Midnight Riders

At 5:11 PM, Team IBM's Gaylon Buttars hands me the baton, which I slip inside my stretchy bike shorts. Heading into the twilight, I test the 10-watt halogen light that's duct-taped to my apple-red helmet. We've been warned: The Utah desert gets dark quickly.

A wire runs down my back, connecting the light to a six-volt battery that's stowed inside my Camelbak -- a 100-ounce bladder of water. Taking the first tentative pedal strokes on my electric-blue Mongoose mountain bike, I'm hit with a flash of worry: I've paired live current with a leaky water bag.

And now, having jounced a mere mile up a rutted access road, I start to gag on swirling clouds of red sand -- the result of the scorching hot, rainless weather that has plagued the Southwest for months. As I loudly suck air through my sand-encrusted nostrils, I realize I'm spooking the other riders. Yesterday, my four teammates predicted that I might be Team IBM's stud. Here in the saddle, I have an update: I'm a dud.

Like marathons and other ultra-endurance contests, the goal of this infamous fat-tire race, dubbed the Fifth Annual Newsweek 24 Hours of Moab, is painfully simple: Survive. At noon today, 360 teams took off into Moab's backcountry and began slamming their way through 14 miles of S-turns, stair-step descents, and wheel-swallowing sandpits. Fast-track teams like Quads of Fury and Cycopaths hope to log more than 20 laps through the remote, high-desert course, the centerpiece of which is a rust-toned massif called Prostitute Butte. That's about 300 miles of riding at a Himalayan peak's worth of elevation. The team that tallies the most laps in 24 hours wins.

Team-based, 24-hour off-road races, of which there are now dozens in North America, are becoming to mountain biking what a marathon is to running: They're the Big Ones. The kind of race you must try at least once. But the relentlessness of the nonstop format can bring out the worst in folks. People crash. People quit. People get very grumpy. Every race-day neophyte inevitably ponders this question: "Why the hell am I doing this?"

Part of this race's draw is Moab, the undisputed mecca for gonzo riders. But the opportunity to race as a team is also appealing. In most endurance classics, you struggle alone in your own private hell. At Moab, the hell is divvied up five ways. You strategize as a team. You carry a baton. You share those 2 AM blowouts with four of your closest buddies.

"Mountain biking is an individual sport, but this is a team-based competition," says race founder Laird Knight, 40. "And when it's over, every team will have a story to tell."

But Knight neglects to tell us the naked truth about endurance epics: Rookies almost always screw up. So here, then, is Team IBM's story -- 24 hours of misadventure at Moab.

Race Wisdom: Your team might be mediocre on paper, but the race isn't won on paper.

Race Reality: Read it, and believe it.

I met the anxious members of Team IBM on the eve of race day, outside their room at the Super 8 motel in downtown Moab. Having been assigned to follow a team in the corporate division, I've learned that Big Blue needs a fifth, and I'm the new recruit.

Three of my teammates -- Buttars, Mike Cooper, and Mike Billmayer -- are part of a business tech-support group that's headquartered at IBM's Boulder, Colorado facility. Buttars's aerobics-instructor wife, Karla Schwenn, is also racing with us. Perhaps as a hedge against less than blue-chip results, team leader Cooper is explicit: We aren't officially riding for you-know-who. For this race, he says, IBM stands for "I Bike Moab."

Our squad is not exactly scary. Because of his work-crazed schedule, 35-year-old Buttars is carrying an extra 15 pounds. Billmayer, 38, a longtime off-road rider, confides that tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of his ACL knee surgery. At 43, Cooper is fit and damn fast on a road bike, but his off-road tear-assing has lacked gusto ever since a spectacular "endo" eight years ago. Schwenn isn't accustomed to technical trail riding, and I'm a day away from sea level.

There's more: Team IBM's preride revealed a spectacular level of preparedness -- among all the other racers. Several teams have brought along masseuses for postlap rubdowns, as well as mechanics for soup-to-nuts overhauls. Amid the hundreds of base camps sprouting up on the eve of the race are stationary warm-up bikes, satellite-TV dishes, concert-quality stereos, even blue-velvet Barcaloungers. Last year, somebody even trucked in a hot tub.

Our own setup? Tents and lawn chairs. Our support team consists of Cooper's wife, Jackie, and their two spunky kids, eight-year-old Travis and seven-year-old Kaylyn. But we do have a secret weapon of our own: Members of Team IBM regularly pull 12-hour night shifts, as part of IBM's 24-by-7 hardware-support program. "We may be underprepared," says Cooper, "but at least we know how to get by on zero sleep."