Hitting the Wall

Waves broke hard on the sand, thundering one after another, as teams of men and women rushed toward the sea with kayaks.

Some boats knifed cleanly through the surf. Others capsized and were strewn like toothpicks in the roiled foam, the racers scrambling back to land shivering and bloody.

Their hardship had only begun.

Through one day and into the next, 37 teams of “adventure racers” struggled across miles of ocean and into the mountains where they hiked, climbed and bicycled with no time for sleep.

Looking back, members of Team Intrepid realize they were doomed from the start of the race last weekend. They needed several tries to punch through the shorebreak and, by the time all four members got underway, the team was well behind.

It was bad luck for a veteran San Fernando Valley crew favored to win. The ensuing hours brought mishaps and missteps, the outrageous fortune that can befall a team pressing to catch up.

“It just wasn’t our day,” said Bill Lovelace, the team captain and resident jokester. “It wasn’t our race.”

As Team Roam--which included Ventura resident Mike Hobbs--pulled away, and as others succumbed to injury and exhaustion, it became clear that Lovelace and his teammates would not finish first. The question was: Would they finish at all?

*

The concept behind adventure racing is simple and brutal.

Competitors need endurance to persist for eight to 11 days with little sleep. They need skills ranging from horseback riding to mountaineering. They need wits to navigate by compass and map through miles of wilderness.

Each team must include a member of the opposite sex. If any member quits, the entire team is disqualified.

The Raid Gauloises is among the oldest and best-known of these races. More recently, an American-based version called the Eco-Challenge was born. For the Eco-Challenge in Australia this summer, 47 top teams were invited.

The mini-race at Point Mugu State Park last weekend was a qualifier for the final three spots in the field.

Team Intrepid was a favorite because its members had finished eighth in the 1995 Eco-Challenge. The team was forced to qualify only because it had missed the previous year because of injury.

But its members worried that the short format favored youth over experience.

No one, however, knew the teams would be tested so quickly.

Within minutes of the 6:20 a.m. start, a woman was taken to the hospital with facial injuries. Other racers emerged bruised and shaken from trying to paddle through the surf. Debra Green, from San Diego, stood on the beach in tears.

“I did a face-plant on the bottom,” Green said. “I thought I was dead.”

She could not bring herself to try again.

“I’m so bummed,” she said. “I’m such a loser.”

Seven teams never got past the start. Five more--including Team Rolex, a pre-race favorite from San Francisco--quit during the 26-mile paddle to Point Dume and back.

Team Intrepid returned to Sycamore Cove at 1 p.m., an hour behind the leaders. Duane McDowell, a lanky man who teammates say is “as dependable as a Saint Bernard,” shook his head.

“It wasn’t our plan to fall behind at the very start,” he said.

The racers are never informed of the entire course, nor the order of events, until after the race begins. At the end of the first stage, Team Intrepid was handed a packet of maps and told to prepare for hiking and mountaineering.

At the transition area, team member Ronni Wilde hurriedly sponged off, changed clothes and gulped sandwiches while her husband, Doug, poured over the maps in characteristically silent fashion.

“Seems like it would be easier to call the auto club,” Lovelace said.

*

Beginning in Sycamore Canyon, the 40-mile foot course veered west over high ridges. Racers kept a steady pace on the ascents and ran the downhills. Along the way, they were required to find checkpoints where race officials waited in the brush.

Team Intrepid reached a waterfall along the narrow, green La Jolla Canyon by mid-afternoon. The breeze felt cool but the racers were drenched in sweat, breathing hard. When asked how it was going, Lovelace could not so much as summon a quip.

“It’s going,” he said.

By 4 p.m., he and his teammates had surged from 21st place to 11th. But they were living on borrowed time, having left the transition area with only part of the course plotted, hoping to navigate the rest on the fly.

As night fell, they could not find the 10th checkpoint.

Such mistakes are bound to occur when fatigue erodes mental faculties. Adventure racers say that physical pain is a constant--successful teams learn to deal with the mental torture. Ronni Wilde was having her doubts.

“The clock was ticking, it was freezing cold and pitch-black, we’re wandering around the forest . . . and we paid good money to do this,” she said. “I turned to Duane and said, ‘Adventure racing is really stupid.’ ”

Ahead, three teams broke away from the pack, completing a relatively simple traverse and rappel, then creeping through a boulder field at dusk.

Race officials had not expected a team to reach this section until dark, when the going would be slow. Sneaking through before sunset, the leaders returned to Sycamore Cove before midnight, hours ahead of schedule.

