If you haven’t been introduced to our amazing team yet,, may we suggest that you first take a look at our chronicle dedicated to the physical and psychological profile  of each of us:

Now, how is racing such an event?  Well, everybody thinks that the race itself is extremely difficult.  Let me tell you, they have it all wrong!   It’s everything that goes before the race that is extenuating.  A last rush at work,  the cleaning and preparation of all gear and equipment, last minute fine tuning on training, bike repair and adjustments, night-light systems to test,  final choice of race jerseys with matching socks and gloves, the 10 pair of shoes to bring, …. In short, race preparation really sucks and we’re all tired of it even before race start! 

To make it worst, the day before the race is dedicated to race registration, lengthy first aid briefings, skills testing, bike verification by someone you have to check so he doesn’t mess with it (by our definition, anyone touching our babies (our bikes) is someone messing with it, sorry for the volunteers doing this job) and mandatory gear verification…

Then when everything appears to be done, each and every racer starts emptying and reorganizing it’s gear bin at least five times before everything is perfectly at it’s place and organized, which is exactly how it was before the whole exercise…

Then, there is the race briefing at 6 PM. The race briefing is a meeting where racers, race organizers and host city officials gather.  City officials make a little speech, we always have a very warm welcome, this time there was a banner and good luck “kits” prepared by school kids for all teams.  Then, invariably, it always ends up with glorious stories with birch bark canoe  and colorful feathered Indians, and this time, it was kind of cool, apparently there is a unicorn Sasquatch living in the area. But we’re all anxious to get to serious stuff:  Now let’s hand out race instructions and topo maps.  Except this time, maps have yet to arrive!!  We’ll have to come back at midnight.  What? Midnight?  Ahhhh!!!!!!!   How fun that is, we had nothing to do at midnight.  Sleep?  Hmm, right, we’re racing tomorrow!  Sleep is overrated!! 

So we come back at midnight, find checkpoint coordinates, plot the ideal course and then cut out the useless portions of maps, like the regular course for instance.  When surprised by a race official, cutting the regular course, our humorous captain was heard saying with a grin that only him has the secret for (!!) : “… yes, so what?…”  I tell you, Benoît humor really is underrated and misunderstood!!!       

Well, now that  maps have been prepared and memorized, we try to sleep a bit before having to get up at 5 AM and drive all the way to the start line, a good 2 hours away from here.  2 hours in a bumpy van with bins, bikes, paddles, Gatorade cans all over us.  Can someone tell me why we do this, do we really have to go through this? When will the race start for real? 

Once at the Lake indicated in our instructions, all teams fight to get the best canoes and we all rush to get ready and head for the start line.   We make sure we get our feet wet, why wait any longer, it’s always the same, in any decent race course design, there is a point, no later than 5 minutes into the race where all will get their feet wet. With a canoe start, it was very easy, sometimes organizers have to work a lot harder but I tell you, they always succeed!   Anyway, needless to say that feet will never be dry again for the next 45 hours.  Apparently some people value having their feet dry, there has been a time in our lives where we shared that vision.  Now, well, we think wet feet are overrated… Will this race ever start.  There is a general feeling of anxiety in the air.  Some many unknowns:  decisions regarding the race course, our mental and physical performance, our equipment, navigation, strategies, team spirit and morale??????? 

All aligned for the start on Lake Témagami, I look around and watch other teams prepare.   Spirit, Taiga, Running Free, Wild Rose, the favorites as well as Jimmy's Night Out, Star Choice and other teams who could well cause a surprise.  They all look very good and extremely fit.  All very experienced teams. And us, we look kind of funny.  Plus we wear those bright yellow bibs won at Stoneham, it’s just as if we were wearing a big board in our back saying “follow us!”.  We’ll be easy to spot!!  Anyway, we’ll do our race, we know we have a very fast pace.  For this first canoe section, we know Taiga and Spirit are renowned to be very fast, we’ll try not to let them go too far ahead.  Anyway, we don’t expect much distance between top teams at the end of the canoe and the following 85 km bike section. 

8 AM.  The race finally starts.  There is a bit of confusion, 80 canoes on a narrow bay, we eventually get ahead, there we go for a short 52 hours maximum of intense racing.  Wow, that is very encouraging!!!  But we don’t think about it.  After a few minutes we are ahead just as the pack has to separate in 2 groups depending on the strategy: 2 portages to cut 1.5 km or the 1 portage option.  We chose the latter.  It will take 3 hours before the 2 packs meet again.   When we do, we find ourselves about 5 minutes behind Taiga and the surprising GearsRacing and just ahead of Jimmy’s Night Out.  Well, say whatever you want, it rains, it is windy but it is so enjoyable to be canoeing with good friends!!  Slowly, we are getting closer to the first teams.  A series a 6 portages is coming and we are confident we can catch up with our very simple strategy: no fussing around, get the canoe out of the water and run while a “surveyor” ahead looks for the best portage escape route. And it pays off big time.  We pass the other 2 teams without having seen them at all!!   Benoit L., in one of his usual gag says: “… hey group, you know it may be the last time we see those teams?…”  Cocky you say?  No, no, just his very misunderstood sense of humor…  Anyway, we laugh, as much because of the improbability of his prediction than   the perspective that it may be true delights us.   Still the two teams are on our heels as we enter a section where the 30-40 km/hr head winds and huge waves just become brutal.  Hurricane Isabel’s tail!  The canoe fills with water, we have to frequently empty it and the pace is now desperately slow.  The difficult conditions help us gain some more ground on the other teams.  We change our paddlers configuration periodically, a luxury that most teams can’t afford.  Benoît G’s  strong paddling comes in handy. 

