GOING THE DISTANCE : Ultra runners test their limits by logging mega miles--a minimum of 50, that is--along remote trails, through the wilderness and often in the dark.

Ed Wehan and Paul Garnett are running outside Ojai. It’s a fine day, especially grand here at 5,000 feet, sun splashing the spine of the Topatopa Mountains. Wehan and Garnett gulp lungs full of fresh air, enjoy the jolt and surge of finely honed muscle as they pound over uneven ground. They occupy their time like most of us, namely by discussing someone who isn’t around. This time it’s Fred Nagelschmidt.

Nagelschmidt is widely revered in Ventura County, a sort of de facto patriarch of the county’s tightknit ultra-running clan. He is also mightily afraid of bears.

Ha, ha, says Ed.

Ha, ha, says Paul.

And then, off to the right, the brush explodes. “It was a thrashing sound like you wouldn’t believe,” recalls Wehan. “Both of us came to an immediate stop and started backing away with this sort of petrified look on our faces.”

And out leaped a deer. Wehan smiles. “Paul looked over at me and said, ‘You know for two guys who aren’t afraid of bears, we nearly peed our pants.’ ”

This story neatly illustrates several things about ultra-running and its disciples. One, ultra-running is a sport of immeasurable surprise. Two, ultra runners are honest and direct. And three, provided the proper stimulus, they can backpedal faster than Michael Jackson on a moonwalk.

Precisely what constitutes an ultra run isn’t clear. Loosely defined, ultra runs last longer than Senate hearings--and usually cover more ground in the process. But in keeping with the independence typical of the sport’s practitioners, ultra runners can’t even agree on a definition of their sport. There is some consensus that ultra runs start at a distance of 50 kilometers (roughly 31 miles). But Wehan, a 51-year-old lanky, affable Venturan who once held the American 50-mile record for runners over 40, demurs.

“Fifty kilometers is too close to the marathon,” he huffs, convinced that the purity of the 26.2-mile marathon distance has been soiled by too many nuns, octogenarians and Nimrods flipping pancakes while running backward.

Wehan thinks a run isn’t an ultra unless it’s 50 miles or longer. Nagelschmidt, who ran his first 50-mile race about 20 years ago, simply defines an ultra run as anything that is hard as hell--in the end, the best definition of any.

LONG-DISTANCE CHALLENGE: Whatever the particulars, this much is true: There are people out there who think nothing of running 30, 50, 100 miles and more. By Nagelschmidt’s estimate, 40 to 50 ultra runners live in the county and, depending on your outlook, the challenges they eagerly tackle are either awe-inspiring or stupid.

Wehan has run about 30 races of 50 miles or more. Nagelschmidt has run more than 75 races longer than 30 miles, and he hasn’t stopped yet, though next month he turns 71. Nagelschmidt, who lives in Ventura, has run 100-mile races through the Sierra Nevada wilderness and six-day races around a quarter-mile track, rites of insomnia in which top runners have been known to sleep an hour a night and notch more than 100 miles. Each day.

Conventional runners, folks who run marathons and 10Ks, can be snivelers, prone to whine about the heat or the paucity of portable toilets at the race start. Ultra runners don’t give a damn. Inclement weather? Ruben Alarcon, a Ventura wallpaper hanger, toed the start of a 50-mile race in Vail, Colo., peering into the guts of a blizzard. Unfortunately, he showed up with no cold-weather gear.

“It was terrible, but everybody has a vice,” says Alarcon, who ran the race in a light Windbreaker, socks on his hands.

Chuck Pullen, a physical therapist aide at St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo, recalls a 35-mile trail race last November in the wind-swept mountains above Santa Barbara.

“Right when we started the race,” says Pullen, “the outhouse blew down the road.”

Actually, many ultra runs take place on remote trails, so you can consider yourself lucky if you find a toilet after the start. Not that ultra runners are austere monks whose sole aims are self-flagellation and an overwrought bladder. They relish challenge, sure, but they don’t eschew pleasantries either. While looping around a San Diego track during a six-day run, Nagelschmidt was advised to stop by a friend’s tent, pitched in the infield, for a 2 a.m. feeding.