First came Team Roam. Hobbs changed into bicycling gear while team captain Andy Petranek studied maps by lamp light.

“That’s a climb,” Petranek moaned, plotting a bike course through steep hills.

Teammate Owen Shea, an anesthesiologist, peeled down his shorts and gave himself an injection of what he said was an anti-inflammatory drug.

“My knees feel like watermelons. My big toenails are about to fall off,” Shea said. “You can never get in good enough shape for this.”

Team Kilroy, another Southern California squad, showed up soon after. Then came Team Vail from Colorado.

Up the mountain, Team Intrepid was headed for trouble.

*

The team moved slowly now, four helmet lamps bobbing single-file through the darkness. Climbing gradually toward the mountaineering stage, around midnight, Doug Wilde slipped on loose shale.

“He cut his chin and bit his tongue. He was spitting up blood,” his wife said. “The shock of the blow made him nauseous and he started throwing up. We thought he might have had a concussion.”

At some point, every racer hits a personal low. The others must pull him or her through. So Team Intrepid huddled around Wilde on Old Boney Mountain, shivering in the cold, waiting.

Any chance of a comeback was dashed. All around, other teams were quitting because of hypothermia, fatigue or frustration. If, by chance, members of Team Intrepid were considering a similar end, Wilde would not hear of it.

“Might as well finish,” he said quietly.

After two hours, his head cleared sufficiently for the traverse and 400-foot rappel. The team then steered through the boulder field.

In the hills below, the leaders were struggling through the bicycle stage. The climbs were too steep, forcing racers to push their bikes. The drops were too perilous. Again, the racers took them on foot.

Shortly after 2:30 a.m., Team Roam crossed the finish line on the same beach where the race had started 20 hours, 27 minutes earlier.

“Is that it?” Petranek asked.

Shea smiled. “How long does it take for toenails to grow back?”

Team Vail finished 39 minutes later. Team member Sara Balatyne could take limited satisfaction in qualifying for the Eco-Challenge.

“I want to go to Australia,” she said. “But do I have to race?”

Team Kilroy, penalized an hour for neglecting to pack the required helmets for the mountaineering stage, held on for third place.

*

At sunrise Sunday, Team Intrepid found itself lost again. They had to backtrack up Serrano Canyon where the hillsides were painted in a thousand hues of dusty greens and browns, where sprays of yellow daisies distracted the eye from poison oak along the trail’s edge.

“We’re no longer Team Intrepid,” Lovelace said.

McDowell quipped: “Now we’re Team Decrepit.”

They did not make their way back to Sycamore Cove until 11:30 a.m. Race officials warned that they had only 4 1/2 hours to finish the 20-mile bicycle stage. Otherwise, the team would be disqualified. Ronni Wilde was not sure she wanted to try.

Wilde is a newcomer to the sport. In 1995, the team raced with Lovelace’s wife, Louise, a charming South African teacher who is among the fiercest of all women adventure racers.

While Bill Lovelace recuperated from knee surgery last year, the team fell dormant and Louise joined three New Zealanders to form a squad that finished second in the most recent Raid Gauloises and has been invited to Australia. Wilde, an ultra-marathoner, took her place.

Like other adventure racers--a curious mix of athletes, outdoorsmen and military personnel--she considered the sport an outlet for her normal, if relatively extreme, workout routine.

But by the time she reached the bicycle stage, the race was beginning to feel “like a cruel joke.” The others urged her onward, carrying her bike up the hills. A group mentality was afoot, long hours of fatigue and frustration giving way to defiance.

“They were going to have to drag us off the course,” Lovelace said.

In the final hours, as Team Intrepid raced to beat the 4 p.m. cut-off time, Wilde discovered what veteran racers say is the true satisfaction of their endeavor.

“Other teams in our situation threw in the towel,” she said. “But we didn’t quit.”

*

McDowell is back at work as an electrician this week. Doug Wilde is thinking clearly again and his wife said she feels relatively fit except for “chafing in some rather strange places.”

“Of course, we’re killer disappointed,” Lovelace said. “But if you see a team hang together when everything is going wrong, that’s success.”

Only 17 of the 37 teams completed the race with all four members. Five racers had to be hospitalized for nausea and dehydration. Another two were treated for ailments at the race site.

Team Intrepid was the 17th and final team, finishing the bicycle stage at 3:35 p.m., after 33 hours 15 minutes on the course. They crossed the finish line as the top three squads were to receive their awards. A crowd of several hundred turned away from the stage to give Team Intrepid a rousing ovation.

The racers smiled for the first time in a long time. Lovelace opened his arms wide.

“Did we kick butt or what?” he said.