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It's all uphill from here.
With just one race remaining in the seven-day, eight-stage Sadler's Alaska Challenge, competition ends today with what promises to be the sternest test yet for a record field of handcycle and wheelchair racers. Racers will tap whatever energy they have left for the 30-mile Hatcher Pass road race, the third mountain pass they've taken on since racing began Monday in Seward. Their tour of Alaska is likely to end on an excruciating note -- today's race begins in Sutton and goes about 14 miles on hilly terrain before turning onto Fishhook Road and beginning an epic climb. In the final 16 miles, they'll gain more than 3,000 feet in elevation as they push themselves to the Independence Mine parking lot at the top of the 3,500-foot pass. The race ends there, the first mountain-top finish in race's 25-year history. Spectators who want to see the finish should be at the parking lot by 8 a.m., race officials said, even though a finisher isn't expected for an hour or two after that. "We don't want traffic to impact the race," co-race director Heather Plucinski said. After climbing Thompson Pass on Friday, competitors raced 54 miles from Wrangell-St. Elias National Park headquarters to Lake Louise on Saturday. They got a much-welcomed break from the rain that's followed them since Monday -- "Everybody is smiling today because it's sunny," Plucinski said -- but that was the only break some of them got. Norbert Mosandl of Germany was taken to the clinic in Glennallen after crashing on the Glenn Highway not far from the turnoff to Lake Louise. He needed some stitches and suffered some bumps, bruises and road rash, but he didn't break any bones, said race official Beth Edmands. Edmands said the accident happened at a section of road that has been chip-sealed. Between Mosandl's speed and the change in surface from regular pavement to chip seal, the handcyclist took a bad spill. Chicago racer James Lilly, meanwhile, scratched for the second day in a row, mostly because of cumulative fatigue from the long week, Edmands said. "This is the most rainy race we've ever had, and it really, really takes a toll," she said. It's especially difficult for those in wheelchairs like Lilly -- one of just three racers out of 36 who are in chairs, not handcycles. Cranking a handcycle is faster, more efficient and most would say easier than pushing a wheelchair. "For one thing," Edmands said, "they don't have gears. It's a lot harder." By the time racers reach Independence Mine today, they'll have raced 223 miles, traveled past five glaciers and gone over three mountain passes during a journey that's taken them to Seward, Hope, Girdwood, Cordova, Valdez, Lake Louise and Hatcher Pass. And if they were lucky, they even saw a little bit of Alaska -- although until Saturday, mostly all they saw was rain. "They're all happy," Plucinski said after the first race held under blue skies all week. "This is why you come to Alaska. Until today they haven't seen any views except raindrops coming off their helmets and a wet road ahead of them."