“Two o’clock in the morning I went by his tent, and he had a table set up with white linen and candles and champagne and he’s got a chiropractor and a couple of girls giving massages,” says Nagelschmidt.

How do you walk away from something like that?

“Very slowly,” says Nagelschmidt.

Ultra runners aren’t bags of wind either. Get trapped in the company of the wrong marathoners and you will receive tedious soliloquies on the joys of running, not to mention a day-by-day analysis of their last six months of training, capped by their total training mileage measured to the last step.

Ultra society adopts a more casual approach. Telephone Nagelschmidt’s home and get his wife Mona on the phone and the conversation might go something like this: Is Fred there?

Mona: “He’s out running in the mountains right now. Let’s see, he left at 1:30 so he’ll probably be back around 6.”

No doubt, the amount of running is impressive. One of Wehan’s favorite runs begins at a trail head off Sisar Road, in upper Ojai, drops into the Sespe Wilderness area and eventually loops around to finish where it started, a distance of roughly 40 miles. Nagelschmidt and Alarcon once ran a 13-mile race in Goleta, then ran home to Ventura, about 45 miles.

Alarcon has been known to rise at midnight and run through the dawn. Not long ago, in the wee morning hours, Pullen heard an odd noise through his window. Alarcon, who had been running since 3 a.m., was huffing outside. Pullen, of course, joined him, the two men logging a few miles before work.

“I put more miles on my feet than my pickup truck,” says Alarcon.

Not to say that every ultra runner logs mega mileage. Pat Farrell’s first ultra was a 24-hour run, an event, usually held on a track, in which runners try to run as far as they can in a day. Farrell undertook this challenge only five months after he started running, explaining why he had to be carried off the track after 37 miles.

“That was stupid,” says Farrell, who still hasn’t changed his habits much. As general manager of the Centerpoint Mall in Oxnard, Farrell’s free time is limited. He often trains as few as 30 miles a week. Still, Farrell has completed more than 30 50-mile races. Not that it’s been easy.

“Oh, man,” says Farrell. “They hurt.”

ENDURANCE AND SMARTS: While hours-long training runs are grand, they are purposeless without pointing toward something even longer. Though they won’t usurp more popular sports such as hurling or lawn bowling any time soon, dozens of ultra races take place across the country, everything from relatively tame 30-milers on up to six-day races and more (the Trans America Footrace takes runners 3,000 miles across the country).

Some ultras take place on roads and tracks, but true ultra runners prefer the challenge of the trail, the more remote and wilder the better. Perhaps the wildest, and thus most prestigious, of all the ultras is the Western States Endurance Run.

One-hundred miles of hellish horse trail through the Sierra Nevada range from Squaw Valley to Auburn, the Western States allows ultra runners to wallow in everything they cherish. That includes 40,000 feet of elevation change and temperature extremes that can permafrost your eyebrows or set your shorts aflame. Though top runners can complete the race in a scant 15 hours, more common folks get to enjoy these offerings for 22 to 30 hours.

The joie de vivre of the Western States is probably best summed up by Jim Pellon, a former county resident and the first runner to complete 10 Western States in a row.

“The way I look at it, you either finish or you perish out there,” Pellon says.

To complete an ultra run doesn’t so much require speed as it does smarts. One must sagely parcel out one’s energy reserves while ingesting enough food and drink to ensure those reserves aren’t sucked dry. Should the equation not match up, the results can be ugly.

Competing in a 100-mile race in Vermont last summer, Nagelschmidt was fine until Mile 95. It was then that he realized he was having problems, and only because two other runners told him.

“Some guys caught me and said, ‘Hey, you’ve been falling off the trail for the last couple of miles,’ ” Nagelschmidt says.

Feeling good, Nagelschmidt had declined the water and food his wife proffered at the 90-mile checkpoint. He paid the price, his staggering lurch over the final 10 miles relieved only by periodic face plants. Still, he finished. Nagelschmidt downplays his doggedness.

“I don’t know what it is,” he says. “You really don’t think. You just get up and go.”

There are other prods to continuing, some of them guaranteed to add zest to even the most dispirited runner’s step. By definition, wilderness comprises wild things. Running in the wilds allows one to enjoy a spectrum of animal life outmatched only by zoos, the difference being that zoo exhibits don’t snuffle right up to you.

