Expedition Idaho Race (english version)

Last week, Stuart Linch, Jackie Boisset, Myriam Guillot and I, Albert Roca, were in Idaho (USA), to participate in the Idaho Expedition Race, a long non-stop race which Dave, an apasionated adventurer, prepared for us with the help of one of the best adventures races in the history, Mike Kloser.

The race covered 500miles, that we'd fight against fiveteen teams, like Team bonnes (one of the bests in USA) or Seagate from New Zealand, one of the bests in the world with Nathan Favae, Marcel Hagner, Sophie Hart and Nick Ross.

Like always the race started one day before, when we got the maps, and chose our way and ours strategies, to try to be on the top. This was in Kellog town, and we had seven maps one meter square in 1:35000 scale, and also four boxes of 200 liters to put all the stuff and food that we could need. Thankfully we finished soon, and we could sleep well, but the first day of the race, Jackie became ill, and we had to start the race without many garanties, but we knew that we'd try to push together as strong how we could.

The race started with long sections. Long bike, long trekking, long long bike, canoe and trekking, untill we could stop a cupple hours to sleep. In this first time we spent arround fivety five hours, and we just slept thirty five minutes in all of that time. We chose a good navigation decision at the start, and we were first since that moment. We were keeping the distance to the second ones until that moment, and Jackie, who was ill since the start, was getting better. Also we could sleep a lot in this first stop (something arround five hours) and then we restarted again, pushing hard. After that, Seagate saw how we were going away from them. We did another mountain bike, then a Survival Quest ( a race where we had to show our skills in many fun things, like light a fire, built a raft...) and then to the finish just were another bike, a trekking, a long kayak and the last bike. In thats last sections, we took a lot of distance to the second ones, and in the last trekking we were already the virtual champions, with more than eight hours of time. But we had to cross the finish line,yet, and It wasn't an easy thing. But finally, after cold, sleep, leg pain, illness, and a long, long race, we got it! But just for a while. We had thirty hours for rest, but then, on saturday morning, all the teams will restart together from that point to the finish line, in an easy ride, but like always, longer than we thought. Anyway, because on the top finish line we'd get our prizes: Finish together an adventure race, is allways a prize; finish in the first position, also a recompense for our work; to know that amzing beautiful country with their great people, amzaing Idaho and... the best finish line that who ever imagine in an adventure race, in the middle of a Beer festival, with music in live and a lot of people waiting us. Thanks for everything, expedition idaho race!!!