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American Morning
Winners Discuss Eco-Challenge Borneo, Part II
Aired April 05, 2001 - 11:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome back the winners of the Eco-Challenge Borneo. We've got the team with us this morning. Joining us today from Denver is Robyn Benincasa and Mike Kloser -- Mike is the guy who's the continual winner, the guy who's never lost, we hear this morning.
And also joining us is Isaac Wilson; he's in Salt Lake City this morning. And we finally got a hold of Ian Adamson, who is the team captain.
There he is. Congratulations. Good to see you; how are you doing?
IAN ADAMSON, CAPTAIN, WINNING TEAM: Good, good. I'm always late, these guys keep telling me.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: Listen, before the break, we asked you guys to think about, and tell us, what were the toughest parts for each of you? And Ian, since you are just joining us now, we'll let you start first. What was the toughest part for you?
ADAMSON: Ooh, well, the whole thing is pretty tough. But, I got to say -- I will probably join a lot of people in this race, and I'll say the leeches were pretty tough. And they weren't tough because they were annoying, but they were tough because you couldn't break them. You try and pull these things apart, and they were like a rubber band; they just snap again.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh. Did we need to know that?
HARRIS: See, this is not a breakfast show, so we can talk about leeches.
(CROSSTALK)
KAGAN: It is on the West Coast.
HARRIS: All right, Robyn, how about for you?
ROBYN BENINCASA, WINNING TEAM MEMBER: I have to agree with Ian that it was just so mentally hard. I remember one night in particular, we were laying on the jungle floor, with not only bugs crawling around beneath us, but leeches falling from the trees onto us like rain -- ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, all over us...
HARRIS: Oh my God!
BENINCASA: ... and I hear Mike whisper to me in the middle of the night while we're sleeping, I think one crawled down my shorts!
(LAUGHTER)
BENINCASA: And I told him he was on his own.
MIKE KLOSER, WINNING TEAM MEMBER: At that point I said, we're out of here, that's enough.
KAGAN: That would be a challenge.
HARRIS: Oh my God!
Okay Mike, can you top that one?
KLOSER: Well, I'll tell you the great thing about the leeches is we didn't have to eat them, unlike "Survivor."
No, really, I think the toughest part for me was this point when you're showing the rope sections there and so forth. We are really tight with the French team and the Aussie team at this point -- maybe 10 or 15 minutes separating us -- and we're going along this ridgeline and I'm heat exhausted; they told us it was a short section. I left the water behind; we all did. And all three teams, as a matter of fact. And so we're pretty dehydrated; the humidity was near 100 percent and the temperature was about the same as well.
HARRIS: Boy. How about you, Isaac?
ISAAC WILSON, WINNING TEAM MEMBER: I had a pretty bad day one day. I got stung by a bunch of bees -- kind of led our team headlong into -- I guess there was a bees' nest or a wasps' nest, and got about 30 or 40 stings. Kind of got a bit of anaphylactic shock, and was just -- my skin and hair and body went on fire. And luckily my teammates reacted pretty quickly, getting me full of antihistamines. But I was miserable for about a whole day; in fact, I was pretty much miserable for the rest of the race.
(CROSSTALK)
HARRIS: But it was all worth it, right?
BENINCASA: We called Ike Charlie Brown for most of the race. If it was going to happen to somebody, it was Ike!
KAGAN: Your misery has fascinated a lot of our viewers, and they've been writing e-mails in. So let's go to one from Yuma, Arizona -- this one from Greg. He says: "Congratulations, first of all, to the Americans." But he also wonders: "Is there any reason or explanations why the Euros seem to dominate these type of endurance challenges? Maybe the Americans are learning from them."
(CROSSTALK)
WILSON: Go ahead, Ian; I'm sorry.
ADAMSON: Thanks, Isaac. I'm not sure that the Euros do dominate these races. In fact, if you look at the history of these things, it's quite often the Kiwis and the Aussies are doing really well; although, of course, now we've caught up. So I think we're leading now. The U.S. contingent is definitely strong.
KAGAN: Well, Ian, what's that accent we here? It doesn't sound like you're from South Carolina.
HARRIS: We got the guy with the accent to answer that one.
KAGAN: Well, it is from the South, but it's way, way South down around the Sydney area, although I've been in the states for 10 years and I'm a permanent resident.
KAGAN: OK, so that qualifies you as American.
