The Bimbache Extrem is Spain's longest and most prestigious adventure race. It's a 4-5 day continuous 450km expedition race for mixed teams of 4 involving orienteering, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking and rope work. There was over 20000 euros of prize money at stake and in addition for the winner, a guaranteed free place to the world championships. With places for the world championships already largely allocated, many teams were also keen to use this race as training and as such half the field was comprised of teams aiming to race the world championships, squeezing the number of local Spanish teams down to just 7.

In the end as is common with these expedition races only 25 full teams made it to the start line and one pair from Finland determined to race even though they had only half a team. Amongst the favourites were Team Finland, Buff-Coolmax (Spain/France), Aberdeen Asset Management(UK), Abarth-Teva (Spain), Lundhags Adventure (Sweden) and CoastZone.dk (Denmark) - all placed in the top three of world series events in the last year together with SupplierPipeline(Canada) and Feed The Machine(USA) both crossing the Atlantic.

Almost 12 hour into the race, stage 2 was a 100 km bike leg. We retraced our steps past the last trek control and were soon climbing up into the hills, going well. Passing through the first village we met Team Sleepmonsters waiting for JC to be picked up because of a recurrence of a knee injury. From then on, Jeff took the navigation as I had a really bad sleepy patch after the heat, exertions of the day and 12 hours of navigating. I don't remember much of the push/ride up to CP13. The route to CP14 was the crux of this stage. Sabs sensibly vetoed what might have been a bike push over the highest part during the coldest part of the night. We descended, adding 20km and significant climb to our route. As we had planned we stopped for an hours sleep on a village green wrapped in our foil blankets. An hour was quite long enough as some of our water froze, but not as bad as keeping going over the tops. Then during the morning we began the slow ascent up to the control, including missing a turning. We saw several teams descending from the control that had gained hours on us including IrishAR and Salt and Pepper, although they hadn't slept and said their hands had been frozen most of the night. Just before the CP, we saw Gill of Sleepmonsters being driven down, pulling out due to the cold. We stopped for a short nap by the fire in the refuge before starting the descent. The long but straighforward ride north to T2 at Baeza was uneventful apart from it starting to snow when we were in the sun through a valley of olive groves!

We reached T2 at 17:00. For a moment we feared we might have missed a cutoff and might be sent out on another MTB leg straight away which would have been torture, but the deadline was for us to leave by 20:00, so we grabbed 90 mins sleep in the tents that were here. We met IrishAR and Aberdeen, both having pulled out through illnesses. They were very encouraging telling us lots of teams had pulled out. Tom Gibbs advised us to take extra clothes and food for the night and just stick in there. Sound advice.

So we headed out into the dusk, following an old railway line through many tunnels and around the town of Ubeda. Paul put on extra clothes in a telephone box in Sabiote before we headed for CP20 on the river. This was a slow plod made worse by a 2km navigational error on my part. This would seem like a disaster on a short one day event but in the context of expedition races seems the norm. We saw the Croatian team at the river or at least we saw the one team member that visited the control and caught up with the rest of their team sleeping in the bushes 2 km back along the trail. Not quite within the rules... We opted for an easy trail route here rather than trying to follow the river canyon in the dark. It was fine until we hit another new main road and the trail disappeared. Eventually having walked 4km up and down the road I was able to place it on the map and realise it had been built on top of our track and we followed it.

Just before dawn we stopped for a sleep in a dry concrete drainage ditch - bliss! So by 8am we were back at the river ready to start the kayak section. One sit on top and one inflatable between us.

This gained us a bit of speed but put a lot of strain on Paul's arms holding it. There was hardly any drinking water at the transition despite assurances so we had to detour at the start of the trek to get some. There were no boxes here, we could just leave the boats and paddles, trekking with our buoyancy aids. It was 13km through the heat of the day and Jeff did a grand job navigating. We kept moving knowing that we would have a 4 hour mandatory stop back in Baeza at T5 and hoping we might catch Salt and Pepper. We got in around 3pm, having reduced their lead from almost 4 hours to 25 minutes. They were already in the tents.

