Is the risk worth it? One look at the number of repeat customers in adventure races, or the speed with which the Eco-Challenge slots fill up (hundreds of teams in a matter of minutes) will answer that question with a resounding YES. Racers tend to have selective memories. When the pain of a week-long ordeal subsides, when their wounds heal and become battle scars, they conjure the highs over the lows, and they return. The rewards come to them by degrees, subtle realizations that they have accomplished a difficult goal, that they have done something truly meaningful for themselves and their teammates.

And there they are at the starting line of the next race, the pain and anguish and suffering and imminent danger now distant recollections — until it's day three and their hands and feet are bleeding once more, and they are on an exposed sawtooth ridge, winds ripping at 80 knots and freezing rain coming down in biting sheets...

Then, as Yogi Berra once said, "It's déjà  vu all over again."

— Buddy Levy, MountainZone.com Columnist