Beyond the limit

<p>Now here's something you don't see every day: A man is pedaling on a stationary bicycle inside the meat locker at Willowside Meats on Guerneville Road.</p><p>Bill Bradley might pedal for five hours this time, maybe six hours the next day, maybe even more. Who knows? He doesn't. He's never trained before to run 100 miles in the dead of winter through the Alaskan wilderness.</p><p>The Susitna 100 is only six weeks away. Bradley knows the temperature could reach 40 degrees below zero. He knows his exposed skin will freeze within minutes. He knows he'll be running 15 hours a day in darkness. He knows race organizers will send out rescue teams on snowmobiles after 48 hours.</p><p>Ah, but there's something even more interesting.</p><p>Santa Rosa's Bradley, 47, has never camped in the snow. He's camped once in the past five years; it was car camping. He's never backpacked, much less pulled a mandatory 15-pound sled, containing survival gear if the weather turns ugly. Until two weeks ago he'd never even run in the snow.</p><p>Ah, but there's something even more interesting.</p><p>In June, Bradley will team with a man from Colorado and ride a bicycle non-stop from Oceanside to Annapolis, Md., in the infamous RAAM, Race Across America. In July he'll compete in the really infamous 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon, from Death Valley up Mt. Whitney. In October he wants to compete in the really incredibly, unbelievably insane Triple Ironman in Hawaii -- a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and 26.2 mile run, done three times without stopping.</p><p>Ah, but there's something even more interesting.</p><p>"I have two talents," said the former owner of Bradley Video. "I'll show up and I'll suffer."</p><p>Right then I felt like stepping on Bradley's toe, just so I could see him smile.</p><p>For the truly tough, pain is supposed to be your friend. For Bradley, pain is his lover, his soul mate.</p><p>"When I'm in that meat locker," Bradley said, "people stare and say, 'Who's that blue guy in there?' "</p><p>Bradley grins at the image of the blue guy, laughs, rocks back in his chair, a bit of spittle forming on his lips and then expelled in the process, all done with the quick-step of someone who is the human energy bar. He has run in six marathons and seven Ironmans. He competed the Davis Double 200 (that's 200 miles on a bike) and completed the 508-mile Furnace Creek bike ride through Death Valley. He finished the Ultraman World Championships in Hawaii, three days totaling 320 miles and 16,200 feet of elevation gain by swimming, bicycling and running.</p><p>Bradley may be 6-foot-2, 188 pounds but he might as well be 62 feet high and 188 miles wide.</p><p>"I can't get my mind around you," I said.</p><p>"I just want to do epic things," he said.</p><p>Well, Epic Bill, you want epic, you got epic. Read a bit about the Susitna 100, which begins Feb. 16, taken from the race's Web site:</p><p>"The current 100-mile course has evolved through a history of tradition, opportunism, stubbornness and confusion . . . Moose encounters are generally uneventful although if it has been a hard winter moose will be irritable and charge you. Be advised: A single kick from a moose will shatter any bone it strikes . . . February offers the most brutal environment an Alaskan winter can summon. Fortunately near death experiences are rare . . . Factor in how you plan to bivouac in the open at 20-to-30-below zero F."</p><p>This race is made for Bradley who stopped doing marathons and Ironmans because he felt in "a rut." But not for a moment should Bradley -- not even for the time it takes to blink -- take his eyes, ears, brains and all your moving parts off any section, any step of the Su 100, as the locals call it. The course starts 25 miles north of Anchorage as the crow flies or 65 miles by road.</p><p>"You start the race in the middle of nowhere," said Rita Wade, registrar of the Su 100, "and then you go off more into the middle of nowhere."</p><p>Wade has run the race six times and said the competitors should hope for temperatures in the minus-20 range as opposed to a relatively balmy plus-40. The reason? The course goes over lakes, rivers and swamps that are passable only by boat in the summer. If the weather "warms," ice could weaken and a racer -- skiers, cyclists and runners are on the course at the same time -- finds himself/herself in icy water in the middle of nowhere.</p><p>"About a third of the time the weather creates harrowing conditions," said Wade of the Susitna 100, now in its 20th year, "and makes this a true endurance race."