The Road to Reality

The be-all and end-all of life should not
be to get rich, but to enrich the world.
— B. C. Forbes

THE MORNING BEGAN LIKE an ordinary Sunday in our Santa Monica apartment: nothing foreshadowed that what was about to unfold would be a life-changing event. I was downstairs preparing our breakfast in bed—eggs over easy, turkey bacon, and Earl Grey tea with cream on the side.

I carried the tray upstairs, beautifully arranged with a flower from our garden, along with the morning paper, which I’d picked up on my early-morning walk. That was just one of the things I’d quickly come to love about living in Santa Monica. Back on Long Island, you had to be a multimillionaire in the Hamptons to live near a nice beach. In Santa Monica, you could live relatively affordably and be in walking distance to the ocean.

That morning, however, Mark had slept in as I wandered along the sand thinking about his relentless drive and entrepreneurial spirit. By then—1991—it was clear that Mark was the sort of person who had to be his own boss, and he loved getting projects off the ground. In the year and a half since we’d been living together, he’d started a new company: Sterling Financial, which issued credit cards through telemarketing. In an industry where there’s a fine line between legitimate and suspect practices, Sterling was well respected, and competing credit-card companies were putting in bids to buy it.

Lately, however, Mark was restless. I knew he was bored with finance and wanted to launch something new. That Sunday morning, I literally delivered the idea—which he later called “a sign”—on a silver tray.

“Ah, a cup of tea,” Mark said with a smile, as I entered our bedroom and set down the assembled brunch. He picked up the Los Angeles Times, his eyes falling upon a photo of a canoe being paddled through churning waters in an ominous-looking jungle. Underneath the photo was an article about a French long-distance endurance race created by Paris-based journalist and explorer Gerald Fusil. Called the Raid Gauloises—raid being the French term for “long-distance trek,” and Gauloises referring to the French cigarette manufacturer that was the sponsor—the two-week-long team events subjected competitors to rigorous adventures—hang gliding, sky diving, mountain climbing, kayaking, and spelunking, among them—in rugged, far-flung locales. The Times article described the third Raid, which had just wrapped up in New Caledonia, an island chain a thousand miles east of Australia.

“Di,” Mark said, looking up from the article, “it says here there’s never been an American team represented in the Raid.” He got that funny look in his eyes that by then I knew well. “We could be the first!” I could nearly hear the idea machine revving up in his head.

A decade earlier, Mark had been in top shape while in the service of the British Army, seeing action in the 1982 Falklands War—and he remained a thrill-seeking man’s man. But lately, his thrills were more of the entrepreneurial variety. In the decade since his commando days, he’d been employed in far less physically-demanding positions—Malibu nanny, insurance salesman, T-shirt hawker on Venice Beach, and vice president of Faces, among them.

Back in those days, we didn’t climb mountains, scuba dive, or go whitewater rafting down churning rivers. For kicks, we traveled abroad—flying to London to visit Mark’s parents, Archie and Jean, or jetting off to Monte Carlo and Paris. Our vacations rarely involved anything more strenuous than a few laps in the resort pool or picking up binoculars and looking for the mythical Loch Ness monster.

Except for our bike rides along Venice Beach, and skiing during weekend getaways to Mammoth Lakes in the Sierras, where Mark tore a ligament in his knee after barreling down a double-black diamond littered with steep moguls, Mark had strayed far from the adventure trail and was no longer in tip-top condition. Back in February 1991 when he read that article about the Raid, I was the one concerned with staying physically fit and working out at the gym. My husband-to-be yawned every time I suggested he start working out. But that was about to change.

By the time we finished our cups of tea that Sunday, we’d committed to an idea that our friends thought was insane: to assemble a team to compete in the 1992 Raid. The event was to unfold in Oman, a country of vast deserts at the toe of the Arabian Peninsula’s “boot.”

We didn’t have a clue that our decision that morning would ultimately vault us into the world of prime-time television, or that we would eventually launch the country’s hottest show. Back then, we had nothing but a pipe dream—and the blind ambition to turn it into a reality.

But it didn’t happen overnight. More than a year elapsed between the moment the gun went off in our heads and the gun signaling the start of the Raid sounded in Oman. In 1991, we both had full-time jobs—I was in the talent-marketing business, and every day Mark oversaw his credit-card enterprise.