At transition 1,  we are welcomed with joy and a bit of surprise by our valorous support team, in first position.   We have a very short 4 minute lead over more than 43 km and 6h10min of effort.  This is going to be a long race!  We manage to get the fastest transition of all teams, 19 minutes, that is the strict minimum to eat, re-fill on water, switch gear and clothing.  Over the whole race, we’ve gained more than 25 minutes on GearsRacing and 43 minutes on Taiga on transitions alone.  Give credits to our astounding support team with Tanya as the coordinator! 

The next section covers more than 85 km of mountain bike, over a maze of unmarked trails and forest roads.  We enjoy the beautiful ride, and say whatever you want, it is just so enjoyable to be biking with friends especially after spending that much time in a canoe. 

Thanks to Benoît’s perfect navigation, we avoid a thousand and one pitfalls and we emerge 7.5 hours later at 10 :15 PM at transition area 2, still in first place, 34 minutes ahead the the second place team (during the whole race, we have no idea how far back are the other teams…).  We take our longest transition, 35 minutes, before heading out for a long 30 km night trek, including long bushwhack sections. 

This could take from 10 to 15 hours.  We know we are extremely fast in the forest and we count on this section to consolidate our lead. 

The night is calm, rain has finally stopped but that doesn’t change much for us,  the vegetation is soaking wet.  You can say whatever you want, it is so enjoyable to be trekking like this with friends, especially after spending so much time on our bikes.  The night is always special:  that is when we really feel and appreciate our teammate’s support:  Benoit L for his concentration and focus, Benoit G. for his little attentions and constant good mood, Melissa for her quiet and confident determination.  Another perfect navigation by Benoit L. and we reach transition area 3 at 9 AM in the morning, without knowing that our lead has increased to more than 100 minutes after 25 hours of racing.  Our pace is infernal.   

After a short morning transition, off we go for an easy 20 k bike ride.  Well, say whatever you want, biking is really very enjoyable after trekking for that long…  We are now at the start of the advanced section.  A challenging 25 k trek/bushwhack.  No doubt, the race’s most important section.  After a good start, everything seems to be ok when suddenly a first hesitation.  Benoît suddenly stops walking.  He pauses for a moment, contemplates the map.  Well, that is not all that unusual.  But to our great dismay, he sits down, thinking, to finally admit that we are nowhere near where we think we are.  Discouragement? Panic? Not at all.  We will head straight south until we hit a recognizable feature and find our way to next checkpoint.  Result?  The best time of all teams on that section.  What an ace!!  Our arrival to checkpoint 7b is the most bucolic (we really like this qualifier!) of all.  The weather is beautiful, we are walking in the fresh waters of a nice stream and is that a mirage, two charming women are there waiting for us, giggling of happiness to finally see a team.  The joy is reciprocal and that will be worth an exceptional 3 minute stop which will be the only slackening moment of our whole race…

It should be noted that volunteers that staff the various control points have a very ingrate role.  They are sent to their site sometimes up to 10 hours before the first team will show up, enduring bad weather conditions, mosquitoes, …  If some are in excellent company, like this lucky guy from CP5 that we envied very much or the cute lesbians from CP6 (!), others must find it very long.  Especially since we don’t spend much time there.  Same thing for the support team.  They spend hours getting from one transition to another, setup a perfect camp where all our equipment is perfectly placed beside our little chair.  Fruits, hot soups and meals are waiting for us all the time.  Then we get there, we are wet, dirty, we stink, we have a thousand and one demand, we turn the whole place upside down all of this in less than 30 minutes.  And then, they need to start all over again at the next transition!

The next section appears relatively easy.  We need to find an ATV trail (not indicated on the 20 year old topo map), going generally south-east, among a dozen possible trails.  As if this was not difficult enough, we meet a “zero” on its ATV that totally confuses us with it’s approximate and misleading advice.  We are tired and it takes us a long time before finally committing to a trail which will eventually prove to be the right one.  All evidently, although we don’t seem to suffer from physical exhaustion – we are still running on trails – mental fatigue had caught up on us.  After 33 hours of intensive racing we emerge from the advanced section still in first place with what we estimate is a precarious lead.  We’ll learn later that we are more than 2.5 hours ahead of the next team. 

