Electrifying Is One Way to Describe Their Adventure

The plan, Jeff Day and Cam Douglass thought, seemed simple enough:

Run from Oceanside to Jacksonville, Fla. See the sights. Get in shape. Escape from mom, dad and summer school.

Getting zapped by an electrical fence--one of many mishaps--wasn’t exactly on their itinerary.

“We had no idea what we were getting into,” Day says.

“Absolutely zero,” says Douglass.

But get into it they did, 15 years ago Friday to be exact. On June 19, 1977, the track standouts from Corona del Mar High School stood ankle-deep in the Oceanside surf and set off on a cross-country trek they would never forget.

These days, Douglass, 32, a car dealer, and Day, 34, owner of an indoor plant maintenance business, can’t help but laugh at the memories.

Unlike the Trans America Footrace, the 64-day stage race beginning Saturday in Huntington Beach, Douglass’ and Day’s transcontinental adventure actually amounted to only half a cross-country trip each.

Every morning and night, one of the boys would start running, while the other would drive their camper van approximately 22 miles ahead. He’d then park the van, take out the moped that was kept inside, and ride it back 11 miles. When the runner reached the 11-mile point, the two would switch places.

“People would say, ‘Didn’t you fudge? Didn’t you cheat?’ ” Douglass says. “Why would we? We weren’t doing this for anyone else but us.”

But plenty of people were interested. Newspapers chronicled their journey. Townspeople took them in. And truckers kept tabs on them with CB radios.

“You can imagine driving out in the middle of nowhere, seeing some kid running down the highway,” Day says. “We had a CB in our van. At night we’d hear them say, ‘Did you see those kids running out there today?’ We even had our own handle--’The California Kids.’ ”

Not everyone, or everything, was so friendly. Dogs chased them by the dozen. Rattlesnakes hissed as they hopped over them. And some people could be downright nasty.

Going through New Mexico, Douglass was driving alongside Day on the moped when a carload of apparently drunken men began taunting them.

“I said, ‘If they turn around, let’s dart through the desert,’ ” Day said. “They did, and we bolted.”

They never saw the barbed-wire fence, electric at that. Although Douglass escaped unscratched, Day got a gash across his leg--he still has the scar--and a serious bout of disorientation.

“And my hair has never been the same,” he said.

For the most part, though, it was a fun-filled--though generally unplanned--journey. Before they started, Douglass and Day laid a map of the United States on the floor.

“We were like, ‘Let’s see, this looks like the shortest way,’ and we’d draw a felt line from here to there,” Douglass says. “We didn’t know that a bridge would be out when we got there.”

Mostly, though, the surprises were pleasant.

“We had just finished running out in Anza-Borrego,” Day says. “It’s like 120 degrees, and I’m just lying on my back cracking up. We’ve got a fishing pole and we’re out there noosing lizards. Then out of nowhere, my sister drives up. With a case of Heineken.”

Certainly, Douglass and Day didn’t follow the laws of ultra-running nutrition. Although they were sponsored, in part, by a company that produced a powdered sports drink--an unusual product in the late 1970s--they basically followed their taste buds.

“I tried the energy drink,” Douglass says. “I tossed it. I was like, ‘Shine this. Give me a Coke.’ ”

And what of all those important complex carbohydrates?

“We ate in the greasiest dives we could find,” says Douglass, who, by Jacksonville, had dropped 20 pounds from his 165-pound frame. “I ate steak, eggs and grits every day. Chicken fried steak, biscuits and gravy. . . . “

“And pecan pie!” adds Day.

The Southern portion of the trip, they said, was by far their favorite. People were most hospitable. In Louisiana, in fact, a group of girls entertained them by reciting verses from “Alice in Wonderland” (the runners are still wondering why).

Texas, they said, was the worst. Not only because a police officer gave Douglass a ticket for “running” a red light, but also because of the state’s monotonous landscape and never-ending horizon.

“You could literally wake up and be able to see where you’d sleep that night,” Day says.

When they finally reached the beach in Jacksonville--58 days after they started--they sprinted into the surf.

“That was the best part,” Douglass says. “Running into the ocean at the other end. Nobody else knew what was going on. Just two kids running into the water. But that’s why we did it. For us and no one else.”