</p><p>When told Bradley planned to train inside a meat locker or some frozen compartment at a grocery store, Wade thought that environment wouldn't produce optimal results.</p><p>"He would do better," Wade said, "if he went out to the beach and pulled a sled. This race really tests the calves."</p><p>So when Bradley heard what Wade said, he grabbed a sled and started dragging it across Doran Beach. Ain't no sled too heavy. Ain't no idea too goofy-hard. It started two years ago when the unholy confluence of divorce and video store bankruptcy led Bradley to lose everything, including "the house on the hill and the Escalade." Down, troubled, seeking a way to climb out of the hole, Bradley followed the advice of a friend.</p><p>"You got your health," the friend said. "Use it."</p><p>Bradley became an endurance athlete. While working for his brother and sister who run Bradley Electric in Novato, he rode, swam and ran his way to a brighter day.</p><p>"I sit at my rented house in Bennett Valley and look at my Pontiac Vibe parked in the driveway," Bradley said, "and my daughter Heather says I have never been happier. When I complete a race I stand a little taller. I felt better about myself."</p><p>I pointed out therapy might be a cheaper and less time-consuming way to improve his outlook and, while amused, he shrugged. Therapy, he reminded me, is not epic. Meditation is not stuff of legends. Sitting still is not the stuff of Epic Bill.</p><p>"If you suffer," he said, "you got good stories."</p><p>If you suffer, you are an endurance athlete. No way out of that. When the pain comes and everything else is blacked out, Bradley dips deep inside himself and throws back the suffering.</p><p>"I just say to myself," said Bradley, " 'I love pain . . . I love these hills . . . ' I say whatever it is that's torturing me."</p><p>By far his worst torture, he said, came at the end of the 508-mile Furnace Creek bike race. It took him 46 hours to complete. He was weaving considerably on the road.</p><p>"I was hearing cheering," he said, "and it was 4 o'clock in the morning."</p><p>There was no cheering. He was hallucinating. He started to sleep on the bike while it was moving. Then he was sleeping after the bike stopped. Which was right around the time he started vomiting. He doesn't remember stopping. He doesn't remember vomiting.</p><p>"When people read about your story," I said, "they'll think you're crazy."</p><p>Bradley nodded.</p><p>"I have no defense," he said. "(I'm) certifiable."</p><p>Bradley wasn't blushing and he wasn't making an apology either. Pushing himself beyond comprehensible physical limits, Bradley has an itch he must scratch.</p><p>"I have an excessive gene," Bradley said. "If a little is good, a lot has to be better."</p><p>"So if you became hooked on Scrabble, you would memorize every Scrabble word, read every Scrabble book, talk to every Scrabble champion?"</p><p>"That's me," he said.</p><p>One man's Scrabble is another man's sled-pulling through an Alaskan wilderness. Excessive is as excessive does and Catherine Davis, swim coach at Windsor High school and masters swim coach at the Airport Health Club, marvels at Bradley's commitment. Davis has worked with Bradley and 50 other triathletes on improving their swimming stroke. When it comes to a triathlete's tenacity, Davis said, Bradley is in the top 1 percentile.</p><p>"It's pretty much beyond my imagination," said Davis of Bradley's commitment. "He just doesn't give up."</p><p>That's because at his core, Bradley knows he is no super hero and, therefore, his ego doesn't need to be fed constantly.</p><p>"You got to remember," Bradley said, "I'm ordinary, I really am. When I was at San Marin High School (Novato) I finished fifth in the county's 880 race. I have never won a race, but I finish. Like I said, I do two things really well: I show up and I suffer. I'm good at suffering."</p><p>It was then that I told him I never met an athlete like him.</p><p>"Let me tell you what I am going to have on my tombstone," he said. "It will say, 'He died stupid and he wouldn't have it any other way.' "</p><p>Bradley didn't know it but he redefined an axiom. "Larger-than-life," that's what is said about people who fill up a room with their accomplishments and personality. Bradley takes it one step further.</p><p>Life turns to Bradley and says, "No, Bill, you go ahead. I'll follow."</p><p>You can reach staff columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.</p>