Nevertheless, every night and every weekend, we brainstormed on how to put together “Team American Pride,” as we called the five-person team that was then just a fantasy. First, we needed to find sponsors: just to enter the Raid we’d have to ante up $25,000—and factoring in airfares, equipment, and lodging, the cost for the adventure shot into the six figures. And from the beginning, we had more than simply competing in the endurance races on our minds: we were trying to figure out how to morph the Raid into a new, high-profile event.

Mark is a trend spotter—he can see the next thing coming around the bend, when to most people it’s still up in thin air. From the minute that L.A. Times article landed on our breakfast tray, he had a gut feeling that the adventure-racing concept that Frenchman Gerard Fusil pioneered would be “the next big thing”—but the instinct of a credit-card salesman wasn’t enough to grab sponsors.

That’s when we pulled in Brian Terkelsen. Skilled in financial forecasting and deciphering trends, the goateed investment banker from New York was the first person to take our pitch seriously. He researched the idea—compiling graphs, survey results, and bell charts. Brian’s research showed three emerging trends in how Americans wanted to spend their free time: traveling in nature, searching for self-fulfillment through adventure, and partaking in (or watching) over-the-top sporting events. Bingo! The international event that we envisioned combined all three, and we coined a name for this adventure event that we were sketching out on the drawing boards of our heads: Eco-Challenge.

To understand the nuts and bolts of organizing an endurance-relay event—as well as what competitors faced—Mark wanted to personally partake in the Raid Gauloises. We needed to understand the logistics of planning, and how to bring in sponsors’ money—not to mention the daunting task of putting together a team. We invited our athletic friends to sign on for Team American Pride: their collective response was a laughter-filled echo of “You’re out of your minds,” interspersed with the occasional “Uh, where is Oman, anyway?”

The idea of entering the 1992 Raid in Oman sounded all the more outrageous when, mere days after the article appeared, Operation Desert Storm began raining bombs over Kuwait and Iraq, while Saddam’s Scud missiles hit nearby Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“Dianne, that Raid thing sounds so dangerous,” my mother said when I called to tell her of our plans. “Is Mark crazy?” She was one of the many who assumed that the entire Middle East was a massive war zone.

Eliciting only warnings from our social circle, I turned elsewhere. On my next visit to the Mezzaplex gym in West L.A., I didn’t just sweat on the Stairmaster: I started networking, telling everyone about our plan. One of the trainers, Diane Ekkert, knew all about the Raid: she was good friends with Nelly Fusil, wife of the Raid’s creator, Gerard Fusil.

As luck would have it, Nelly was coming to town. Diane invited Mark and me to dinner to meet the Parisian, and we all hit it off. From there, the wheels began quickly turning. Mark brought Gerard Fusil into the Eco-Challenge planning, hiring him as a consultant; in turn, rangy Gerard involved Mark in logistical planning for the 1992 Raid.

I also mined Mezzaplex for athletes to be part of Team American Pride. By early 1992, we’d lined up a motley crew—an actor, a stockbroker, and a fitness trainer to the stars, later adding an assistant TV director. With the team members in place, our next hurdle was raising money. We devised sponsorship packages and started cold-calling companies to raise money. Our friend Glenna Wiseman was the driving force in getting B.U.M. Equipment, a sportswear manufacturer, to sign on as the title sponsor, which brought in $50,000—the foundation of the team’s funding. From there, it began snowballing, with Nissan and Paul Mitchell among those donating money and equipment for the cause of Team American Pride.

With the project well under way, Mark formally proposed, adding even more thrills—and chaos—to the year.

We’d been talking about marriage ever since I’d moved to California. Mark’s parents weren’t entirely surprised when we announced our engagement. They’d suspected that I might end up being the second “Mrs. Burnett” ever since we met over Christmas 1989, which I’d initially planned to spend in New York with my family. When Mark flew to London for the holidays that year, he was so down in the dumps after three days that his mother insisted that he fly me to England, where I spent the holiday with his merry-making clan.

