What's wrong with Blain?
"I always say, "he offers midway into a 60-mile bike ride in 97-degree weather, "the last easy day was yesterday."
CPT Blain Reeves in the U.S. Army's recruiting commander in Orlando. At 5 feet, 11 inches and 189 pounds of lean meat and unbridled ambition, he ought to be on an enlistment poster.
Reeves is a veteran in the burgeoning sport of adventure racing - coed teams that run, bike, climb, ride horseback, kayak, trek, rappel, scramble and retch their way over 300 or more miles of hostile wilderness. They eat as much as they can carry, sleep an hour or two a night, and battle every indignity from dehydration to crocodiles to wolf spiders with flesh-eating venom. They cross glacier-fed rivers and ancient rain-forests, crawl through caves and shoot down whitewater rapids. Their feet become bloody, blistered stumps, their knees swell to elephantine proportions, their spirits break. They hallucinate wildly. Sometimes, even, they are knocked unconscious.
And, yes, they pay for the privilege - as much as $10,000 for the entry fee alone.
Lose a team member to injury, illness, insanity - or open the sealed emergency radio to call for help - and it's sayonara, baby. The whole team is disqualified.
No one has died.
Yet.
"Every race, there's the potential for death," Reeves says.
In last September's Eco-Challenge - one of the biggest and toughest of the genre - that flirtation with disaster happened in Australia, as Reeves' equipment failed midway during a descent down a 300-foot cliff.
In the Eco-Challenge 95, it happened in Utah, as his team ran low on water and was forced to drink straight from the river. Racked by diarrhea and dehydration, they limped along for a day and a half until one man collapsed. Reeves had to hike another 12 miles to reach anyone by radio.
"I mean, you're out there and you're just hating life so badly, but that's the fun part," he says, completely serious. "You're deprived of sleep, you're deprived of food, your body is exhausted, your mind is exhausted, and then they throw something in there that can kill you. So you're like, Whew, what else can happen? This is great!"
Adventure racing began with the vaunted Raid Gauloises, launched by a Frenchman in 1989. It has changed venues to Madagascar, Borneo, Patagonia and South America, just so the competitors don't get too complacent with the course. And while the sport has evolved to produce single-day sprint races, the real tests are those that continue around the clock for five to seven days.
Perhaps surprisingly, these events are dominated by civilians, and some even speculate that military men are too rigid in their thinking to make good teammates. Reeves, of course, disagrees vigorously.
In fact, it was the Army that lured him to the sport. In 1992, he signed up for a cheery, three-day picnic called the Best Ranger Competition, the military's ultimate test of strength, stamina and cunning.
It has all the physical tests of adventure racing - including a six-hour, 26-mile hike carrying 70 pounds - plus, just when you're really exhausted, they make you jump out of airplanes, assemble explosives and dodge simulated gunfire and nuclear weapons.
Yes, nothing like a little nuclear weaponry to help you unwind at the end of a tough day.
Only half of the two-person teams made it through the first 24 hours.
Does it get any better than this?
"I guess it's that pressure - that's what I thrive on," says Reeves, who won the Best Ranger Competition on his second try. "That's why I'm still in the military after 11 years."
He gets up at 4:30 every morning, unless he sleeps in until 5. He trains two or three hours - running, cycling, climbing, lifting weights, whatever - then works until 7:30 or 8 at night. Then it's another hour or two of exercise before he heads home.
And sleep?
"It's a crutch," he says.
"I'm trying to stay at that level where I'm competitive and still keeping my job. The hard part is keeping the wife happy too."
Tracy Reeves knew her husband's obsessions when she married him. She even trains with him on occasion, though she does a fraction of his workout.
"Hey," she shrugs, "at least he's not out drinking all night."
But, um, Blain, don't you ever want to go lie on a beach somewhere? Don't you want to sleep til noon and spend the evening sipping fruity concoctions with little umbrellas in them?
"If you've never been there, it's hard to explain," he says. "But it takes you out to the edge of life, you know, and it lets you dangle...If I die tomorrow, I'd go a happy man, I could say I've done a few things.
He pauses.
"Of course, I hope it's not tomorrow."
Two days after he said this, Reeves crashes in the middle of a pack of bicyclists on a fast training ride. He slides along the asphalt at 23 mph, and at least one racer rides over the top of him. Everyone comes screeching to a halt and circles back to check on what is sure to be at least a very nasty case of road rash. The last wreck like this sent a guy to the hospital for hip surgery.
Instead, Reeves immediately gets up, brushes himself off, straightens his handlebars and makes sure he's not bleeding too profusely.
Then he hops back on his bile.
"Come on" he says. "I don't want to stand around."