We got ready for the next MTB stage and then slept. Paul tried to get pizzas but ended up with cakes instead and Sabs spent quite a while getting antibiotics for her teeth, missing out on some sleep but a necessary diversion. Getting up after the alarms it was starting to cool off already and we were told the course had been shortened for all teams to 90kms and we had an updated route and maps. Salt and Pepper awoke to the same news but they were nowhere near ready to leave.

We left in the last of the daylight, pleased as Salt and Pepper were still getting ready, only to have trouble finding the first CP as my bike computer was misbehaving and we were in the wrong bunch of olive trees! With anxious glances over our shoulders we later heard Salt and Pepper had a lot of trouble here too as it was dark by the time they arrived. Beyond the ride was long and monotonous mostly on dirt roads staring down a torch beam. We were constantly changing maps and I had trouble keeping on top of the navigation. As we became tired the team got angry with me that I couldn't tell them how far to the next CP. A sleep helped and we eventually rode up to the CP. I could at least say that the next CP was the end of the MTB and it was mostly downhill.

The extra wind chill from the downhill road made it very cold indeed. It's possible we stopped for another quick nap, I forget. I know Jeff and Sabs were having great trouble staying awake despite playing games and I had to shout at Jeff once as he drifted off, waking him before he left the road. The road was marked with 1 km signs so we could count down to transition. If we weren't almost at transition we would have stopped sooner. At this point we didn't realise we were entering the last refuge of Iberian Lynx, we just assumed the feline road warning signs were figments of our imagination!

We awoke the marshal and hunted around to find the skates. It was about 5am and cold. We should have had our bike bag with more food but nothing. The marshal declared a timeout while they attempted to get our skates. Fine by us, we were planning on a sleep anyway. Due to the enforced stop the marshal took pity on us. Jeff and Sabs jumped into the marshal's tent while Paul and I got the foil blankets out. He took the sleeping bag and I took the foil bivi with both of us inside the shelter under some trees. About 06:30am (day 3) the marshal awoke us to tell us our skates were here. This was the coldest part of the race for me. I already had all my clothes on and kept the foil blanket while we packed and put on the skates. There was plenty of water so we stocked up for the skate uphill and set off into the dawn. More importantly we would have 90 minutes knocked off our time and Salt and Pepper hadn't appeared during that time.

The skate went well. Uphill just required power. We all took turns at towing Sabs and I took her pack while Paul towed her most of the way up. There was only one tumble at the first slight descent as Paul and Sabs collided. We were up the top of the hill - Santa Maria de la Cabeza by 9am. This was a slow transition as we were pretty much packing clothes and food for the rest of the race: Trek, Kayak, Trek, MTB, Kayak, almost 36 hours away. We started directly down the hill and almost made the mistake of following this cross country route but retreated and had an easy walk down a longer track. 12km later we were at the reservoir.

Two inflatable boats, no drinking water again - we would be drinking from the reservoir as we paddled. This was a 14km out and back paddle just like we'd do at the end of a 2 day race. The first difference was how slow the inflatables were! The more surprising one was to see sun-bathing small turtles jumping into the water as we passed. It was afternoon and tiredness hit us a bit here, until we were on the return leg and saw Salt and Pepper coming towards us and exchanged greetings - they were better paddlers than us and were going well. But we knew we had 90 mins to be taken off our time.

Seeing the team behind made for a quick transition and we set off on the hike. Just 4km uphill to reunite with our bikes. Our minds focused we discussed exactly what we had to do before we got to transition and got on with it. There was only 1L of water for 4 of us for a whole night, so the first stop was back at Santa Maria de la Cabeza to fill up. Rumour has it Paul also used a toilet! I had some trouble finding the singletrack that had been added to our maps but then it was a joy to ride. Paul took a tumble near the first CP but got himself up OK. Salt and Pepper arrived here in the dark and said they had some trouble locating the CP.