Despite our intentions to wed, we didn’t immediately get around to it. We’d been busy with a move to a new apartment in Santa Monica, and I kept changing jobs—advancing up the entertainment-marketing ladder at assorted firms. And we frequently traveled abroad. At the end of a trip to visit Mark’s family in England over Christmas 1991, followed by a jaunt to France for my birthday, then Monaco for New Year’s Eve, I wrote in my journal while waiting at the airport:

January 6, 1992

With Mark as my guide, I’m finally seeing the world! The architecture! The food! The people! The history! It’s incredible!

Everything is happening so fast, though. I have to slow down and focus to achieve my goals, one by one, step by step.

My goals for 1992:

1. Buy a home

2. Plan wedding: dress, Hawaii, reception

3. Start a business

4. Buy a piano/take singing lessons!

5. Take French classes

6. Sign up for real estate classes; get my certificate

We were sitting in Chaya Brasserie—the classy restaurant that had been the backdrop for so much of our personal history. We’d had our secret, romantic interlude there when I’d visited the West Coast with Virginia; it was also the site of the incident with Kym and her sisters my first night back in California, when I’d returned to move in with Mark. We reminisced about that spirited beginning, laughing that Kym was still calling me, demanding the return of the purse, which Mark denied giving her in the first place.

“To the love of my life,” Mark said that night, raising his glass of Cristal. Our glasses clinked, and I smiled, more in love than ever with the man by my side.

He pulled out a small red-velvet Cartier box with a beautiful, sparkling two-carat emerald-cut diamond inside. “So are you in this for the duration, or what?”

I laughed. “Is that how the romantic who rescued me from the 516 zone is proposing?”

It was fitting that he would pop the question in terms of an endurance race. By then, Mark was obsessed with them—and his obsession only grew.

“Joan Minerva!” Mark crowed into the phone, doing his best Monty Hall imitation. “You have just won an all-expenses-paid vacation to the tropical island of Kaua’i! Rain forests, waterfalls, and a gorgeous bride-to-be are just a few lures to this getaway of a lifetime …”

I could hear my mother’s voice on the other end. “I won what … Who is this?”

“Got you that time, Joanie!” said my fiancé, falling back into his clipped proper English. Mark loved to call Mom and talk in funny accents; he got her almost every time. “Joanie, I am marrying your bee-you-tee-full daughter! In Hawaii! Start packing your bags!”

I’d wanted to have our wedding in New York, close to my family, and in the scenario I’d been dreaming up, our reception would be held at Tavern on the Green. Mark wanted to have it in a lovely medieval church in London, close to his clan. So we compromised, and decided on Hawaii—the gorgeous island of Kaua’i to be precise—rolling the wedding, an extended-family vacation, and our honeymoon into one. We selected the date June 29, 1992—exactly three years from our first kiss. Our wedding invitations read, “On this day, I marry my best friend.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration: by then, Mark and I were a dynamic unit—loyal friends, passionate lovers, world travelers, and partners working toward a shared dream. But my best friend, already deep in pitching sponsors for Team American Pride as well as developing Eco-Challenge, didn’t have time to plan a wedding. Neither, for that matter, did I, but I squeezed it in anyway.

If ever a young woman wants her mother near, it’s when she’s planning her wedding. The three thousand miles between my mother and me seemed more like three thousand light-years, and I missed her more than ever. When I was back in New York over Christmas, we’d gone shopping for dresses at Vera Wang—and Mom’s eyes got misty every time I walked out of the dressing room. But back then Mark and I hadn’t set the date. Now that we had a date in mind, I kept inviting Mom to California to help me pick out a dress, and to help with the wedding planning. I asked and asked, offering to fly her out, but she hated planes; never a spontaneous person, she preferred to plan her travel several months in advance. Despite my frequent calls, she just wouldn’t come.

I looked through the racks of bridal stores across the greater Los Angeles area, but I couldn’t find what I wanted. After months of searching, I finally designed a gown of my own: off-the-shoulder, low-cut, with a form-fitting lacy bodice and long satin gloves. My dress, said those at my wedding, was the sexiest bridal gown they’d ever seen.

In the days leading up to our flight to Hawaii, family members began arriving in Los Angeles. My friend Jean teamed up with my sister Lisa to throw a beautiful wedding shower for me. Normally, a wedding shower is ladies-only, but we wanted the visiting men to partake in the festivities.

