PETE PENSEYRES : Responding to a Challenge With a Record-Setting Race

When Pete Penseyres’ wife, Joanne, suggested buying bicycles for neighborhood outings 14 years ago, he shrugged off the idea as a fad.

“I was sort of reluctant. A lot of people buy them and don’t ride them,” Penseyres said.

Sunday rides with Joanne and their toddler, Kristi, led to overnight cycling trips and short races.

“His bike was a clunker then. It even squeaked. It drove the other riders crazy,” Joanne remembered.

Last week, Penseyres, 43, zipped down the Atlantic City boardwalk aboard his racing cycle to a light-flooded finish line and a record-setting Race Across AMerica victory.

He had crossed the 3,120-mile route, which began in Huntington Beach, in 8 days, 9 hours and 47 minutes and broken Jonathon Boyer’s 1985 record.

“The best way to describe this race is that it is bicycling’s answer to the Cannonball Run,” he said from his hotel room after the race.

“Except what we do is legal.”

It was the Fallbrook cyclist’s second victory in the transcontinental bicycle marathon. When he won in 1984, he had thought it would be his last competition in the annual race. “He said on national television that he had absolutely no reason to come back,” Joanne Penseyres remembered.

But Penseyres changed his mind.

He had come back to settle a challenge. He said his ’86 victory represented more than personal accomplishment.

After his victory in ‘85, Boyer had made remarks that piqued Penseyres, along with other riders who had competed in Race Across AMerica. Boyer’s plan to participate in this year’s race brought Penseyres back with a mission.

“First of all, he (Boyer) is a professional. He makes a living racing. Here was a chance for me to race a guy I had heard about for 10 years, and I would not be able to compete with him in any other race,” Penseyres said.

But it was Boyer’s disparaging comments about cyclists in the race that “really bothered” Penseyres and encouraged him to ride again this year.

“I did not take it personally, it was a general insult. He (Boyer) said his only competitor was the clock. He said that there are no real athletes in Race Across AMerica.

“I think it is totally unnecessary for someone that good to run other people into the ground,” Penseyres said.

Boyer disappointed Penseyres by deciding not to ride in the race this year. But Penseyres, who had done his training already, only shifted emphasis.

“I wanted to annihilate his record,” he said.

That he did. Averaging 370 miles a day and 17 m.p.h., Penseyres broke Boyer’s record of 9 days, 2 hours and 6 minutes by more than 16 hours.

He pedaled in 22-hour stretches across 13 states, took 90-minute naps before dawn and whittled eight pounds off his already lean, 142-pound frame.

It was a ride that mimicked his effort in the ’84 competition. “I was going faster (this year), but the effort wasn’t there. I wasn’t riding any harder.”

He said new training, a different diet and sophisticated equipment--plus cooperative weather--helped fuel the record-breaking ride.

“We considered every input of new ideas. We didn’t go back trying to repeat what I did in 1984. We started from the ground up and threw away all the ideas I had before. We didn’t leave any stone unturned.

“This year, I worked on speed and had the aerodynamic stuff and the diet.”

An engineer who works as a chemistry supervisor at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, Penseyres trains year-round by riding to his job and back.

He cycles 60 miles round trip from his house atop a 900-foot hill in Fallbrook, down winding country roads and through Camp Pendelton to get to the plant and back five days a week, rain or shine.

Intensive training began two months before the race when he tackled nonstop, 400-mile, 24-hour trips on the weekends, with Joanne, or 16-year-old daughter Kristi, chugging along in their 1956 Volkswagen.

A week before the race, he cycled to San Francisco for a utilities convention, stopped in Ontario on his way back for his 25th high school reunion and trained in Palm Springs for four days to “climatize to the heat.”

“I tried to get as much sleep as I could and then would go out at the hottest part of the day to ride 50 to 60 miles,” he said. The ’84 Race Across AMerica followed a northern route. The ’86 race followed a hotter, southern route through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The weather, however, wasn’t as searing as he had expected. “The temperature didn’t get past 100. This time there were no head winds, and significant tail winds. And there was very little rain. Rain is not a disaster, but it takes additional time. Every time you have to get off the bike to put on or take off rain gear takes time.

