Lee, a 34-year-old hotel property consultant, saw an Eco-Challenge event on TV in 1997 and contacted the promoters to take an advertised two day training/simulation course.

They responded - three years later - and invited her to compete in Sabah. 'I started having spasms,' she says when she received the e-mail last August. 'When something falls in your lap, you've got to go forward.'

For the past year, Lee, who was born in Hong Kong and raised in the United States, has been single mindedly training. But exactly how does one prepare for tramping through overgrown ancient headhunter paths and swimming among one of the world's greatest concentrations of venomous sea snakes, all while competing against members of the US Navy Seals and French Foreign Legion? Start with a attitude. 'The more tired or exhausted I am, the later at night or the harder it's raining - that's the best time to train,' she says.

Lee ran, cycled, hiked, paddled, swam, and to a lesser extent lifted weights, typically working out twice a week day. On weekends, training sessions could stretch from 12 to 36 hours; sometimes she'd sling a hammock off a trail in Lantau or Sai Kung for a few hours of shut-eye. She'd fill her backpack with more than 10 litres of bottled water and run the 1,333 steps (she counted) at Violet and Sister Hills, known as the Twin Peaks between Parkview and Stanley.

Lee's regimen was largely unscientific - she didn't use a heart rate monitor or have a specific programme that periodically intensified and ebbed in sets or repetitions. An average hike was five to eight hours, four times a week; swims - freestyle and breaststroke - averaged one to two kilometres, three times a week; four-hour bike rides, twice a week; and lunches at the gym, usually spent on the treadmill or VersaClimber. 'There's less chance of injury because I'm not overusing any specific muscle group,' she says.

Navigating an Eco-Challenge also requires a considerable skill set: she honed her rock climbing, rappelling and rope work; compass and navigation skills; learned how to whitewater kayak (outside Kuala Lumpur where she was based for work for five months); and more. 'What people don't understand is that it's not just physical; it's organisational - getting from A to B with what you need for each stage,' she says.

Such high resolve, immutable energy and masochistic inclinations have certainly given Lee a rock-hard physique - glimpsed through a shirt revealing her midriff - and packed on two kilograms in the process. But muscle does weigh more than fat and she says her clothes are now too big in the waist, thighs and bum. Such rigorous training also doesn't need to take diet in to account. 'I can eat anything,' she says, but notes that she now craves more vegetables and fruit.

Lee says she was short and chubby child, with no confidence who didn't even get an idea of what trees and lakes were until her family left Chicago to go on a car-camping vacation. She didn't consider herself athletic and never really played any sports. In the mid-90s she began 'social running'. In 1996 she started taking karate and she is now a brown belt, three levels shy of the highest, black belt level.

'To do a race like this you already have to have a lifestyle of doing sports,' she says. 'And the mindset to experience new things.' She says training was never boring because you can always think about improving your technique. Also, motivation comes from new experiences, like learning how to jumar, the act of ascending a rock climbing rope with an handheld device. 'I could never sustain a workout programme because of vanity.'

There are some aspects of the race for which Lee hasn't quite been able to prepare: possibly the most historically important component of succeeding in the race is team dynamics. Stress overload leads to sniping. Lee's team didn't come together until just weeks ago. In April, two teammates pulled out after a two-week jungle training session. Then in June she conducted extensive interviews of some 30 people; she even tried to cajole her boss. 'I was failing at the one thing I'd given up my personal life for,' she says. 'People were telling me to wait until next year. It's hard to listen to that.'

With characteristic perseverance she managed to assemble a team that set in motion yesterday, the race's start. Hong Kong's other team includes past champions of the Action Asia Challenge, a much shorter but similarly inspired event, and triathletes. 'We're not the fittest, fastest or strongest,' says Lee. 'But we overcame our doubts and fears.'