No one ever said adventure racing was risk-free. Let's face it, adrenaline junkies crave life on the fringe, and if adventure racing was entirely pedestrian, racers would be paragliding or bungee jumping or crocodile wrestling instead. They gotta have it. As Gerard Fusil once said, explaining why people choose to do adventure races, "They want to know extremity, because there is life in risk, and nobility in the breach."

It is a testament to the race organizations that there haven't been more injuries, or even some disasters, in big-time adventure races. Sure, there is the odd broken limb, dislocated joint, and the occasional punctured lung (at this year's Eco-Challenge a competitor fell off his mountain bike, impaled through his thorax by a tree branch). All serious enough, but such maladies occur in Pop Warner football games and on weekend mountain bike rides, too. Living through the danger is half the fun...