Zoe Roy smiles as she crosses the finish line to win the elite women's division of the SELCO Pole Pedal Paddle on Saturday in Bend.

Zoe Roy said the last 1-mile run was “endless,” but the throngs of spectators lining the Deschutes River in Bend’s Old Mill District helped propel her to the finish line.

When she crossed that line on Saturday, finishing a run leg that was twice as long as in previous years, Roy made history by becoming the first woman to win five straight Pole Pedal Paddle races.

Roy, 34 and of Bend, won the elite women’s PPP in 2 hours, 10 minutes, 26 seconds. Bend’s Kayla Kobelin finished second in 2:20:36, and Grace Perkins, also of Bend, finished third in 2:25:27.

Roy broke the record of Bend’s Suzanne King, a former Olympic cross-country skier who won the PPP race each year from 2004 to 2007. “It’s kind of fun,” Roy said of her record title. “I’ll have to break it to Suzanne.”

Roy said her race went according to plan, even with heavy rain and winds at Mt. Bachelor ski area for the alpine and nordic ski stages.

“I was in the front from the start,” Roy said. “I just made sure each leg was consistent. My transitions went well. I didn’t really have any hiccup, which is lucky, because there’s a lot of places where hiccups can happen.”

Roy said it’s “way too soon” to think about adding to her streak next year, but she seems in a position to keep it going.

Kobelin, meanwhile, was a first-time PPP racer who found out the hard way that it pays to have a support crew and to plan ahead.

“It was a logistical nightmare,” said Kobelin, a professional triathlete who moved to Bend from Seattle three years ago. “I didn’t have anybody helping me, so I had to figure out where to drop stuff off the night before. It was pissing rain and it was so windy. I ran into the store beforehand to buy a pair of gloves because my ski gloves got so wet.”

Still, the PPP has a way of making it fun for the racers, even in horrid conditions.

“It was so much fun,” Kobelin said. “I’ve never smiled through so much pain before.”

Kobelin said she had not nordic skied in three months and she borrowed a coworker’s kayak. Her favorite stage was the 22-mile bike ride from Bachelor to Bend, as most of the elite racers had a tailwind for the fast, mostly downhill ride.

“As cold as it was, it’s fun to go really, really fast and know that you’re coming down to warmer weather and hopefully sunshine, which we did,” Kobelin said. “It’s perfect weather down here.”

Kobelin said she plans to race the PPP again, and be more prepared with a real race kayak and a support crew.

“I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into,” she said. “Ignorance is bliss, and I made that work for me.”