Team Paparazzi
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Most teams arrived late at night on Day 5 to the camp at Les Confins just outside of the town of La Clusaz. Morning broke clear and beautiful with a view of the Alps that would be hard to beat in a postcard. The teams took off running at 5am, and circled back through camp about seven hours later en route to the finish line.

Nike and Salomon Crested Butte Men were together at this point (photo), and finished with Salomon Crested Butte just in from of Nike., giving them ninth place overall, and with Nike in 10th.

Nike, with Monique Merrill battling a stomach virus throughout the week, pushed through and held on to second place in the mixed category.

The first edition of this event went off smoothly overall, with teams enjoying the new format The points accumulation and scoring proved a bit tricky to get a firm grasp of, but as with any race, top teams will have it dialed in the next years, undoubtedly pushing the speed and the sport to new heights.

Phil Davies of British Team Saab Salomon talks to the cameras after emerging from the hydrospeed. The team of three Brits fought off a hard charge from Frenchmen Les Arcs Quechua to hold on to yellow when it really counted, at the final finish line. With all three Brits specializing in fell running, this race suited them well. That's not to take away from the rest of their week; they still had to mountain bike, paddle, climb and orienteer with skill, speed and making no errors to beat a highly elite field.

Travis Macy of Team Paparazzi is seen here about to fly down the kayak shoot to tackle the flatwater slalom kayak time trial. Travis was an excellent addition to Team Paparazzi, his individual running stages helping the team's overall ranking tremendously.

From the town of Les Contamines Monjoie, the afternoon run started up a steep and slippery slope (in photo) into the stormy mountains before ending up 14K later iat Les Chapieux near Bourg Saint Maurice. We spent the night camping in Bourg before the whitewater day of canoeing, hydrospeeding, kayak slaloming and then a long uphill into Les Arcs 1950.

The boys got ready to hydrospeed down the River Isere' in Class IV rapids (photo), donning 6 mil wetsuits, hooded vests, neoprene shoes and gloves, and flippers. Team Salomon Crested Butte Women's Gretchen Reeves had to do the section without neoprene gloves as her gear never arrived from the airlines. The girls had borrowed most everything to get by, and Gretchen survived the cold water without gloves, but they definitely had to overcome racing with a mish-mosh of gear.

The sixth and final day of the race was a doozy. A 5 a.m. start sent teams up 12,000 feet or so of incredible alpine terrain over 40 kiolometers. The Brits of Saab Salomon put the hammer down to win the stage, securing their overall win. For a team that's come in second many times over the years at major races, this win is extra sweet.

Team Paparazzi had a great day on the climbing stage yesterday, finishing 10th overall and sending each of the three routes (one per team member), but this morning succumbed to a sour stomach and no gas in the tank. Travis continued on the adventure running/navigating leg with two Italian racers who's teammate had dropped earlier.

The three Paparazzi's will compete in the final stage, a 5K running relay here in the insanely beautiful town of La Clusaz (and it's sunny and warm, finally!) in a half hour, at 5pm local time. Travis was second overall in the run yesterday, and has put the fear in someof the international runners here.

Team Nike also put the hammer down today, despite an ailing Monique Merrill, who pushed through some intense pain and suffering. The team finished as the first mixed team today, but I'm not sure it was enough for them to win the overall mixed competition. They couldn't recover enough points from a nav error on the moluntain bike day; a real shame considering the discipline is their strong suit.

Salomon Crested Butte men's and women's teams finished well -- the final outcome will be posted after the run. Speaking of the run, it starts in 25 minutes, so i better go!

Sorry that I haven't been able to post! It's been a busy couple of days for teams (and their support crews) as with two running stages taking the place of mountaineering due to relentless rain, followed by a day of whitewater activities and another run. In betwen the days we camped near the River Isere in Bourg St. Maurice where there wasn't any internet connection.

We managed to stay dry in our tents at night, and the sun actually poked through the dark clouds for a few hours yesterday. The day when the mountaineering was planned, teams started a run from our soggy campground and finished in the town of Les Contamines Monjoie, high on the western flank of Mont Blanc amidst waterfalls and glaciated ice peering through the thick, misty fog and rain. A couple hours later, another run/hike kicked off near town and climbed south on part of the Tour du Mont Blanc trail. Snow and high winds hit teams with force as tehy climbed into the mountains and down into Les Chapieux.

The drive was epic: two hours of narrow, windy mountain roads, also enshrouded in fog and rain, then snow at higher elevations. Paint from past Tour de France races made me wish I was riding a bike instead of driving our van, but that might have lasted only a few hundred kilometers into any one of those big ascents.

