X-Treme Team

On the fifth sleepless night of the world's toughest expedition race, three Playmates and I crashed down the rapids of the Segama River in Borneo. As boulders surged up suddenly out of the black, we fought to control the sampan canoe. Disaster would be the one boulder we missed. So we tied up to an overhanging tree for a few hours' sleep, placing our life jackets under us for cushioning. The jungle was as black as a cave--the triple canopy sealed out the starlight, and without our headlamps we could not see our hands. And it was incredibly loud, with monkeys screeching, the river roaring, large animals crashing through the brush to the water for last call, and the occasional explosive grunt of a meal missed or seized. Crocodiles were attracted to the bumping sound our canoe made against the bank, so no one was sleeping heavily when the snake came for us. Kalin Olson was on hyperwatch, her headlamp gyrating like a berserk lighthouse, when she screamed--a seven-foot pit viper (text continued on page 158) X-Treme Team (continued from page 115) was skimming across the river toward the canoe in the rippling cone of her light. When it reached the gunwale it stopped, lifted its head out of the water and began wavering from side to side, trying to propel itself into the boat. All hell broke loose.

"Oh my God, it's a huge snake!" screamed Kalin, Miss August 1997. "Get a paddle and hit it!"

"Turn off your light!" screamed Jennifer Lavoie, Miss August 1993. "It's coming in!"

"Cut us free, Owen!" screamed Danelle Folta, Miss April 1995 and our team captain. "Now!"

"Aaahhh!" was this former Marine's contribution to the conversation.

After I cut, slashed and bit loose the tether, the dugout spun sideways into the next set of rapids waiting in ambush, smashing into a submerged log. The canoe slowly rode up over the log, tilting and slipping toward a capsize. We were without life jackets, on a black night in a black, fast-running river brimming with reptiles. I had the absurd thought: This could end badly. What am I doing in this crazy race again? And what the hell are three Playboy Playmates doing here?

Founded by Survivor producer Mark Burnett, the Eco-Challenge is a brutal competition that pushes racers to their emotional and physical limits--then shoves them past. Coed teams of four (I was the token male who reversed the usual gender breakdown) paddle, hike, rappel, kayak, climb, swim, raft, mountain-bike and run for 10 days toward a finish 500 kilometers away. There are no time-outs and the clock never stops; teams sleep only when their bodies refuse to go another step without rest. Racers navigate with maps, compasses, altimeters and their fading ability to make decisions and function as a team, becoming more disoriented with each sleepless night. After the first 24 hours of paddling or running, most carry a lingering nausea, much like after an all-nighter of partying. And they will carry that retching feeling--along with their gear--for another nine days.

The Eco-Challenge annually attracts endurance athletes in pursuit of adventure racing's world championship. The 304 racers include some of the best-conditioned competitors. All expect to finish well, yet most fail to finish at all.

After the 1998 Eco-Challenge in Morocco, I vowed never to race again, a promise I had made at the finish lines of three other Ecos. But when my wife got the call inviting me to join three Playmates as the token male on Team Playboy X-Treme, her response was immediate. "He'll be there."

Danelle founded the team in 1998--a warren of athletic Playmates who competed in various sports around the nation, outclimbing and outrunning college kids on spring breaks, kicking corporate ass in volleyball and softball tournaments, placing well in three-hour versions of the Eco-Challenge. Everywhere she led her team, Danelle took another step toward her goal to shatter the notion that Playmates are too soft and coddled to compete at a high athletic level. In the Eco-Challenge, she had a chance at the ultimate test on the ultimate stage.

The over-under on Team Playboy X-Treme was established quickly in Borneo--three days, then one of the Playmates would come up with an injury or just quit.

So while mountain biking at three A.M. on a jungle road--with just four hours to go before we could get the "three days" monkey off our backs--I was not surprised when Danelle's bike shattered irreparably. The Eco-Challenge kicks you when you're down and watches how you react. Danelle pushed the bike--you must start and finish each Eco-Challenge leg with all your equipment--and began what was to be a Bataan death march instead of a bike leg, hiking the final 40 kilometers in 100-degree heat.

