SYCAMORE COVE — 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?
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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.
