Goyet and Teammate in Borneo [click] Photo: Nathan Bilow

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How have you been training for Ecuador?
For training, what I do, and again I'm not sure that's the standard training, but [here's] what we do as a team and what I do individually.

As a team we do a lot of weekends together. This year it has been a lot of mountain things, especially this summer. In the winter, I do practice a lot of different sports, but starting in March or April we start training really with the Raid as an objective. We've been doing quite a few weekends together, mountaineering here and there. Since this year we are going up to 6,000 meters, we've tried to do quite a few 4,000 meters here in the Alps. That means with a glacier element, an altitude element, in the training.

We would set off on Saturday morning, hiking up to a refuge, we call it, or cabin up in the mountains, spending the night there, try to acclimatize to altitude, and the next day would go up and climb one of the summits. This, again, to train for glacier, for technique on glacier, and alpine techniques, and also to get used to the altitude.

We've done a few specialized trainings as well, like river rafting, canoeing. This weekend it was sea kayaking I just came back from. A few horse riding weekends...so we try to focus our weekends on the thematic techniques for the Raid. Throughout the week, what I do, I do between one and two hours of training every day and I try to do a bit of endurance and running or bicycling, a bit of muscular exercise as well, and that I do in a gym. So I try to do quite a bit of the cardio exercises in addition to some muscular, pumping iron and whatever one does with weights and things. So it's been a mixture of those two, basically endurance, with running, jogging, biking, a bit of swimming or some muscular exercises.

If I don't do things with the team, I then do things by myself, either with... I belong to a few clubs here, an alpine club. Either with some of those clubs or some friends, we go up in the mountains and do less of an intensive weekend, but still some mountaineering.

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How many days does it take to cover 500 kilometers with such a huge elevation gain?
They have a maximum of about 10, I don't know if it's 10 or eleven days this year. We would call that, between eight to 10 days, yes, that would be the length of the race. I've never been up to 6,000 meters. The French Alps don't go that high. I've been to the Mont Blanc, which is 4,808, which is the highest point in Europe. That's as far as I've gone, so that's going to be a bit different.

They tell us here in the Raid that the 6,000 meters in Ecuador is a bit similar to the 4,800 of the Mont Blanc here because of the latitude difference. I don't know. We'll see, but still, 6,000 meters is a hell of a way to go.

We don't know how the race is going to be structured. It's possible that we start maybe at 4,000 meters, go up to 6,000, and then all the way down to the coast and finish with the sea kayaking. Or it may be the other way around. We're not sure. The exact details of the race are given to us just the day before we leave for the competition — I mean just before we leave for the race, actually. So we don't know up until that date. But definitely, we'll have to go at some point from 6,000 to zero, from zero to six, I mean, one way or the other. So there'll be a big amplitude in the altitude.

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What does it take to compete in the Raid and what type of personalities do best, i.e. really driven people, or more easy going?
I think physically, endurance is the key word. You have to stick in there for that seven to 10 days, so endurance is the key. I mean, people can be excellent in triathlon or something but may not do it in 10 days. It's a slow process.

I find the mountain people, the mountaineer people, a lot more acclimatized to that type of race than maybe triathletes just because they're used to providing effort over a long time, over a long period, with hard conditions, with not much sleep, food inadequate or something. To me, maybe the mountaineering people are the best type for endurance, this kind of profile for the physical side of it.

For the mental side of it, to me, you need very balanced people, very calm and mature, with a very good sense of balance of judging how important things are and taking it easy, taking it on the light side, able to communicate, very good communicator, and social people, able to participate in a team. Very humble people; people boasting around and all the confidence, usually you don't get very far. So very humble people, but still very determined, a lot of determination, a lot of will, very strong willpower and, yes, very strong determination to get to the end.

I've seen people with broken arms or with really very difficult injuries still finishing the race, and I've seen people with a few blisters or something just giving up after two days. So it really depends on how strong your motivation and your determination is also.

That's individually, but then the personality of each of the individuals really make up the team as well. So you can see from the team if it's socially well structured, if it sticks together, if it helps each other, that's very helpful as well. If you have a bunch of disassociated individuals that don't really glue together, then again, it makes things more difficult. If you have a team that's really a team: that sticks together; that helps each other; and you see coming together; you see doing things together; you see supporting each other; you see weaknesses being overcome by the general strength of the team; then that helps and that's a factor to getting to the end — maybe not to winning, but at least to getting to the end. Winning is, I would think, a bit of all this and maybe exponentially, and very strong determination.

