The Girl Can't Help It (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine April 2003

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The Girl Can't Help It (Cont.)

THREE MONTHS AFTER Team Firejock's training begins in earnest, their practice is interrupted by the worst Colorado wildfire season in recorded history. In mid-July, the southeast flank of the Hayman fire, which will go on to consume 134,000 acres, blows up not 30 miles from Colorado Springs. The Fat spends 14 days at a remote camp, where volunteer and paid firefighters can be seen sucking wind and surrendering their calm in extreme heat, just as Juliet would have predicted.

"It was the real deal," says The Fat, grateful to have been under Juliet's wing before hitting the backcountry. "You fight an urban structure fire, you go at 110 percent for 40 minutes. But wildland is aerobic: 14-hour days moving firewood, cutting fire lines, prepping houses. It's continuous, arduous work with no breaks, and then you camp on the ground at night, eating food served out of drywall buckets."

"If for no other reason than the level of stress, you should be ready for it," says Juliet, who stayed behind to handle medical calls. "You're away from your family for up to 21 days at a time, you carry all the stuff you need on your back, hiking all day. And that's just getting to the fire."

For everybody on Team Firejock, the summer is marked by steady fitness gains. Four months after the big blaze, by the time of the Challenge regionals in Denver, all three competitors are climbing stairs and swinging sledgehammers in their sleep. They're sore. They're worn out. They're ready.

As the racing picks up steam at the Medved Autoplex, everybody tries to stay loose. The Fat steps very slowly up and down on a folding chair. Stacy's about to go. Denny tries to extract a used wad of chewing gum from its foil. He likes to have a little spit in his mouth, he says, and this will help work it up.

On the other side of the course, competitors are finishing the race by falling onto a mattress, still clutching Rescue Randy. Whether they kicked butt or bonked, they now stagger into the recovery area breathless and/or nauseated, cooling off in a spray of water.

"All I want to do is finish," The Fat says as he watches the racers come in. "I want it not to be memorable. I don't want people saying, Remember when the chief got tangled in a hose? Remember when the chief puked?"

A small video crew wanders around, shooting atmosphere footage under the direction of Pamela Jones.

"They're doing our fake Nike commercial, starring Juliet," Pamela announces. When it's wrapped up, she says, she'll show it to Nike officials. After that, she hopes, maybe they'll decide to shoot a real one. "And this is so great, we might be able to use it in our exercise video."

Exercise video?

"Oh, yes, we're definitely doing that now," she says, holding a parasol over her head to keep the sun at bay. "We might tie it in with Firejock, or it might be a whole new thing. We're still working on it!"

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