Competitors know that it will begin at Mount Bachelor at 6 on Saturday morning and end sometime on Sunday afternoon at the Les Schwab Amphitheater in Bend. It could take them as few as 18 hours or as many as 36 (time totals represent the amount of time teams are competing on the course. The clock stops when teams transition at checkpoints and when they reach Saturday’s night camp).

Teams competing in the X-Adventure Raid race in Central Oregon this weekend may get eight hours of sleep on Saturday night, or possibly just a wink or two.

Fifty-six teams from around the globe will trek, mountain bike, snowshoe, canoe, in-line skate and navigate their way over 145 miles of terrain and endure 11,200 feet of elevation gain as they traverse the Deschutes National Forest.

More than half the teams competing in the Raid this weekend are from the U.S., and six teams are based in Central Oregon.

Patrick Harper is the course designer for this third race in the 2005 series of four Raid World Cup events.

Harper, a member of Australia-based team Montrail-Revo, was commissioned by Raid for the second year to challenge competitors at the Central Oregon adventure race.

The former Bend resident, who now lives in McCall, Idaho, says the goal of designing a good adventure-race course is to make it exciting.

”They need to flow together well and be challenging,” says Harper, who has been designing courses for about four years. ”It (Raid) is more speed-oriented and less navigation. A lot of it has to do with time, because you only have two days of racing and they want it to be fast.”

In the adventure racing world, the Raid series races are considered shorter than some of the more expedition-style races that run continuously over several days. Also in Raid events, competitors are allowed to use a global positioning system (GPS) to navigate rather than the more conventional map and compass.

Harper says it is often challenging to design a wholly unique course for an event held a second time in the same location.

But, he adds, competitors can expect to encounter all new terrain this year.

”It’s a totally different course,” says the designer. ”There are no ropes this year, but there’s quite a bit of biking. I think they’ll find the navigating will be harder.”

In 2004, Harper sent teams rappelling across Tumalo Falls. He says this year he couldn’t find a good spot to include a rope challenge and didn’t want to use the Tumalo site a second time.

Navigation isn’t emphasized in Raid races as much as in other adventures races, according to Harper, although he adds that in designing the Central Oregon course for this year he tried to challenge competitors’ ability to plot their way along the route.

”There are a couple places where you (competitors) could take a different route, and choosing that is difficult,” he says. ”There are three or four different ways to get from one checkpoint or another, and one is generally fastest and it’s not always obvious.”

Will there be a hometown advantage for the Central Oregon teams? Not according to Harper.

”None of the locals have even been out on this terrain,” he says. ”We try to choose stuff that people don’t go on very often.”

For teams like Paul Schneider’s BOAR (Battered Ol’ Adventure Racers) squad, that de-emphasis on navigation is a disadvantage.

And Schneider chuckles when he adds that his team learned how to operate a GPS for the first time on Wednesday.

”The more challenging a checkpoint is to find, the better we do,” says Schneider, who lives in Sisters. ”We’re not a fast team, but we have good endurance.”

He predicts that his team will get little sleep on Saturday night, noting that BOAR will probably arrive at camp around 4 or 5 in the morning.

With 15 to 25 pounds of gear on their backs, and many miles to travel with critical decisions to be made at each juncture (and some of those in the dark of night), the racers must ask not only their bodies to perform, but their minds as well.

”A lot of it is a mental game,” says Schneider, ”to continue on and not give up.”

Race organizers expect that the competition to cross the finish line first will be fierce and will include top U.S. teams Nike Balance Bar and Golite-Timberland.

The European teams Saab Salomon of Great Britain, and Les Arcs-Quechua, Atout Majeur Eider and Aigle Sybelles, all of France, are expected to be in a tight race to capture points as well.

Coming off a victory at the second World Cup race in Sweden, Les-Arcs Quechua is likely to be top contender for the win. Salomon Suisse, the top finisher of the 2004 Raid race in Central Oregon, will also be in the hunt for the top prize.

Teams earn points based on how well they finish at each of the four races in the Raid World Cup series. The teams with the highest overall ranking from eight geographic zones qualify for the Raid World Championships held in Switzerland in September.

Heather Clark can be reached at 541-383-0352 or at hclark@bendbulletin.com.