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Outside Magazine August 2002

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Turn-ons: Cycling, Paddling, Yoga, Jungle Navigation!
Turn-offs: Leeches, bad stylists—and spoilsports who mock Team Playboy X-treme

By Mary Roach


	(Roberto Parada)

YOUNG STEVE BLICK HAS BEEN COURTING A PLAYBOY PLAYMATE. He has wooed Miss April with flattering words, and now he kneels before her with gifts. In Blick's duffel bag are a hundred pairs of Oakley sunglasses, with vaporized metal coatings and patented XYZ Optics. Blick does not wish to possess this woman in a physical way. He wishes to possess her in a marketing way: He wants to sponsor her bones.

The woman, 33-year-old Danelle Folta, is captain of Team Playboy X-Treme, an adventure-racing squadron that consists of 22 former centerfolds in their twenties and early thirties. Since its inception in 1998, Team Playboy has run one Eco-Challenge—the famously grueling slog across one or another of the world's most unwelcoming landscapes—and nine Hi-Tec Adventure Races, daylong competitions here in the U.S. Unfortunately the team was disqualified in the 2000 Eco-Challenge for failing to reach a checkpoint in time, but placed second in the women's division in four Hi-Tec races. The Playmates also compete in non-endurance events, including volleyball and golf tournaments. Regardless of their standing, the women feature prominently in television coverage of these games. To date, the team has 14 corporate sponsors, including Adidas, St. Pauli Girl, Red Bull, and Oakley. A popular ice cream brand is considering launching an X-Treme Girl flavor, despite the questionable tact of naming a lickable product after soft-porn models.

Blick, 33, has driven from Oakley's Orange County headquarters to Santa Monica, where ten members of the Playboy team have gathered for a skills camp run by an outfit called Adventure Training Consultants. He has come to introduce the women to the sunglasses that they will be "running," which is what Blick says instead of "wearing." The group is standing in a corner of the parking lot outside the Adventure Training gym. Blick finishes his spiel, and the women descend on the black bag.

"Hey, Steve, what other fashion frames did you bring?"

"Steve, do you have any more like Danelle's?"

"I can't get my lenses in my M-Frame."

"Mine won't fit right on my nose." Playmate Echo Johnson shows Blick how the frames hover above her provocatively upturned appendage. Blick fiddles with the frames and then tells her to try sliding them on over her hair, to which Johnson firmly replies, "No." Adventure Training Consultants is owned by an affable 44-year-old triathlete named Scott Zagarino, who runs classes and training camps for endurance athletes. He periodically coaches the Playmates as they prepare for upcoming events. They've got several Hi-Tec races in the months ahead, along with their second Eco-Challenge, which takes place in Fiji in October.

Zagarino is a Buddhist, but you can tell that his Zen is being stretched thin by the distraction Blick's swag bag has presented. He has three days to cover rock climbing, sea kayaking, land navigation, and advanced mountain biking. Ten minutes ago, the Adventure Training van was scheduled to be on the road to Point Dume, a sea cliff a half-hour north of here. All around him, women in sunglasses are checking their reflections in other women's sunglasses.

"You look awesome!"

"These are totally fly."

"Can I try yours?"

Zagarino cups his hands to his mouth. "Can we please start moving toward the van!"

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Mary Roach is a contributing editor at Discover and writes for The New York Times Magazine and Wired. She lives in San Francisco.

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