PELLY CROSSING After battling severe knee and back pain for much of the Yukon Quest, Whitehorse-area musher Kyla Boivin scratched from the race in Pelly Crossing Thursday.

'It's a damn shame that I scratched, but there it is,' Boivin said as she lay on straw with her dogs in Pelly. 'I can't go back. I can't go back across those hills. I'm not going to make it a second time.

'I just wanted to (finish) really bad. If we were finishing in Whitehorse, I'd be continuing on.'

This year's Quest was the 23-year-old's fourth.

Boivin was suffering from knee pain prior to the Feb. 11 start of the race, but the rough trail between Angel Creek and Mile 101 only made the problem worse.

'I've been pushing myself hard. You can push through the pain. You can hit it like a wall and just give it a shove and you grit your teeth and get through and carry on. But I'm done now.'

Boivin's sciatica nerve, which is one of the body's largest nerves and runs through the lower back and down the back of each leg, now appears to be pinched, she said.

'I can't run, I can't push. I can barely pedal,' she said. 'I've been in mass amounts of pain most of the time. My guts are rotting from swallowing as many pain killers and anti-inflamatories I can stuff down.'

Boivin said she began to seriously consider scratching from the race when she arrived at the Scroggie Creek stop on her southbound trip to the Pelly Crossing checkpoint.

'After I left Scroggie, I did a lot of thinking all the way to Stepping Stone, and I considered and I weighed everything. I came up with reasons why and reasons why not (to scratch),' she said.

Heading into Pelly, she said, she did all her 'crying and whining', but was now OK with her decision to withdraw from the race.

Boivin was the Quest's back runner. Her pain had caused her to stop and take up to 10 or 12 hours' rest at checkpoints for much of the race.

By the time she arrived at Pelly Crossing at 12:40 p.m. Thursday, she was travelling more than 17 hours behind her closest competitor, Alaskan Regina Wycoff.

Boivin said she was concerned if she decided to do the return route to Dawson City, she would be so far behind that if something happened to her, no one would be available to help for quite some time.

Boivin also didn't want to force the nine dogs remaining on her team to literally drag her up and down the nine elevations and the 1,200-metre (4,002-foot) King Solomon's Dome a second time.

She was disappointed she wasn't allowed to cast a vote that decided how the race was going to end. Last Friday afternoon, the mushers who had arrived in Dawson City for their 36-hour layover cast secret ballots to determine if the race would end in Pelly or return to Dawson.

'That kind of ticked me off, because the vote was apparently finish here (Pelly Crossing) or go back to Dawson. And they were out by one vote for finishing here and I would have finished here.'

If Boivin had completed the race, she would have won money from the Quest's $125,000 US purse. Now only 11 mushers will finish the race and share in the reward.

Boivin was using this year's Quest to make some decisions about her dog team for future races. Prior to the race, she was considering getting puppies to train and selling her present team.

But, she said her dogs have more than proved themselves to her this year.

'My dog team is gorgeous. I'm really happy with what they've done. Now I know what they're worth,' she said.

Boivin speculated if it hadn't been for her back, she would have been a top-10 finisher in this year's race.

Her dog team has been raring to go while she's needed to take the extra down time. The rest for the dogs has meant that coming out of the checkpoints has almost been like leaving from the starting line, said Boivin.

'I've got to make sure that my snow hook is tied down right and I've got to hang on for the first five miles,' she said.

Boivin said she's been told repeatedly by race officials and vets that she needs to remember that she's part of the team too. The Quest isn't just about taking care of the dogs, it's also about taking care of yourself, she said.

'I don't want to do permanent damage to myself. I might be to the point I already have.'

Boivin doesn't know what the future holds now. She said she wants to rest and wean herself off the anti-inflamatories she's been taking to see how bad her back really is.

'I'll look after myself and maybe I'll do it again and kick some ass,' she said. 'I do not know what the future holds. All I know that I got here. I'm here. I'm alive. I'm not too badly f---ed, I hope, and I'll find out later.'

Rookie musher Richie Beattie reached the finish line in Dawson at 2:48 p.m. Thursday, making him the rookie of the year.

Wayne Hall, who won the Red Lantern in 2002, completed the race in 10th place at 7:04 a.m. today.

The only remaining team to arrive is rookie Regina Wycoff. She left the final checkpoint in Scroggie Creek at 1:50 this morning.

Alaska's Lance Mackey won his second straight Quest Tuesday night.