Our progression towards the zip line is extremely laborious.  We receive information indicating that Jimmy’s Night Out is less than 30 minutes behind us and that seriously affects our moral.  The information is correct, except for the fact that this team has chosen the regular course (7 hours less) and therefore does not threaten our position.  Mentally, the race is getting difficult.  Our water reserves have been dry for a while, our progression seems desperately inefficient and we feel like we are losing ground, we need to constantly re-focus and re-establish the pace.  Without any doubt, this is the toughest part of the race for us, we imagine all other teams catching up on us.  The night, the extenuation and the race’s tension are playing tricks on us.  We finally get to the zip line checkpoint with great relief, we are still in first place.  We will learn later that most teams endured grief on that section too.   The zip line itself is kind of cool!   We tie on our harness to the rope, and  off the cliff we jump in the empty darkness of the gully!  To the sound of the rapids at the bottom, we feel the rope stretching under our weight before we pick up longitudinal speed until we reach  the other side, a hundred meters down below.  Well, say whatever you want, it feels real good to be hung up in the air for a short moment after all that hiking and climbing.  Fortunately, this little “rest” period will allow us to regain composure and hit the next transition in better spirits

At TA5, we stop for only 19 minutes, no time to waste, it’s 10 PM Saturday night, we have been racing stop less for 38 hours and we have a room reserved and paid at the Canadian Ecology Center.   Only 2 more stages, about 20km of mountain biking that we expect to be fairly easy and a dozen km of canoeing of the Mattawa river to the finish line.  Well you can say whatever you want, it feels good to be biking after all that hiking and scrambling in the woods.  But what we expected to be a nice night ride will end up being a real killer.  First, a “small” mistake will take us on the wrong side of a fork on the road, then we broke a derailleur and our lights started to fade away. Time to re-focus again and find our way back on the good track, we have lost a good 2 hours of precious time.  Despite that setback, we remain calm and confident.  We finally find the right trail, used mainly by 4 wheelers;  it is a real mess with deep tracks cut in the slippery wet clay-like ground, we keep on sliding and falling., our progression is slow.  We help each other, Benoît G. makes us laugh by climbing an absolutely amazing wall on his bike, he is absolutely unbelievable, we know the end is near.  Our arrival in Mattawa is a real deliverance at 50 km/hr with almost no light left.  It is 2 :30 AM when we finally reach the Ottawa and Mattawa  rivers at this last  checkpoint before the finish line!!  

A short (!) 12 km up the river to the Canadian Ecology Center and we’ll be there.  We embark on the canoes joyfully and light-hearted except for Benoit L who rolls in it like a larvae.  The tension that has held us since the morning dissipates slowly in favor of a warm and peaceful night.  We are alone in the world; the river is wonderfully calm and appeasing.  We luckily avoid the numerous slightly submerged rocks along the way, we laugh of our hallucinations and nocturnal wild imaginings, our hilarious conversations from one canoe to another make no sense whatsoever, we are filled with the sweet euphoria of  a tough race’s victory.   

Do we start believing it?  Maybe it will come true?  What seemed like a wishful objective is about to become real!  Ironically, I wish this moment could last much longer.  Well, we can say what we want but it is kind of fun to be canoeing along with friends, laughing like drunks.  After 2 more hours of fast paddling to stay awake, we  perceive a few lights in the night that indicate the finish line is close.  One last portage, hey is it already over?  Sunday morning, 4:40, after close to 45 hours non stop racing.   We learn that only 4 other teams have elected to take the advanced course, the closest one is at least 3 hours behind us.  Only 7 teams will finish the race.  It’s hard to believe, but  we have won!!!

Before the race, I had written to my friends what I thought would be the key to success for this type of race :

”…And what does it takes to win? Well that is not too complicated!  We have to draw a perfect course, start as lions, keep the pace at full throttle all along, don’t get lost, avoid being knocked down (or knock down a team-mate), avoid dehydration, hypothermia, resist sleep monsters, take good decisions in spite of fatigue,  a bit of humor when the above conditions don’t exactly materialize (!) and first and foremost, to love tenderly (!) each and every team-mate and have total faith in them.  Easy??…

And once it’s done, one realizes that all of this is true.  Especially for the love and trust.  What a fabulous team, dedicated, disciplined, performing and amusing!!!

It’s now over.  And we’ve won it.  So why is it that I feel a bit down.  It is as if crossing the finish line, that signaled the victory but also the relief of so much intense effort also signaled the end of a great adventure.  Setting to rest a perfectly tuned machine of 4 bodies and 4 minds in perfect synchronicity.  As if victory lied more in the process than in the result itself.   As if the exhilaration was not in the finality but lied more the sum of all those efforts, in the fabulous energy deployed, in the realization of all the little victories, in friendship, synergy and laughs…In brief, in the sum of all the magical moments spend together.    So is it really over?  Well not really, because now we’re intoxicated by happiness and dreaming about next time… 

Thanks to you Benoît, Benoît, Melissa and Tanya, what a marvelous team!!

Alain