In High Gear : Sheila Cluff, owner of the Oaks at Ojai, leads fitness classes, runs, lectures, consults. She’s known as a woman who never slows down.

Swooping through the post-dawn quiet of downtown Ojai, a slight figure in a dazzlingly white jumpsuit power-strides down the sidewalk, her shoulder-length blond hair bouncing, a train of 40 fitness pilgrims streaming out behind her.

Sheila Cluff does not pause for the traffic on Ojai Avenue--it halts for her. And it stays halted while she bounds across, trailed by her multi-paced retinue in downscale sweat togs. They disappear down a side street like leaves in the wind. The high-gear walk is a Saturday ritual for the owner of the Oaks at Ojai. Except when she leads the more rugged mountain hike.

When Cluff returns to the starting point, the sprawling mission-style health spa, she shrugs off the top of her outfit to reveal a taut and tanned upper body in a gold-spangled exercise suit. There’s a stretch class to lead before breakfast.

Cluff is not one to gather moss, either on the business ladder or the trail. Her work for the Oaks takes up an estimated 60 hours a week and includes leading fitness cruises, consulting for European spas, or lecturing to such audiences as Cornell University’s prestigious hotel management school. She fits in 20 miles of running and has energy left to think up a rash of new promotional deals.

The Oaks was her first big success.

“I knew I was going to do a spa, and I decided it had to be in Ojai,” she says, “Ojai is magical, mystical, holistic--it’s got artists, its got creative spirit.”

Some Ojaians might return the compliment. The Oaks and its holding company, Fitness Inc., make up the town’s fourth largest private employer with 110 on the payroll, and its guests are notorious shoppers. Several local merchants call the desk to ask how many will be in residence before they schedule their weekend staffs.

It took only three years for Cluff and her husband, Don, to realize a profit when they took over the hotel in 1976. The business, converted from a 1920s tourist hotel, was sinking, and the couple borrowed $300,000 to keep it viable while they pared staff and changed the marketing.

It was, Cluff says, the scariest time of her life. She had a BS in physical education and years of organizing private fitness classes under her stretch belt, but administrative tasks were new. Even though Don Cluff kept his full-time job with Proctor & Gamble, before they turned the spa around, they were down to their last $10,000.

“I taught everything,” Cluff says. “The kids scrubbed the pool. My son was the dishwasher, my youngest daughter (then about 9) cleaned the pool furniture. I got down to 85 pounds.”

Nevertheless, as soon as profits started coming in, Sheila Cluff found another losing hotel in Palm Springs, and went for it.

That one took seven years to show a profit. She found that West Coast dwellers who regularly trek to Ojai don’t seem enchanted by the desert. She had to learn to woo travelers from the East Coast to fill The Palms at Palm Springs.

In those days, Cluff says, her work weeks sometimes stretched into 80 hours. But luckily, she had good training. As a child growing up in Ottawa, Canada, she had been serious about ice skating.

“You get up at 4 or 5 in the morning when it’s 30 below zero, practice for a couple of hours when it’s 5 below, and then get into school clothes and go to school,” she says.

That sort of dedication got her into competition in the Canadian Nationals and, after high school, a job touring with Sonja Henie’s Hollywood Ice Revue.

At 55, Sheila Cluff can outdistance women half her age.

Elizabeth Kinney, who is half her age, confirms this. As fitness director for the Oaks, Kinney leads most of the high-impact aerobics there.

“I can never keep up with her stamina,” Kinney says. “She’s beyond me. She might have just done a 10K run and won--she usually always wins--and she’s still going, she’s still excited. She is always up.”

And her influence extends beyond fitness regimes. She chose the coral and teal decor that runs throughout the Oaks-from the wallpaper, china and pool umbrellas to the pale coral toilet paper (carefully checked for ecologically correct dye). She decided to forget the elite crowd that frequents the typical spa and go for the middle-income group. And it is Cluff who takes the time to get to know the guests and to listen to their problems.

“I tell them when they are a little depressed, when they are getting a divorce, ‘Turn to fitness, get those endorphins going.’ Sometimes I feel like a psychologist,” she says.

Don Cluff, former college gymnast and chief executive officer of Fitness, Inc. calls his wife “a caring kind of person, intuitive. She somehow has the intuitive capability of being able to sense a whole group.”

One of those groups is her family. The Cluffs have been married for 31 years and have raised four children, two of whom have joined the business. According to Don Cluff, it hasn’t always been easy for the children to share their mother with a business that never closes and often summons her at home.

“She has a good business sense, but she is very spontaneous,” he says. “She doesn’t take the time (to analyze details) because she is so high energy and so enthusiastic. There’s sort of a joke around here: Sheila creates, and I clean up after her. There’s some truth in the matter.”

Whatever the formula is, it seems to be working.

Sheila Cluff is successful enough to belong to the Committee of 200, a club for women whose businesses gross more than $10 million a year. She has published two books, “Aerobic Body Contouring” and “The Ultimate Recipe For Fitness,” co-authored with Eleanor Brown. And she has produced a video with actress Shirley Jones, “Secrets of the Stars.”

Cluff believes appearance is a runner-up in importance to health. She regularly schedules facials and “body scrubs” and readily admits to having had cosmetic surgery for what she calls “tired eyes,” saying she cannot afford to look tired on television.

In spite of her eyes’ failure to keep up with her, she seems in no danger of slowing down. She is working out plans to attract more men to her spas, and in her spare time she wants to put out a line of clothing.

She also has a long-term goal: “I would like to think,” she says, “when I reach the 80s that someone from a distance would guess that I am in my 60s.”

UP CLOSES / HEILA CLUFF

Through the eyes of those close to her . . .

Elizabeth Kinney, employee: “All these years I have tried to get her to relax and let her hair down. Her ‘on stage’ is real. It’s not like putting on a face . . . there is no ‘off stage.’ ”

Shirley Jones, actress, business collaborator: “She can stay up all night discoing and run five miles in the morning and feel great. I thought, ‘Maybe she is just showing off for people,’ but I realized it’s her.”

Rhona Sacks, repeat client: “She gives off a tremendous amount of energy. . . . I hate what she looks like.”

Marty Ingels, actor and friend: “She’s a combination of Jackie Kennedy and Tinker Bell.”