The next legs were some of the best and worst of the race. We were in a park where bikes are normally banned, riding brilliant singletrack through grassy forests, seeing stags below us as the sunset over the undulating hills which continued into the distance. The aim was to finish the park section and descent and then take some sleep but as soon as it got dark we were a mess. We would barely cycle for 10 to 15 minutes before someone would stop for one reason or another. Then Jeff left the road and had to be untangled from some barbed wire. We kept going a little further. Paul said he would have to stop soon and before we knew it, he was napping on the verge. We lost track that we were due a proper sleep as we had been going since first light and just kept having naps. Eventually with a town in sight and talk of coffee (albeit 2am) Paul was wobbly and disorientated. We had a 20 minute nap. Woke Paul up - just the same. We all bedded down and set the watches for 90 mins like we should have done a couple of hours previously.

We counted down the kilometres to our scheduled river crossing but deliberately not telling Sabs that it was a river crossing in case it turned out to be a cold one. Mist swirled from the river and I started to see horses alongside the road. Then a pure white stallion, like I've only ever seen in movies. We rode on in silence. Eventually someone was brave enough to ask - "Did you see those horses?". We all had. They had been real! There were anxious moments when we rode through the 'road closed' sign, found the river but no signs of life. We almost phoned Antonio to see if we were on the correct route and it hadn't been cut. After some hunting we found the marshal and woke him up. He pointed out the kayaks and we proceeded to lash the bikes to the kayaks. It was all fairly straight forward really. Paul and I made one journey with the bikes and then came back for Jeff and Sabs. That woke us up a little but we still soon needed another nap about 5am.

Just as Paul started off again, his rear deraillieur hangar snapped off. Jeff and Sabs went back to sleep while Paul and I shortened the chain to make it into a singlespeed although it was hardly needed as the last hills on road were walk up, freewheel down. We were going to make the river well before 9am, the final cutoff for the full course. We were going to finish!

Or were we? We rode in at 07:30 elated and with the finish in mind. But once again, our paddles and kayaking gear were not there. Timeout again but all we wanted was to get to the finish. We found a petrol station to buy coffee, fresh bread and sardines for breakfast. A short nap and our paddles were delivered. In the mean time, the boats we had checked and prepared had been taken by another team but the marshals put a couple out for us. We left at 09:30. No sign of Salt and Pepper and the cut-off time had passed.

2 km down the river, Jeff and my boat was getting very slow and Paul pointed out that we appeared to be sinking! A quick inspection showed that the drain plug was missing - something I had specifically checked on the boats we originally prepared. We made for a mud bank and managed to invert the boat and drain most of the water. A piece of bamboo served as a plug. We were soon at the first portage - 500m up and down, a road, a fence and some sharp rocks. Paul was an animal and dragged the boats almost on his own. Salt and Pepper appeared here having been allowed to continue but their portage would have been slow with two females (and no mighty Paul!).

The river changed character several times. After the first portage it was fairly shallow. There was lots of getting out and pulling over mudrock, slipping and sliding with tired muscles, often falling in but it was fun in the sunshine and warm water. Later we had lots of shallow rapids and picking a good line was key. Sabs was best at this but it was her and Paul's boat that got caught and capsized, sending Jeff and me off chasing paddles and throwlines that floated away. Finally the end was in sight but we couldn't understand the final instructions being shouted at us leaving Jeff to wade through the mud to the shore. Here we had a quick change to walk through town, Jeff covered in mud, bits of sunburn and fully looking like we had been racing for more than 4 days to reach the finish about 18:30. It was almost empty though. The other teams were away in the hotel the other side of the city and they were just waiting for Salt and Pepper to close the finish. We were there to welcome them in but it was a bit of an anticlimax. Our thoughts were immediately on to getting sorted in time for the race meal, prizegiving and getting all our gear packed for departure in the morning. A bit of sleep somewhere would be good too. We were 6th shortly infront of Salt and Pepper. At the hotel it was great to see the other British folk and they had been drying all our gear as it appeared for us so it was ready to pack. The food was brilliant and we sat and exchanged notes with Salt and Pepper - they had been trying to catch us all day.

Thanks Sabs, Paul and Jeff - we did it together...