August 18: It's not over yet
By Dan Morrison

Louisa Stieger of Team Peak Sweden

Team Eco-Internet, despite the two-hour delay for losing its passport, still managed to keep a commanding lead, and finished almost two hours ahead of their nearest competitor. Eco-Internet's official time is five days, 19 hours, and 40 minutes.

That's 139 hours and 40 minutes of nearly non-stop physical effort over extremely difficult terrain. Like the other four teams in the top five, Eco-Internet averaged less than two hours of sleep each night during the race.

The race within the race turned out to be between Team Canterbury of New Zealand and Australia's Team Pure Energy. The Kiwi team managed to pass the Aussies on the tortuous climb to the top of Mount Bartle Frere, and held an hour's lead when they arrived at Bramston Beach.

But Team Pure Energy managed to prepare their kayaks quicker, and when both teams launched into the early morning surf they were shoulder-to-shoulder and paddle-to-paddle.

Somewhere out at sea, Team Pure Energy pulled ahead in the choppy water to eventually land in Cairns two hours and 40 minutes ahead of their rivals.

The official times for the money-winners is as follows:

Team Eco-Internet: 139 hours, 40 minutes
Team Pure Energy: 141 hours, 20 minutes
Team Canterbury of New Zealand: 143 hours, 36 minutes
Team Red Hot: 144 hours, 58 minutes
Team New Zealand: 146 hours, 47 minutes

The striking thing about that list is that places first, third, and fifth go to teams racing under the New Zealand flag, with second and fourth to Australian teams.

The sixth group to arrive in Cairns was the French Team ARS, followed by the New Zealand competitors Team Endeavour.

So, four of the top six teams in this year's race are from New Zealand. And when you factor in the fact that the America's Cup was won by a Kiwi team, it makes for a pretty damn strong argument that among the 4 million people living on those two islands just southeast of Australia are the toughest adventure racers in the world. And their neighbors on the big island to the northwest ain't to shabby either.

However, it is important to note that these teams are international in composition. Although Team ARS is referred to as a French team, and in fact all three men on the team are French, the captain of the team, Cathy Sassin, is from the U.S. Ian Adamson, of Team Pure Energy Australia, lives in Denver. The leader of Team Endeavour, Louise Cooper, is an ex pat from South Africa who now lives just outside Los Angeles.

And the most successful adventure racing team currently participating in the nascent sport, Team Eco-Internet, has an Irishman, Robert Nagle, as its captain.

Mark Burnett (c) with John Jacoby and Ian Adamson of Team Pure Energy

As the teams continue to arrive in Cairns at all hours of the day and night, the crowds of cheering people continue to welcome them to the end of their personal odyssey. Mark Burnett and his staff greet each team with champagne, flowers, and gifts.

The presence of the media diminishes slightly with each passing hour, but it is doubtful the competitors care one way or another about the number of microphones poked in their faces or the number of strobes to temporarily blind them.

What is important to most racers is being greeted by family and friends and fellow competitors.

As Team Peak Sweden pulled their kayaks out of the surf to claim the final spot in the top ten, competitors who had arrived earlier offered hugs and handshakes.

And, after having a few hours sleep and time to tend to wounds, the early finishers found time to swap stories, compare the relative success or failure of their strategies, and to begin planning for upcoming races.

Cathy Sassin of Team ARS laughed and compared her feet with Jane Hall of Team Pure Energy. Sassin's feet were puffy and swathed in bandages, and Hall's lower legs were severely swollen.

"Now I know what legs will look like when I'm 60 years old," Sassin laughed.

"Most of the swelling is from tissue damage," explained Hall. "I did my ankle in, and then strained my tendon about three days ago. And I injured my knee on the first day. I couldn't bend my knee, so I was walking funny, which caused me to overcompensate with my other leg, which damaged it."

"I never get blisters," Sassin said. "I did this whole race without them, until that last section down from Bartle Frere on the road. Walking on that hard road, it was constant friction on the same spot on your feet mile after mile after mile."

"The swelling," she continued, "is just from abusing your legs for so long and then going directly from days of hiking, hiking, hiking to sitting in a boat in the same position. I had to take my socks off, because they were too tight. My legs swelled up within an hour of sitting in that boat."

Hall agreed with Sassin.

"Part of it," Hall said, "is because you're vertical for five or six days. You never really sleep, so you never have your body in a horizontal position. So naturally your fingers and your legs begin to swell, and that is all compounded by sitting in a kayak."

