In the world of sport, Greg and Denise McHale have pretty much seen it all.

Avid runners, cyclists and just all-around great athletes, the husband and wife duo have been adventure racing for the past few years, winning the 2004 Fulda Challenge under the Team Canada banner.

Denise is also a well-known marathon runner while Greg, who is an RCMP officer, recently placed second with teammate Stephen Mooney in the 2005 Yukon River Quest.

But standing on the podium never gets old for the McHales and this past weekend, they were back where they've become used to belonging, picking up the silver medal in a Sea 2 Summit adventure race in B.C.

'This was our first time going to this race, but it's been going on for 10 years,' said Denise in an interview this morning, back home in Whitehorse. 'It's the longest running adventure race in Canada.

'We've wanted to go for quite a few years, but it just never worked out for timing.'

This year, the timing was perfect, as the McHales partnered with Yukon Tourism on their Gateways program. Tourism officials were in Vancouver to promote their new contest, 'Four Days, Four Friends, Four Ways.'

'So they had a booth down there and they sponsored us in the race,' said Denise, adding Air North also helped out with the travel. 'It was great.'

The two-day event started in North Vancouver, at Deep Cove, then racers paddled 23 kilometres through Indian Arm, biked and trekked through the Indian River Valley and Mamquam River Valley to Squamish, where teams spent the night.

On Day 2, the crews biked more than 70 km, followed by an 18 km run into Whistler.

'It was a really good course, it was beautiful,' said Denise. 'It was a fun format too, fast and furious.

'(The running portion) was a great way to end the race. After all that biking, we were like, Yay, we get to run.''

Denise said she and Greg are happy with their race, finishing second in the two-person coed division behind a team that featured one of the best woman mountain bikers in North America in Wendy Sims.

'We had a really good race. Unfortunately, more than half of the race was biking. We beat them in the paddling and running, but she was just a really good biker.'

The McHales also raced against some all-male two-person teams, which Denise said was tough, but a good experience. One-hundred and thirty teams were entered in the race, in solo, two-person and four-person divisions.

Next up for the McHales are the world adventure racing championships in New Zealand in November. The best 65 teams from all over the world will compete and Denise said they hope to finish within the top ten.

'It's hard to say, because it's a huge field. We were seventh at the championships last year, when they were held in Newfoundland. But there are a lot more teams this year and it's a tougher field.

'A lot of the local New Zealand teams are probably really good but just don't get out to North America and they'll have the hometown advantage.'

After the world championships, Denise said the duo will take a little break from racing and reevaluate their plans for next year. Asked if she was thinking about entering the 2006 Yukon River Quest, now that Greg has done it, she laughed.

'That's a lot of pain.'

She said Greg may not enter it next year either, calling it 'a very tough race.

'Greg really felt like he took a long time to come back from that, because he had to cut back on the biking and running when he was training for the River Quest,' she said, adding his hamstrings were also very sore after the River Quest, so it took some time for him to get back into everything else.

'With adventure racing, you can't really focus on just one discipline, you have to do them all.'