We left a trail slick with tears but, drifting dangerously close to heat exhaustion, reached the end of the bike leg in 29 hours. The fastest team had finished in ten. We had pushed our bike across and finished the leg as a team.

It marked the beginning of the nastiest leg of the race--a 60-kilometer jungle trek. The broken bike had prevented us from reaching the checkpoint in time to continue on for an official ranking (nearly half the teams faced this conundrum) so we had two choices--we could attempt the finish line unranked or we could quit.

Starting a leech-riddled jungle trek immediately after a hike that had extracted such a terrible toll was an abominable idea. I suspected that someone would yield, but I was proud of our effort. In three and a half days I had seen wondrous things. I had seen Jennifer-- 95 pounds of pure energy--hike up an impossibly steep atoll with a heavy pack, crying most of the time and putting me on mute but refusing to quit on a hump that would have dropped most soldiers. I had seen Kalin, perhaps the best natural athlete among us, paddle nonstop through the night in a race against the sun, even though she was badly dehydrated and the rest of us were forced to take rests. And I had seen the best kind of leadership in Danelle. Period. In a race that puts its premium on teamwork, the captain bears the relentless burden of decision making, balancing tough orders on food and load distribution with cheerleading and coddling.

"What's the verdict?" I asked when we dumped the cursed bike. "We driving on?"

"Hell, yes, we are," Danelle answered. "The official ranking doesn't matter. The finish line does."

The next morning, Playboy X-Treme lowered its collective head, strapped on its packs and plunged into the next discipline. The Borneo jungle is nature untamed, a clime filled with hungry critters and stinging plants. I was leading the file when I heard Kalin's otherworldly scream. She got a leech.

I could tell from its dark-brown racing stripes that it was a tiger leech, swollen and turgid with blood, attached firmly to Kalin's calf. When we eventually routed him with Betadine, Jennifer began twisting and shouting herself, stripping off her gear and clothing, frantically swiping at her skin. Fire ants. The jungle was quite an experience--after a few hours we were plucking the hitchhikers from our broken bodies like veteran hosts, slipping down steep mud slides on our mashed feet in squalls so thick we had to tip our heads forward to breathe. But darker things lurked.

Four days and more than 150 miles of jungle white water and Pacific Ocean later, just a day and a half from the finish line, we collided head-on with the worst leg of the Eco-Challenge, a caving section that had bested some of the world's best racers. It was a train wreck. We entered the caves wearing medical masks and were immediately wading shin-high (for Jennifer it might have crested her knees) through bat guano that invaded all the cuts on our legs and bleeding feet. The smell was a thick crush of waste and rot that made us wince. The cave was boiling with bats that fluttered in the narrow cylinders of our headlamps.

After a grueling ascent out of the hole on 150-foot fixed ropes, the race turned cruel, as it is prone to do. Two more jungle summits, a 500-foot rappel and a steep foot march stood between us and our canoe, with another 50 kilometers of windy ocean paddling to go.

I knew we would taste the finish line when we were steps from the second summit. Jennifer had collapsed under the weight of her pack and she was bawling. What happened next did not surprise me. Danelle and Kalin offered to hump her pack, but this was taken as an affront. Jennifer's eyes were burning and her teeth were clenched when she brushed them off and growled, "Shut up and . .. stand ... me ... up!" The three of them leaned into the hill and pushed higher, setting a wicked pace, laughing at a joke. Nothing would stop them now.

I was struggling to catch my sine-curved teammates when I saw them pass one of the many tough-as-nails three-guys-and-a-girl teams ahead of whom we would eventually finish. In what was a microcosm of the entire race, my teammates--who had been staring into the abyss just minutes before--announced their arrival with friendly shouts.

"Hey there, guys!" shouted Kalin.

"Hi, guys! Lookin' good!" shouted Danelle.

"Woo, hoo! Almost to the top! Keep it up!" shouted Jennifer.

They moved ahead quickly and, approaching from behind, I heard one of the men say to his ailing buddy, "Come on, man. Suck it up! We just got passed by the Playboy Playmates, dude." Ah, but there's no shame in that, my friend-- you have plenty of company.

Get workout tips from the X-Treme team at playboy.com/current.