“The unique thing about this race is that it is nonstop. The clock is always running. If you have to do something--anything--it counts,” he said.

More than 80% of Penseyres’ diet consisted of a liquid formula mixed by a pharmacist. “It provided all the carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals to keep my blood sugar level consistent,” he said.

“As the race progressed, it became very important. No matter how hot out it was, I could eat it. In the last race I had a lot of trouble. All I could eat was cherries and ice cream. I would have to wait until dark to eat solid food.”

When he craved something to chew on this time around, he sampled some of his sister’s homemade lasagna from a Styrofoam cup or chewed a grilled cheese sandwich.

His family, including wife and daughter, parents Gene and Penny Penseyres of Oceanside and brother Jim from San Juan Capistrano, followed the winning cyclist by van and motor home as part of his 10-member crew.

Joanne Penseyres dubbed her husband’s Raleigh bicycle McBike for its red and yellow paint that happened to match the colors of the race’s last-minute sponsor, McDonald’s Corp. McDonald’s provided the winning purse of $6,500.

The Raleigh, custom built for Penseyres, was made of lighter materials such as graphite and aluminum and had a special disc wheel. Penseyres also had engineered a platform that allowed him to steer with his forearms.

“Body parts get sore. Any place you touch the bike--hands, feet and rear end. But the padded platform kept my hands from getting sore.”

He said his stamina prevailed until the eighth day, when he had to sneak in an extra half-hour’s rest.

“I was so sleepy, and none of the tricks I tried to stay awake would work,” he said. “I lost my sensation of speed.

“That is the major key with this race. A lot of people think all you have to do is keep yourself riding, but you have to keep riding fast. If you are not alert and wide awake, you slow down.

“Being in good physical condition, it’s not the body that needs rest. The only reason you stop is to rest your brain, so that you don’t start to hallucinate.”

His most harrowing time on the trip, he said, was during a “cat and mouse” chase with his closest competitor, Michael Secrest of Flint, Mich.

“We were tracking each other. I was in the lead, and it was consistent for three or four days. Then he gained some time. I rode harder for the next period, and he rode it faster. I rode harder yet, and he gained even more at the next checkpoint. We are talking minutes, but at that time I was going flat out. He gained 214 minutes in a four-hour period. If he continued . . . well, I was plainly worried.”

But on the seventh night of the race and 43 miles behind the leader, Secrest’s bicycle hit a pothole in the road. He flew over the handlebars and broke his collarbone.

Although Penseyres was somewhat relieved, “I also felt sorry and concerned.”

“And, in fact, I would have slowed down considerably at that point, but not only were we racing each other, we were trying to beat last year’s record.”

Secrest wrote an encouraging poem to Penseyres from the Johnson City, Tenn., Medical Center, where he spent the night after his race-ending injury. Secrest and his crew showed up later at a particularly difficult climb about 300 miles shy of the finish line.

“I was struggling up this hill on a parkway, one of the most difficult climbs, and at the top Secrest and his crew were chanting my name,” Penseyres said. “I was really pumped up, it was really emotional.”

Penseyres said this will be his last cross-country cycling marathon. “I accomplished far more than I even hoped for. I don’t have any reason to come back.”

Two days after the race, Penseyres and his wife celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. “I would not have even considered doing something like this (the race) if it wasn’t for her support, and I mean active support. She has gone above and beyond the call of duty,” he said.

“What she wanted most for the anniversary was for me to win this race. We are pretty happy about this.”

Next year, like last year, Penseyres will be on the crew instead of the bicycle, following his brother Jim in the race. Jim Penseyres, a veteran who lost a leg in Vietnam, will compete for a second time in the cross-country race. In 1985, he finished fifth.

But Pete Penseyres, who began cycling as a hobby in 1972, plans to resume it in that capacity. He hopes to take a cross-country trip next summer with Lon Haldeman of Harvard, Ill., this year’s second-place finisher in Race Across AMerica.

A week after the race, Penseyres was back at his hilltop home in Fallbrook, looking tired but content. He ate his second piece of the congratulatory chocolate cake, given to him by his co-workers on his first day back at work.

He had regained the eight pounds lost during the race, and he was back on his 60-mile commute. It was taking 10 minutes longer than usual, though. He said his legs were feeling a little bit heavy.