At 53, Angelika Castaneda is made for the Raid
By James Bowyer

"What was I going to say?" asks Kelty-Cabela's John Kainer to no one in particular, his thoughts scrambled by the strain of completing the 68-mile overnight hike.

The rest of the team that would finally finish the Raid in 16th place are being pampered by their assistants at the Raid's fourth headquarters, two-thirds of the way into the race.

Dr. Parker Cross, the team's fixer of battered limbs, busies himself with restoring 36-year-old Nick Spaeder's tender feet. The Navy SEAL from Virginia lays flat on his stomach while the doctor cuts away the dead skin on the soles of his feet. Most of the skin on his marshmallow appendages will have to be removed and he will continue the race on pain killers.

"Oh, yes," remembers Kainer, "Angelika, how are your feet doing?"

Fifty-three-year-old Angelika Castaneda, the original Iron Lady, lifts a perfect foot, waves it in the air, and smiles.

It's not that she's showing off, but after 14 years of intensive training her body has long given up complaining.

"The first time the feet say no, the ligaments say no and the muscles say no," she says in her heavy Austrian accent, "I have had all the blisters a person can get, but eventually the body adjusts."

In her career as an ultrarunner, triathlete, and adventure racer, Angelika has pushed herself further than all but a few.

She has won her class in the French triple Ironman, the double in the U.S., and has captured places in another 16 of the unforgiving races.

Three times she has survived the Death Valley to Mount Whitney summer foot race. The 150-mile desert race from the lowest to highest point in the lower 48 states passes through one of the world's hottest spots.

She has also crossed the Saharan desert in the Marathon des Sables, and has completed more than 50 50-mile races.

The 1996 Extreme Games was hers and she led the winning women's team in last year's Raid. In her spare time she gets a kick out of climbing frozen waterfalls.

"Being an athlete is a humbling experience," says Castaneda by way of explanation. The reasons for racing, it would seem, are not that important.

"What am I doing? Why am I doing it? It doesn't matter, the questions don't make it easier, they just pass through my head."

By way of what might be a clue she talks about her home in San Diego, where she has covered a wall with photos, clippings, and certificates documenting her long career.

"I call it my little wall of fame but it is really my wall of pain," she says.

During each race, she says, she searches for a few words to carry her through, an antidote for the doubts that will come. "I hold onto these words instead of drifting into pain," she explains.

By the start of this year's Raid, her third, she still had not found the words, but by the end of the first day's hike she had found her mantra: "I am doing it in faith."

"You see, I tap into this power," she says throwing her arm into the air and pointing to the sky. Racing is her religion.

Her body is so finely tuned that she can pinpoint her every need as only those who have gone beyond the thresholds know how. The need for potassium, sugar, or protein are all monitored in the extreme cycle of burning energy.

"Eating takes up too much energy," she says shrugging off an offer of food while the rest of the team tucks into buckets of pasta. "I will eat later but now my body is still giving out too much energy."

But the effort required for such titanic displays of endurance do take their toll. Her daily training program begins at 5 a.m. with an average of up to four hours of running, riding, or swimming, with the weekends topped by a 25-mile run.

"Whatever you do, you must pay a price," she says, "Sometimes I feel I have paid enough because it has been so long."

James Bowyer is a freelance journalist living in Cape Town, South Africa.