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How old are you?
I'm 35. It's not that young. It's about an average, I would think. I think for the Raid Gauloises people, the average must be around 35. It must be around there. It's not so young. I mean, you have a few young teams, but usually they're more between 30- and 40-years-old. That's usually the average. So it requires a lot of endurance, a lot of maturity in managing the race. Usually people are between 30 and 40, so I'm not unusual. I think I'm now in the average. I was a bit young before. Now I'm mature enough to be in the average.

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What other Raid Gauloises have you participated in?
The first one I did is the Raid number two, actually, the one in Costa Rica in 1990. Then I was with the youngest team in the Raid. We were young and my team members were both really young as well, but we did okay. We did pretty good. That was in Costa Rica. Then I went on to New Caledonia, where we finished, just three of us. Two people, they gave up. You have to pass the finish line with the five of you together. If one of the team members give up, abandon, for whatever reason, be it a physical injury or just mental shock or just a feeling of you don't want to go on... For whatever reason, if one abandons, then the whole team is disqualified. You are allowed to continue the race just for the fun of it, but you're not qualified in the final listing. That was New Caledonia. Then I went to Madagascar, and Madagascar only two of us finished. It was even worse. Then I was in Borneo, and the five of us finished. And that's it. That's four of them.

Last year was in South Africa, but I was in the organization team, so it was a bit different. I was outside looking at the competitors. It was a different perspective. It was pretty difficult, actually, at the starting line. I cried. I was crying. Everybody was happy and jumping up and down, and I was crying. It was too much to see them go, and I wished I had been with them. It was a bit difficult. But then, of course, you get into the rhythm of the course and of the race, and in the logistics side of it there are so many things to take care of that you forget about it. And it's good, actually, to see a different side of it, to see the assistance side of it, to see the organization side of it. When you compete, you don't realize everything that goes on besides it. You're just so focused on putting one foot after the other that you don't really understand and realize that whole thing that goes on besides it, and the nightmares that some of the assistance team and some of the organization go through to make sure that the whole logistics is there.

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You are the only woman on your team. How did you and your team members get together for this race?
I am the only woman at this point. There's four guys and one woman. I was lucky to be called upon, actually. They found me. As you know, there is one woman minimum per team, and this is a requirement. There can be more than one, but often, for the majority of the teams, there usually is only one. And they were looking for somebody, and one of my team members now, he's been competing a few times as well, so he called me up and asked me if I was free and available and would like to join him and his team in this race. So they found me, so I was lucky enough to be in that position.

Now the team leader, he's the one who built the team together. He's the only one besides me who's done it. He's done it two or three times, I believe. The other members he chose basically not only on the physical elements and physical conditions of the people, but mostly on how to deal with them socially, how the individual personality is about, how easy-going they are, how endurant they are, both physically and mentally, and how they cope with different situations. So it's been a mixture of those two. I know he's been looking at those two elements when selecting people.

It's almost a company team in the sense that we're sponsored by Peugeot, the French car company. They're kind of like the godfather of the team, and through their support we've managed to get funding from a lot of their suppliers and partners in the industry.

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Are you ready?
Now I'm to that point where I'm being a bit careful also, because I don't want to run the risk of having a twist in my ankle or something. So now we are at that stage where we're trying to be careful — still training, but trying to be careful what we do. I don't want to slip into a crevasse or anything this weekend and have some back injury or something. So we're getting to that stage where now we have to be careful. We have to basically look at our body a bit and try to patch everything that's going a bit strange.

Mentally, yes, I think now we're ready. I think I'm ready. I'm definitely ready for it to start now. I think I'm okay physically. I've done what I could do with the life I have, and mentally, it's a bit different for me because I've done it a few times before, so I don't have this kind of anxiety that some other people may have when they just start.

I remember the first one was a bit like jumping off an airplane with a parachute. You're kind of frightened, but at the same time… You're kind of frightened because you don't know what's going to happen and you know it's going to be scary, but at the same time you're not really sure what's going to happen, so that kind of decreases your fright. I don't know if you see what I mean, but now that I've jumped and I know how it is, I know how difficult it can be, but at the same time I know I've done it before so I think I can do it. I don't know. It's a bit like I'm maybe more confident than somebody who's not done it at all... doesn't mean that I'm going to finish, but maybe I'm more confident that I can do it. Whereas when you do it the first time, you don't even know whether you'll be able to make it to the end.