard stretch from the seat outside our lodging to the bench at the General Store down the street, and back again.

While enjoying the day from the balcony above, our team heard the words, "Baaaad Kitty" from somewhere down below. After hearing, "Baaaaaad Kitty" a second time, my teammates looked over the balcony to see Rose scolding a white kitty named Snowball for going in the street. We continued to laugh about this over and over throughout the rest of the week, and "Baaaaaad Kitty" soon became our comforting saying when we thought of the race. Before we knew it, our thoughts drifted to next year and a return appearance at the race... only we would have a new name. Can you guess what it is? That's right, Team Baaaaaad Kitty!

Only a few weeks later, I still find myself asking, "Why do I race?" The pain you feel during the most adverse situations is always washed away somehow with the endorphins that get released when I see the most amazing views from high up on the mountains, or when our team is able to bushwhack up or down the face of a mountain, lake, river, etc.... through places you would never choose to travel alone, or even believe you would travel together with a group, but somehow in a race, it becomes epic and the drive is there for all of us to return, no matter what level we race on (beginner through pro).

And so for me, I may never be able to answer the eternal question of "Why I race?" The most fulfilling answer I have is, "Because I can." As long as I am blessed with good health and the drive to do it, I will always find something that seems a little "out there" to others. But I have learned this about myself. It is no longer about the race, but instead, it is about pulling your team together and rallying in the end... whether you make it to the finish line, or whether you have to drop out. Having the ability to turn the race into a learning experience no matter what happens is maybe the biggest challenge of all, and getting to the finish line first isn't such a priority for me anymore. Don't get me wrong, I still think Team Baaaaad Kitty has a shot at that $250,000 prize purse next year, but I wouldn't trade all the adversities I found in racing this year for anything, nor the friendships I met along the way.

After this year, don't be surprised if you see me listed in the "Retired Section" of "Active Racers". Your guess may be better than mine of what that actually means.