2,900 Miles Before Them, Yet They’ve Come So Far : Sports: Elderly O.C. team expects race to test endurance. Through cycling, four already won a second chance at life.

IRVINE — Four bicycles dart through the park like giant dragonflies.

Four muscular men crouch above the handlebars, their chins thrust defiantly forward, their faces gleaming with sweat.

A man stops to admire the cyclists’ speed and grace.

He doesn’t know that their combined age is 265 years old.

He doesn’t know that their collective medical history reads like the plot summary from a recent episode of “ER”--two hip replacements, three angioplasties, two knee reconstructions, one heart attack, one double bypass, diabetes, alcoholism, blood clots, arthritis, hypertension and high blood pressure. (Not to mention one near-fatal goring by a bull.)

This is no ordinary group of cyclists, but a quartet of hard-living senior citizens in a headlong sprint against time.

When the 2,900-mile Race Across America begins Sunday, they will join 14 other foursomes of finely trained athletes--most in their 20s and 30s--trying to pedal nonstop from Irvine to Savannah, Ga.

They did it last year, the first Masters Division team ever to complete the punishing event.

But this year they aim to compete , to prove last year was no fluke by turning back a challenge from two upstart squads of seniors.

In a nation that considers power-lounging a sport and relaxation a religion, the team wants to inspire 60-somethings everywhere to rise from their recliners and go forth.

Equally committed is the team’s pit crew, an eclectic assortment of almost a dozen seniors and cardiac patients who will navigate the support vans, prepare the meals and fix the flattened tires.

“We’re not dead yet,” one crew member says bluntly, sounding the unofficial team motto.

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During a recent strategy session in a crew member’s basement, the great expedition of gray-haired rebels seemed a cross between “Cocoon” and “Breaking Away,” which suits team members and their corporate sponsors at Orange County-based Secure Horizons, an HMO for seniors.

“What makes me feel good is if I can encourage people to feel better and have a better lifestyle,” says Jewett Pattee, the 71-year-old team captain from Long Beach, who stands as squat and solid as a fire hydrant, but once was so fat that he couldn’t see his feet. “It’s hard to explain it, unless you’ve been to 50 and been there. You’re an old man, on death’s doorstep, and what the heck are you going to do?”

No longer dwelling on the end, Pattee now hopes to help others his age see the finish line.

But even in the midst of his vigorous training--which routinely includes 100-mile rides--fresh are memories of those days when a premature death seemed his fate, almost his birthright, as a prosperous, 20th-Century American male.

“When I bent over, I couldn’t breathe,” he says, straddling a sleek carbon-fiber racing bike after a long morning’s ride, both John Wayne-ish and Jack LaLanne-ish atop the hard rubber saddle. “I had borderline diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis of the spine. I was an alcoholic, I smoked cigarettes, and I had Renaud’s Syndrome. I thought I was going to die.”

Instead, he was reborn, as were teammates Jim Davis, 63, of Huntington Beach, Chuck Hanson, 64, of Bellflower, and Ray Michel, 67, of Lakewood.

Race Across America founders concede that when they designed their unique endurance test in 1982, they never envisioned a team with three grandfathers taking part.

After the cruel heat of the desert, which typically claims a team or two, the heavenward trek through the Rocky Mountains will hold special tortures for legs that were springiest during the Eisenhower era.

“They have three 10,000-foot climbs in Colorado,” race director Michael Shermer says. “Then they’ve got two days of head winds and rain in Oklahoma. And in Arkansas we have to go across the worst highway in America. . . . It’s pretty brutal.”

Like most racers, Team Secure Horizons plans to divide the work into eight-hour shifts. Two cyclists will take hourly turns during one shift, then eat and sleep during the second tandem’s shift.

“That’s a great feeling when you go in the van,” says Michel, a former bodybuilder and bullfighter.

Michel did not ride with Team Secure Horizons last year, but worked in the pit crew.

He earned a promotion this year when 60-year-old Bill Rider, the team’s youngest member, took a nasty spill and broke his clavicle earlier this year.

With no firsthand experience of the grueling race, Michel does not share his teammates’ cushion of confidence.

Still, he almost relishes the extra anxiety, savoring each drop of that sweet, gritty elixir so plentiful in his bullfighting youth--adrenaline.