The body, believes Hall, suffers hidden wounds as well as the obvious ones.

"If you don't have physical signs of damage," Hall explained, "like strained ligaments, strained knees, and all that, you tend to think that you're okay. But I think there is a lot more damage there than what you think there is. So it's important to give yourself a week of doing nothing, and another week of slow recovery after that."

As Sassin nodded in agreement, Hall continued, "You tend to come out of it feeling relatively unscathed. But I think there is a lot more damage there. Especially with the sleep deprivation. I think that takes a lot more out of you than you realize. And that really hasn't been looked at in racing. There's a whole new part of race philosophy, sleep deprivation."

Ian Adamson and John Jacoby, teammate of Jane Hall on Team Pure Energy Australia, join the conversation.

"I kept track of our sleep," says Adamson, "it was a little over eight hours in six-and-a-half days."

Cathy Sassin's team slept four hours the first night. "After that we never got more than 30 minutes each night," she says.

How do they force themselves to wake up each night after only minutes of sleep? "You're so panicked that another team has passed you while you're sleeping, you just go," Sassin laughs.

Teams Canterbury of New Zealand and Pure Energy Australia had no idea the lead team had lost their passport until they reached Bramston Beach.

"We were thinking catching Team Eco-Internet was a possibility," says Adamson, "but we knew that 80 kilometers probably wasn't enough. A good team can paddle that distance in eight hours, and we were four hours behind. There just wasn't enough time left. We did the section from Bramston Beach and Fitzroy Island at twice their speed, but it still wasn't enough."

Ian Adamson was the original partner of Robert Nagle. And yet he was not on the winning team this year because of a change in the roster. Does shuffling of friends and long-time teammates cause hard feelings?

"Never," answers Adamson quickly. "Not that I'm aware of. It's all very amicable. My personal feeling in this race was that if I didn't win, I wanted Eco-Internet to win."

Adamson will race with his old teammate in two weeks in China.

"And then we'll reconfigure again and race the Southern Traverse, and reconfigure again and race in the X-Games, and then come back around full circle for next year's Eco."

And then the inevitable question comes up. These races are expensive. The Raid costs each team a minimum of $35,000. This year's Eco-Challenge required a $2,500 entry fee per team, plus each competitor had to come up with $1,200 for lodging, and the teams had to pay for their transportation from their home country to Australia. Not to mention the nearly $20,000 worth of gear each team has to bring in order to compete.

So why the hell do it?

"If you think of all the stuff we do," explains Adamson, "we're doing an annual vacation continually for essentially a week. It equals 10 years worth of vacations for other people."

It is difficult to imagine this rigorous physical test as a vacation.

Members of Team Red Wolf hug at the finish line

Adamson admits that there aren't many other competitive sports events in which the level of injury and sleep deprivation is so prevalent.

"But if you look at teams out there," he insists, "and what actually happens the majority of the time — or not even the majority of the time but the stuff that sticks in your head — this whole thing is unbelievably fun."

Adamson has a point. Many people pay big bucks to share the same kind of experiences as the adventure racers, but at a level not nearly as intense.

"I was looking at John yesterday," continues Adamson, "as he was paddling and screaming down a huge swell, and he's got his thumb in the air and he's just whooping! And to me, that embodies the race. you're coming down the Tully River,weaving between rocks and down waterfalls and there's vines and palm trees. This whole thing is unbelievable."

"And the fact that the race is in a different location each year helps, too," according to Jacoby. "If this thing was in North Queensland every year not many people would show up. But the attraction is 'The race is in Morocco next year; I've never been to northern Africa.'"

"It's almost like a package holiday," says Adamson. "The Eco staff finds the location, they set the course for you. You just have to turn up and race it."

Simple as that.

While we are talking, Team SCAR and Team Red Wolf arrive simultaneously at the beach. Getting out of the four kayaks, the competitors pose for the media.

"Just call us Team Red SCAR," laughs David Kelly, team captain of SCAR.

"Who wants to be listed as 11th place and who will take 12th?" asks a race official. Doesn't really matter, the teams agree.

One of the competitors from Team Red Dog has become hypothermic during the paddle from Bramston Beach to the finish line. He is quickly wrapped in a thick blanket and rushed off to a hotel room to be warmed. The medical team is efficient and will soon have the racer out of physical danger.

Now that's a service not usually offered in most package holidays.

Dan Morrison covered the Marathon des Sables for Outside Online.