The rain poured through the night, and morning greeted teams with a whitewater canoeing section. Mark, with his years of nagivating teenagers down east coast rivers as a camp counselor, kept the boys upright and pointed straight downriver. They finished 17th in the section. From there it was hydrospeeding, a kind of whitewater boogie boarding down class IV rapids. Then teams did a flatwater kayak slalom time trial. Good fun.

Yesterday afternoon sent them straight up from the valley floor to Les Arcs 1950 (meters), an epic uphill that took the winner an hour and change.

We camped last night, then drove early this morning to the start of yet another run in the town of La Feclaz in the Massif de Bauge. A light mist has been falling off and on this morning, and the boys head out on the climbing activities soon. I ran about half of the 13K trail race this morning, and the muddy, slippery conditions were fun to explore...then again, I only did part of it, and they've been running once or twice a day for four days now.

Day two of the Saab Salomon Mountain-X Race was a wet one. Rain began pouring down on the Alps less than an hour into the 50k cross-country mountain bike race that started at 7 a.m. After a night of camping at a site near as small lake in Les Gets, teams rode a diverse route mixed with fire roads with cows and cowbells on the sides, paved roads with Tour de France paint leftover from years past, muddy, slippery singletrack and hike-a-bike sections. The end of the cross-country race dumped teams onto a downhill course in Les Gets, and teams had to take their turns among true downhillers in full garb.

The first teams to arrive at the finish in Les Gets were Les Arcs Quiechua 1 (men) and Les Arcs Quechua Trail (men) arriving just seconds apart. Buff Sweden (with New Zealand's Richard and Elina Ussher) was the first mixed (coed) team, arriving in 10th. Team Nike had some navigational issues and arrived 15th, the fourth mixed team.

Team Paparazzi came in 26th after having a handful of mechanicals, but arrived
nonetheless and made it in time to the start of the downhill race.

The downhill course kicked off at 3pm, and was an expert-level route of roughly 2,000 feet of vertical feet. Teams took a gondola to the top of Morzine, had a practice run, and then a timed run. The downhill course was timed like the trail running stage, with individual times combining for overall team
positions.

Christophe Abounnet of French Team Planet XA had the fastest descent, and Nike's Mike Kloser finished 16th. The three Paparazzi boys had a good run, staying upright and making it to the bottom of the slippery run in one piece.

Sitting at the bottom of the run in the rain, I watched riders come in, covered in mud, exhilerated, and heading back up for more. The overall sentiment was that the downhilling was a very different sport than what adventure racers are used to, but most everyone seemed to have a good time, despite the pouring rain.

At the end of the bike day, the top three teams overall are: Koxx Quechua Trail (men, wearing the yellow jerseys), Les Arcs Quechua One (men), Scientex Nutrition-Mercantour (men). Brittish Team Saab Salomon wore the yellow jersey until the downhill bike time trial, then bumped down to fourth but said they had a bloody good time on the downhill.

Of the mixed teams, Sport 200 LaFuma leads (10th overall), followed by Buff Sweden (11th), Nike (12th) and Les Arcs Quechua (13th).

Salomon Crested Butte Women (19th) is winning the women's race, with the French women of Dauphine Libere-Sport 2000 (23rd). The two teams are separated by 16 points.

After a nearly 2-hour drive on windy French roads and through picturesque towns, we arrived in Contamines Montjoie. The mountaineering is currently being changed to a trail running section in the morning at 9am instead of 4am, followed by an altered mountaineering course because of heavy snow and safety.

We'll eat the catered dinner now, then set up our tents in the rain and try to get some rest.

Team Paparazzi is 25th.

The first Saab Salomon Mountain-X Race kicked off here in France earlier this evening with a 6K trail running race from downtown Morzine, up and over a ski run, across wet,rooty,slipperly terrain and down into the town of Les Gets.

Thirty-one teams of three lined up for the race, but new to the sport are the individual running races at the end of most every day in this event ((every day except tomorrow's mountain bike stage). Individual racers' times are added up for team totals. Roc Amador of Spanish Team Salolmon Espana won in 40:47. The first woman was Marguet Florence of Les Arc Quechua 2. At the end of the run, the top-five team totals stood as: Saab Salomon (GBR), Salomon Espana (ESP), Koxx Quechua Trail (FRA), Les Arcs Quechua 1 (FRA) and Nike (USA).

The top American runners were Travis Macy (our Team Paparazzi ringer) and Michael Tobin (Nike). Monique Merrill (Nike) was the first American woman, finishing third overall for women.

The rain showered all of us most of the day during check--in and at the start of the running race, then stopped for a while during the run, only to start again while we were setting up our tents in Les Gets. It might be a wet and soggy week here in the Alps. The weather might be so bad, in fact, that some sections of the race may have to be altered, if not cancelled completiely. Sections in question so far are Wednesday's mountaineering section, the whitewater (due to the river being too high), and the climbing.