Besides meeting up with coyotes, bobcats and golden eagles, county ultra runners have also come upon mountain lions and bears. Sometimes it’s hard to tell precisely what’s out there. Alarcon, who apparently has the sleep habits of a bat, has had his share of thrills during night runs.

“When you’re out at midnight with nothing but a flashlight and you hear noises like something trodding after you, that’s what’s really frightening,” he says.

An eye to the ground doesn’t guarantee you’ll see everything. As a rule, rattlesnakes are slow and sluggish and, if spotted, easily avoided; but on trails lined with scrub, they aren’t always easily spotted.

Ultra-running lore is full of horrific tales of rattlers apprised of runners before the runners were apprised of them. In one instance, a startled runner looked down to find a rattler that had lashed out and embedded itself in the toe of his shoe. With its fangs caught in the shoe’s nylon mesh, the snake jounced and dangled like a thick shoelace.

In deference to rattlers, runners string out at least 10 feet apart along narrow trails; should the lead runner scare up a rattler, this distance allows trailing runners time to brake before trodding on the now-animated reptile. But last spring, running with Pullen in Ventura County’s La Jolla Canyon, Nagelschmidt ignored this cardinal rule.

For a time, the trail was wide and Nagelschmidt and Pullen ran side by side. When the trail narrowed, bordered by thick brush, they stayed together. Then Nagelschmidt felt a jolt and a sharp pain in his ankle. The rattler crawled onto the path. Almost immediately, Nagelschmidt felt funny, his tongue thickening in his mouth, his chest going tight.

Fortunately, Nagelschmidt and Pullen were less than a mile from their car. While Pullen wove through Saturday traffic, Nagelschmidt fought off wooziness and a curious feeling.

“A strange thing,” he says. “It felt like my feet were floating off the floor.”

At Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital, there were a few dicey moments. Nagelschmidt was allergic to the anti-venom, so the doctors could only monitor him while the poison ran its course. Nagelschmidt spent the night in the intensive care unit, his wife by his side.

“I wasn’t too concerned,” says Mona, “until the doctor said, ‘I hope we don’t have to take his foot off.’ ”

Nagelschmidt survived intact, though his leg turned black and green while approximating the size and shape of the Hindenburg. Nagelschmidt has returned to the trails, but he is a changed man.

“I never gave snakes a thought,” he says. “Now I’m not as easygoing about it.”

A FEW GOOD WOMEN: Yes, there are ultra women and some fine ones at that. At last year’s Western States, Ann Trason, a soft-spoken Northern Californian, finished second overall. But rattlers and other assorted offerings might explain why there are only slightly more women in ultra-running than there are on the Dallas Cowboys offensive line.

“It takes an unusual woman to really enjoy it and not find all the side aspects unappealing, like being dirty and sweaty and hot and looking bad and running into rattlesnakes and being alone in the middle of nowhere,” says Jean McPherson.

McPherson, 37, first discovered ultra-running when she saw the Western States run on TV (“It gave me goose bumps just watching it”), then took up the sport with gusto after marrying Wehan. She allows it would be nice to see more women in ultra-running, but she doesn’t see women flooding the sport any time soon.

“For most women, going out and running for three-quarters of a Saturday is not their idea of fun,” she says.

Nonetheless, McPherson and Lianne Kimball are hooked. Kimball, a 34-year-old Oxnard resident, has run a 31-mile race and two 50-milers. Last summer, McPherson completed the Vermont 100-mile Endurance Run in 22 hours.

Male or female, ultra runners allow that their sport presents substantial mental hurdles.

“It’s a hard sport for a lot of people to understand,” says Kimball. “I mean, think about it. Some of these runs are like running from Oxnard to L.A.”

Though they admit such concepts can be off-putting, the payoffs, they say, can be priceless: sweeping mountain vistas, a tremendous feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, the body fat of bamboo. In fact, while discoursing on the allure of their sport, ultra runners very nearly become the same bags of wind as their short-distance counterparts.

But Pullen saves the day.

“Remember when you were a kid and you played all day and you got dirty and you didn’t have to come home until really late?” he says. “That’s what it’s like.”