Santa Rosa man seeks, gets best of ultra-distance challenges

Sure, Bill Bradley said, I'll show you my toes. Why not? There's always a body part on Bradley that invites curiosity and examination. No body, least of all his, goes through what it has gone through and remains pristine. And so last Wednesday Bradley took off his closed-toed sandals on his left foot to reveal those five toes, toes that looked like they were stabbed with an ice pick after they had been hit with a hammer.

"Last night," said the Santa Rosa resident, "I had to pull off the toenail on my big toe. It was throbbing too much for me to sleep. I cut the nail in half, then cut as much along the cuticle as I could and then yanked. Nah, it didn't really hurt. I already lost three in the Canyon."

Extracting a toenail is a bug bite to Bradley after what he experienced for five days, 23 hours and 30 minutes in Arizona. On May 26, Bradley emerged from the Grand Canyon for the seventh and last time, completing seven consecutive rim-to-rim run-walks, the most anyone has ever done. Bradley didn't sleep for more than two hours a night. He was exposed to a temperature range of 39-114 degrees. One crossing took 17? hours. He was delirious more hours than he could count. On reflection, Bradley summarizes his adventure as only he can, as only he would dare.

"The Grand Canyon is sexy," said Bradley, 52. "I loved it. I absolutely would do it again."

For Bradley, pain is his friend, his ally in a way. He needs to feel it, in all its anatomical locations and in its various degrees of intensity. Pain to Bradley is like sugar in the morning coffee. Some people need a little. Some people need a lot. Bradley always prefers multiple spoonfuls. It makes him feel alive and awake. Still to some extent, pain gives him a sense of worth, that through it he is rebuilding his confidence from a devastating bankruptcy and divorce in 2005.

"Back then I couldn't look at people in the eyes," said Bradley, who lost 17 video game stores, five buildings, two houses and an estimated $5 million net worth.

Pain is accomplishment for Bradley because it represents all the things he has done in the last eight years and, without understatement, very few of us own this kind of resume.

In 2010 Bradley became the 24th person to run a Double Badwater, a 292-mile run-walk-stagger from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney and back. In June 2009 he completed the Race Across America, a 3,000 bike from Oceanside to Annapolis, Md. In April 2010, he ran 199 miles from Calistoga to Santa Cruz, stopping along the way to swim under the Golden Gate Bridge. In 2007 he completed The Furnace Creek 508, a bike race of that mileage through Death Valley in which he fell asleep while on the bike. In October 2011 he completed the Ultimate Lake Tahoe Triathlon in a snowstorm at five days, 16 hours.

There's also a flip side to his pain. In May 2012, he spent 11 days trying to climb Mt. Denali in Alaska, stopping because of bronchitis and altitude sickness. He has tried and failed three times to complete the Arrowhead 135, pulling a 40-pound sled in the dead of a Minnesota winter. He has made four attempts at swimming the English Channel and failed each time.

And then there's the pain that led Bradley to a middle ground. In February 2009, Bradley completed his second attempt at the Susitna 100, a 100-mile sled dog race in which Bradley was the sled dog, pulling a 40-pound sled for 54 hours over snow and frozen ground. His accomplishment was not official because he finished six hours after officials closed the race.

Bradley carries no illusion that he is an elite athlete, an Olympian of Zeus proportions who is about to represent America or even the local YMCA at a competition.

"I am ordinary," he said. "But you know how athletes talk all the time about doing something great. Well, I want to be the greatest at suffering."

Degree and duration of pain would appear difficult to measure. True, Bradley has experienced hypothermia, dehydration, bronchitis, altitude sickness, hallucinations, frostbite and sea sickness - yes he swims even though he gets sea sick. Those words all carry an image. But what about real impact?

Here are two examples that can more dramatically articulate pain and suffering.

Bradley nearly succumbed from dust pneumonia.

"Had no idea what that was," said Bradley, who always had at least one of two ultra marathoners with him on the trails.

On his fourth descent into the Canyon Bradley began suffering from dust pneumonia, an inflammation of the airways from the accumulation of dust.

"I kept wondering where all the dust I saw was going," Bradley said. "It was going into my lungs."

By the seventh crossing Bradley was spitting up a brown mud-like substance. He had difficulty breathing and talking. It was of little solace to him when he found out many Americans died from dust pneumonia during the dust storms of the 1930s.