Midnight Riders

Race Wisdom: It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Race Reality: Hold back, and you're roadkill.

Saturday, 11:50 AM. Billmayer has bravely accepted the martyr's role and agreed to lead us off. He'll be part of the race's Le Mans-style start: At the stroke of noon, a cavalry charge blasts from two-story-high speakers, and 360 adrenaline-pumped maniacs stampede 400 yards to their bikes.

Minutes before the start, Billmayer is gripped: He's forgotten a spare tube and his energy-gel antibonk food. Cooper hurriedly retrieves both and tells Billmayer to block out the hundreds of cowbell-ringing, horn-blowing spectators and to fight the tendency to go out too hard.

Billmayer follows that advice -- to the extreme. He barely breaks into a jog as he heads for the bikes. For a while, he disappears from view. "Did you see Billmayer?" asks Buttars, who got a close-up view of the mayhem. "Wasn't in much of a rush, was he?"

But Billmayer turns in a respectable lap: 108 minutes. Most other riders, however, are clocking 75 to 90 minutes; the fastest lap is an immortal 63 minutes. "Everybody was flying by," says Billmayer. Among those who zoomed past him: Brett Wolfe, a renowned one-legged rider.

Later, the play-by-play race announcer grabs Billmayer and asks him to handicap Team IBM's chances. "We make really fast computers," he allows, his amplified voice reverberating throughout the canyon. "We don't make fast riders."

Race Wisdom: You race against the 14-mile course, not each other.

Race Reality: Tell that to the jerk next to you.

Saturday, 1:48 PM. Karla Schwenn is next. She appears almost eerily serene as she saddles up. But her goal is unambiguous: to croak Billmayer's time. Competing against your teammates is actually a good team tactic. If we can each do 90-to-120-minute laps, we'll have a good shot at 15 laps and a top-30 finish.

Despite the broiling 85-degree heat, Schwenn finishes the course in 123 minutes. As expected, the treacherous first third of the course beats her up: the three supersteep descents, the large patches of axle-deep sand, and the mile-long section of washboard. But it wasn't the course that made her lose her cool.

"This jerk who wanted to pass me kept yelling at me to move over," she reports. "I told him I was as far over as I could go." The rider muttered something rude, and Schwenn went ballistic, spewing curses and ending her tirade with a warning: "I know your number, and I'm gonna get you!"

Energywise, the outburst cost her, says Schwenn. But the kick-in-the-pants impact it has on the rest of us is significant. Like a coach who jacks up players by laying into a ref, Schwenn's reaction gets us revved. We may not have cutting-edge bikes. We may not have green goatees, camouflage cargo shorts, or a bohemian bone in our collective body. But look out Moab, we've got Karla!

Race Wisdom: If you're not riding, you're backing up your teammates.

Race Reality: People do funny things when the sun goes down.

Saturday, 7:11 PM. This is a team-based race, and team chemistry depends entirely on one thing: caring about your teammates. Is your on-deck rider ready and waiting at the timekeepers' tent for the baton handoff? Is your newly finished rider updating course conditions for the next one out? Does everyone, as baseball types put it, have their heads in the game?

In our case, we're like many rookie teams: borderline dysfunctional. Back in camp, we don't talk strategy. We're not reading aloud from some inane bike magazine, or trading tales of epic endos. Hell, no one's even up for raiding the nearby encampment of the pink-spandexed team Betty Returns.

This all comes to a head shortly after I finish my lap. To my surprise, I find a second wind after my early woes and turn in a team-best time of 88 minutes. At our campsite, Schwenn and Buttars are obviously happy for me. But what's this? They're in Billmayer's truck, and they're going somewhere.

Buttars returns 30 minutes later from the campground showers -- and he informs us that Schwenn has driven into town. Moab is 20 minutes away. This is a thoroughly unanticipated development. Suddenly our lady heroine is awol.

Stranger still is the reason. Schwenn wants to hit the First Annual Sidewalk Sale in Moab. "She's not even a shopper," says Buttars, trying to appease us.

Right now we're in 70th place, barely ahead of Cheap Chicks. If Schwenn doesn't return in time for her midnight lap, we'll be forced to ride more and rest less. Privately, I say a prayer: May she find her blue goblets with their 50% markdown, and get her ass back to camp -- pronto!

Race Wisdom: Failure is not an option.

Race Reality: Stick a fork in us; we're done.