The hypothetical votes are in and have been tallied. The results, unofficial as they are, are just as the initial polling suggested: Jeremy Kuhlen is officially the "toughest man in Richmond." Interestingly, he also received a few write-in votes for "craziest man in Richmond."

How did he make his case to the voters? The local financial planner recently completed America's toughest adventure race - Primal Quest, held this year in Montana's backcountry. Kuhlen's team, Goals ARA, finished 12th, eight days after they started, out of more than 50 teams that began the race.

The numbers are staggering: Finishers had to trek, mountain bike, paddle, riverboard, kayak and rock climb 550 miles. They gained and lost 100,000 feet of elevation. Kuhlen lost 15 pounds in the eight days. He and his teammates did all this while sleeping a total of maybe 20-25 hours.

It seems the voters have the right man.

Now back in Richmond, Kuhlen took the time to fill me in on the race that bills itself as the "World's Most Challenging Human Endurance Competition."

Q. You spent eight days and nights in Big Sky country. Any good wildlife sightings?

A. One team saw four black bears and a grizzly. We didn't see any, but we saw tons of tracks, lots of bear tracks and mountain lion tracks. Huge tracks. Bigger than your hand . . . We also saw tons of moose, elk, deer. At every turn it was like living National Geographic.

Q. These racecourses are always subject to change based on weather. Did Mother Nature cooperate?

A. They had to eliminate an 80-mile flatwater paddle on the Yellowstone River. So that basically turned the whole thing into a trekking and biking type of course. We were on our feet so much - over 200 plus miles on our feet. The total [distance] was 550 miles, and only 35 were on water.

Q. They eliminated the paddle section because the water was too high?

A. The Gallatin and Yellowstone rivers were where the water sections were and they were both at flood levels [from snow melt]. I think I heard they were the highest they've been since 1940. It was intense. They were just raging.

Q. Was that the scariest part of the race?

A. You had to be on your game [on the rivers] . . . but the [climbing] section was pretty nuts. It was 1,200 feet long. You were on these thin rock spires just trying to navigate around these while it's pitch black at midnight. It took us six to eight hours to finish the ropes section. Wiped out, no water, on the rock face.

Q. You raced Primal Quest in Utah two years ago and have completed other expedition-length races. Was this one the most difficult?

A. It was the hardest one I've done to date just because of the remoteness and the challenging nature of really the Montana landscape. The mountains were gigantic, the rivers were raging, the scree fields, the snowfields. The diversity of terrain was pretty amazing.

There were plenty of moments where you're out there thinking, "What am I doing out here?" This course was the most remote challenging course that I've been on just in terms of being in the backcountry, the weather conditions we experienced and just the terrain of Montana.

Q. When you tell people about this race, how many think you're crazy?

A. [Adventure racing] is really just to see how far you can push yourself. There are different types of people in the world. They do triathlons or mountain bike races or whatever to see how far they can push their bodies. For some people, that's what gets them going. They like the adrenalin and what that does for you.

You might not have enjoyed it during the race, but when you look back and you say, 'Man I just did this eight-day race that was 500-plus miles.' . . . that's a pretty good accomplishment and makes you feel good about yourself. In one of these races, you kind of go through all the emotions that someone would experience in a year or maybe even a lifetime."