RACE ACROSS AMERICA : He’s Taking a Different Approach

Jim Penseyres remembers the quiet. The rush of air around him, the agonizing pain and the realization that the lower portion of his left leg was no longer there.

A foot trap--as the name implies--was a brutal combination of plastic explosive and wire designed solely to maim soldiers patrolling unknown territory during the Vietnam War. In Penseyres’ case, it worked to perfection, blowing away his leg 4 1/2 inches below his knee.

“It was really stupid of me,” he said, still chiding himself after more than 22 years. “I had stepped on one just like that the day before on a rice paddy dike, but it didn’t go off.”

On the following day in January, 1968, while walking through a sandy, open stretch of ground, Penseyres’ life changed forever.

Neither for worse, nor better, he will tell you. But it suddenly became different.

“I never saw him depressed,” said Diane Penseyres, his wife.

Penseyres (pronounced Pen-sears) calls himself lucky, even relieved it happened.

In his Marine Corps unit of 200, only two went home without a scratch.

“It could have been a lot worse,” he said. “There’s never been a point where I felt sorry for myself.”

Not long after his return home, Penseyres was fitted with an artificial leg, allowing him to lead a normal life.

He could walk, even break into a slow trot if he wanted. And he could ride a bicycle.

At first, cycling was merely a method of transportation to take him to the beach. He was a passionate surfer before and after Vietnam.

But Penseyres’ interest in cycling quickly evolved. Depending on your point of view, he either became obsessed beyond reason or merely followed the logical steps in becoming a long-distance cyclist.

Monday afternoon, Penseyres, a 43-year-old machinist from San Juan Capistrano, pedaled into Prescott, Ariz., the fourth time station along the 2,922-mile Race Across America route. He had covered 397.8 miles in 1 day, 5 hours and 32 minutes with 2,524.2 miles to go before he reaches the finish line in Savannah, Ga.

This is his fourth RAAM. In 1985, after intently watching his older brother, Pete, win the previous year’s race, Jim decided this was something he’d like to try. Not to raise money, not to draw attention to himself, but to actually ride cross-country. And maybe to beat a few people to the finish line in the process.

So in 1985, Penseyres tried it himself. But poor diet and saddle sores slowed him considerably. He finished in 11 days 23 hours, more than 48 hours behind the winner.

Chucking a diet that seemed to be picked at random, Penseyres turned to a high-calorie, high-carbohydrate drink for the ’87 race. He also tinkered with his bikes and smoothed out his ride, easing the threat of saddle sores.

“We used a shorter crank arm and tilted my (artificial) foot back,” he said. “We took some slow-motion film of me from behind and came up with a happy medium.”

He lowered his time to 11 days 9 hours, finishing in 13th place.

Last year, riding as part of a four-man team that included Pete, he won the human-powered vehicle race in 5 days 1 hour 20 minutes.

Now, he’s riding solo again, trying to lower his time once more. You learn by doing in this race. Often it seems to be extreme, but if it gets you to the finish line faster and in better shape, what the heck.

For example, Jim and Pete developed a harsh way of staying awake at night.

“Get ice cubes and hold them on your eyelids . . . your eyelids snap open,” Jim said. “That works for a while.”

The high-calorie drink, called Ultra Energy, is another innovation. Developed for cancer patients, it looks vaguely like a Coke-flavored Slurpee.

And it tastes like?

“Pete almost threw up the first time he tasted it,” Jim said.

But it works. Without the drink in the 1985 race, Penseyres lost 10 pounds. With the drink in ‘87, he lost only a pound.

When he’s not racing cross-country, Penseyres eats salads and bran muffins and cookies and ice cream, up to 6,000 calories a day to combat the effects of long-distance training.

“My lunch usually takes up the bottom shelf in the fridge at work,” he said.

Most days, Penseyres rides 15 miles from his home in San Juan Capistrano to San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant, where he works. He then goes 15 miles farther south, before turning back to the plant to end his morning ride. After a quick shower, Penseyres begins working.

After his eight-hour shift, he rides 15 miles south again before turning for home. Sometimes he adds a longer loop for extra mileage.

On some weekends, Penseyres, his brother and a few other riders meet for longer rides. Beginning Friday after work, the group will head into the desert for a trip around the Salton Sea. Often, they ride without sleeping and don’t return until Sunday afternoon.

For the most part, Penseyres cycles like any other rider. He wears a normal shoe and sock on his artificial leg.

Unlike others, however, accidents can create unusual results.

One evening when Penseyres was riding home from work on Pacific Coast Highway, a car suddenly pulled out in front of him. Faced with swerving into traffic or hitting the brakes and taking his chances, Penseyres squeezed his brakes as hard as he could and hoped for the best.

The brakes held, a little too strong as it turned out, throwing him over the handle bars and into the street. His leg, still held tight by the toe-clip, remained on the bike.

Penseyres clearly recalls the feeling of being in the street with cars all around him, the teen-age passenger getting out off the offending car, covering his face with his hand and moaning softly, “Oh my God.”

“He’d seen my leg still attached to the bike and thought it was real,” Penseyres said, breaking into a laugh.

“The driver came over and said, ‘Is there anything I can do?’ I said, ‘You can bring my leg over here so I can get out of the street. I’ll never forget, he carried it like it was my own flesh.”

Penseyres laughed again.

It’s a natural response. The Penseyres family has never treated Jim’s accident like a tragedy. His handicap, a word that doesn’t quite seem to fit though Penseyres occasionally uses it himself, is part of the family routine.

He only takes his leg off when he sleeps and when he showers.

“For years our kids (Shawna, 17, and Kyle, 15) used to hop to the bathroom from their beds,” Diane said. “That’s the way their father did it. They thought that’s the way you did it.”

Sometimes friends at work will take his leg and hide it while Jim showers after his morning ride. It’s all in fun. Penseyres’ co-workers have gained an appreciation for his long-distance madness.

“I’ve always looked at it as another challenge,” Penseyres said of living with an artificial leg. “Whether I have a disability or not, I set challenges.

“I still haven’t grasped the whole situation. I never seem to see the whole picture. I don’t see the East Coast. I just see state line to state line.”