“My wife was telling me the other day, ‘You’re tossing and turning and mumbling in your sleep!’ ”

He smiles. Just like the old days.

“To me, it’s kind of awesome to be able to do this,” says Hanson, a retired business executive whose life seemed to slip its chain 10 years ago.

Drinking, smoking, aimlessly carousing, Hanson vowed on New Year’s Day, 1986, to remake himself.

He has not had a drink since, but has ridden his bicycle with the zeal of a penitent.

“It’s possible I could’ve ended up on Skid Row if it wasn’t for the bicycle,” he says.

Pedaling through years of despair, then through a heart attack and double bypass, Hanson calculates that since 1983 he has pedaled enough miles to span the globe four times.

Riding also has afforded him the time to do a few thousand laps through his mind, the best form of reflection for an active man who loathes the golden years.

“I would like to help be the solution for the problems of the world,” he says softly, referring to his healthful lifestyle. “I used to think the way I was--and people like me--was the problem.”

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Like his teammates, Davis wants his ride to stand for something.

An executive with TRW in Huntington Beach, he intends to help people disregard not just their own ages, but his.

“The only time I think about being 63 is when somebody asks me about being 63,” he says with a huff.

Having flown Air Force jets for 22 years, Davis says fear is not a factor in his race preparation, as it is for many long-distance riders.

Piloting a bicycle across the California desert loses its power to intimidate when a man has felt an airplane shudder and explode beneath him.

“Once you start pedaling, you just keep pedaling,” he says, laughing at the simplicity of his life’s motto. “Don’t look back, baby.”

The team expects to finish the race in seven days.

That was their goal last year too, but the race took them eight days, five hours and seven minutes.

Most delays were caused by crew members, many of whom were mentally and physically unprepared for the challenges of the road.

By the 2,900th mile last year, crew members were not speaking, the crew chief had been fired and navigation had become a nightmare.

Pattee laughs bitterly, recalling one particular night when poor directions sent Hanson pedaling off into the darkness, miles up a steep grade that was far afield of the race course.

This year’s crew has many new members, many of whom are proud athletes in their own right, and everyone seems committed to shattering last year’s time.

“It’ll be quite an accomplishment for the riders,” says crew chief Guido Acquistapace, 68, a cardiac patient who recuperates from his triple bypass by riding his bicycle compulsively. “The one thing to remember is, 90% of the crew is just as good as anyone riding.”

In fact, Acquistapace says crew members face a more bracing endurance test than the riders, because they must fight the dangerous urge to fall asleep at the wheel.

Ultimately, both crew members and riders say it doesn’t matter how many times they get lost, or how long it takes to reach Savannah.

The real goal is the crossing, which brings a feeling that defies Pattee’s powers of description.

“It’s like nothing in this world,” he says. “All the problems are gone. We’re big men, so we’re not supposed to do what we did when we crossed the finish line [last year], wiping our eyes.”

Best of all, Pattee adds, is that people given a second chance at fitness cross a spiritual finish line every day of their lives.

“People talk about the afterlife, or second life, and they go to heaven,” he says. “That’s very similar to what I did. I didn’t die physically, but I changed from a grave situation into a situation that is active, vibrant. Life.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Easy Rider

Profile: Jewett Pattee

Role: Captain, Team Secure Horizons

Age: 71

Residence: Long Beach

Job: Pharmacist

Awards: Four Senior Olympics gold medals; various silver and bronze medals

Turning point: “At 50, I was overweight. I smoked and drank. I gave it all up and started running and cycling. I was an old man at 50, I’m not anymore.”

Next goal: “I’d like to be the oldest winner of a Triple Crown, which is to ride three double centuries in one season.”

Outlook: “I know if I keep this lifestyle, I’ll continue to feel better than I did when I was in my 30s.”

RAAM Route

The 2,900-mile race across the United States traverses the southern half of the country, with its most challenging section coming in the deserts:

Start: Irvine

Flagstaff, AZ; 498 miles

Durango, Co; 854 miles

Halfway point: Slapout, OK; 1,441 miles

Memphis, TN; 2,149 miles

Finish: Savannah, GA; 2,904 miles

Source: Team Secure Horizons