ADAMSON: Absolutely.
HARRIS: All right, let's get to the next e-mail question. This is from Karen in New York city: "Congratulations. I watched all four nights, and was pulling for you the entire time. What did you eat to give you the needed energy to go on, and did you load up on carbs prior to the race, similar to what marathon runners do?"
KLOSER: Lots of PowerBars.
BENINCASA: Nice, Mike!
KLOSER: No, we eat pretty much about anything that we can put in our packs, and we're usually eating a lot of the food from our teammates' packs. And I did the race in the fall with Isaac, and Isaac breaks out these Cheetos, crunchy Cheetos, and I never eat the things. I go, Ike, you can't eat these things in the race. He goes, here, try some, believe me you'll never go back. And it's amazing, you just eat what you're hungry for, what your body's craving for; and usually it's a lot of proteins and so forth, but you will take in that junk and fat.
HARRIS: You see -- the next race, I can see it now -- the endorsement deals; he'll be wearing the shirt that's got Cheetos on one side and PowerBars on the other side.
KAGAN: Or maybe Cheeto-flavored PowerBars. I don't know, maybe there's a new product out there.
We do have another e-mail for you -- put that one up on the screen. This one from Chris; he says: "I'm curious to know what kinds of injuries the team sustained, and do they administer their own first aid?"
ADAMSON: We're really well managed, so we don't tend to get very injured. Although in Isaac's case, when he was stung by the bees, we have to do everything in the field. And if we didn't have antihistamines and creams, he probably wouldn't be with us now...
HARRIS: Wasn't there one guy from one team who was really severely badly injured and had to be pulled out?
KLOSER: Several, I think.
ADAMSON: Yes, there was a guy who was impaled on a tree. He was mountain biking down a hill and launched himself onto a tree and it stuck right through his chest -- missed his heart by about two inches.
HARRIS: Oh my God! Is he OK? I mean, I assume he's still alive; is he all right, do you know?
ADAMSON: Oh yes, he's OK now, yes. They got to him in about 10 minutes.
KAGAN: Wasn't one of the teams that got so much publicity before we actually learned about the winners was the team of playmates.
HARRIS: Oh, yes, that's right, the "Playboy" team. How did they do?
KLOSER: They survived the race. I was actually very impressed with that team of gals and then Owen -- he was the male member of the team. And he did a great job keeping the girls under control and coaxing them through or encouraging them through their tough times and so forth. It was pretty impressive.
KAGAN: Tough job, but somebody had to do it, huh?
HARRIS: I've got to think that Robyn, particularly, might have enjoyed snickering at those -- at that team. Did you, Robyn?
BENINCASA: No, they were really, really nice. And for people that had only done, you know, two- or three-hour races -- they were definitely in over their heads, but I have to say that they rose to the occasion, and I think they did a great job.
KAGAN: Let me ask you this; I know there's a lot of people probably watching who are -- they do 10ks, they do marathons or they're a recreational runner. How do you go from being that to what you guys are? How big of a gulf is that, and how much time do you put into your training?
ADAMSON: Well, it's a lifestyle. Very difficult from going to a 10k to doing a 10-day or 12-day race. But I think what we all do is we combine our lives -- make our lives what we do. So our training, which I probably wouldn't call training these days -- it's just going out and running around in the field and having fun in the mountains and cruising down rivers. And if you do enough of it, you get all the skills and you get the ability to do it for a very long time.
HARRIS: You know, I'm looking at you all -- and this is no disrespect intended -- but none of you look like you graduated from high school last year. How much longer do you expect to be able to do this sort of thing and put your bodies to the test like this on a regular basis?
BENINCASA: This race is definitely a race for mature people, patient people, empathetic people. And that tends to put you up into the higher age groups. I mean, Mikey here is -- well how old are you now?
KLOSER: Forty-one.
BENINCASA: Forty-one...
KLOSER: Just a young guy.
BENINCASA: And he is the strongest guy in the sport, and there's no question about it. We really do need to be, I think, almost an older-type endurance athlete to succeed at these things. So I think we're going to be around until they have the eco-challenge on crutches.
HARRIS: Well, whatever the combination is, you guys all have it. Listen, congratulations Ian Adamson, Robyn Benincasa, Mike Kloser, Isaac Wilson. Congratulations guys, you're some great people and you pulled off a great challenge.
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