After several days of merrymaking in Santa Monica, we departed from LAX for Hawaii’s “paradise garden island”—Kaua’i. Fearing that my gown would get lost if I checked it in with my baggage, I carried my wedding dress onto the plane and stuffed it, as carefully as possible, into the small luggage closet in the front of the coach section, where our group had taken over most of the seats; there were so many of us, it felt like we’d chartered the plane.

We rented houses in Hanalei and the setting was surreal. Kaua’i—one of the wettest islands on the planet—has incessant tropical rainfall: every morning we awoke to a rainbow. Everyone was in great spirits, and even Mom let her hair down. From the minute she arrived—being greeted at the airport with a lei—Mark kept ribbing that Joanie was going to come to our wedding in her wedding dress, and wanted to remarry Dom, my father.

“Dom,” Mark said with a poker face whenever my mother was in hearing distance, “Joanie brought her wedding dress, I saw it!”

“Oh, Mark, cut it out!” Joanie responded every time, blushing between laughs. She adored Mark and his non-stop joking.

Mom had no desire to renew her vows with Dad, but the tropical climate, rolling mountains and white sand beaches of the exotic oasis were clearly a welcome change from Peppermint Road, which she hadn’t left for years; she couldn’t stop smiling.

Mark’s mother Jean, who’d been battling cancer, was strong enough to travel to Hawaii to witness our union. My mother-in-law displayed her artistic flair, beautifully arranging all the flowers for the wedding party: my bouquet of white orchids and white roses, flower pieces for the bridal party’s hair, and boutonnières for the men.

In the hours leading up to the wedding, all my bridesmaids congregated in my suite, where we sipped champagne while getting ready. I fixed my own hair and makeup, my mother at my side all the while.

“Honey, I’m so thrilled for you!” she kept saying. “Dianne, you look beautiful!” Mom was radiant; I’d never seen her happier.

Our ceremony was an intimate affair held at the edge of Hanalei Bay, on the north side of Kaua’i. It was officiated by a local pastor, who conducted the ceremony half in English and half in the local Hawaiian dialect; whenever he spoke in the native tongue, Virginia had to hold in her laugh. Conversely, I was so emotional during the ceremony that I broke down sobbing as I was saying my vows; I could barely get out the words.

Everyone was beaming as we walked out as man and wife. Jean told me that she was touched seeing her son with his new bride, seeing pure joy light up Mark’s face.

We held the reception at the Princeville Hotel. On a terrace overlooking the ocean, Mark and I sat down at the wedding table, surrounded by the people who meant most to us—my mother, my father, Jean and Archie, my sister Lisa, and Mark’s friend Steve from England. Our families hit it off, and we laughed and laughed throughout the many courses of the luau, from the Hawaiian appetizers—called pupus—to the main course of roasted pig, grilled on an open fire. After dinner, the entertainment began with men throwing flaming sticks, then swallowing fire, followed by Hawaiian women in coconut bras and grass skirts, swaying to traditional Hawaiian tunes played on ukuleles. Mom even got up on the stage, miming their steps and flowing hand movements that told historical stories with the gestures.

After the reception, Mark and I went back to the room and I slipped into sexy lingerie—white corset, white lacy garter belt, white stockings, the works. All my dreams about my wedding night were about to come true. I thought.

I made my appearance in the bedroom, still wearing my white Jimmy Choos, and anticipating that my hubby would take one look at my get-up, swoop me into in his arms, and dramatically carry me to the bed—or at least whistle.

“Hey, hon,” said Mark, barely noticing my racy garb, “let’s ask Steve if he wants to hang out with us in the hot tub and drink some champagne!”

I looked at my husband of four hours. “Ummm, well, sure, absolutely!” I didn’t want to start our marriage with a fight.

I had imagined that Steve would have had the good sense to turn down the invitation, given that it was our wedding night. But he didn’t.

After a few more magical days with our families—hiking past waterfalls in the jungle, kayaking across turquoise lagoons, and enjoying fabulous dinners on oceanfront terraces—all our guests flew back to the mainland. Mark and I checked into The Princeville. I had just married the man of my dreams, and couldn’t have been happier. We savored every moment of our honeymoon in the tropical paradise. And then we flew back to L.A. and began training for the Raid. The adventure had just begun.

A possible snag arose early in the practice sessions. The men I’d recruited from Mezzaplex—actor Owen Rutledge (a rugby star back in New Zealand), fitness guru Michael Carson (Paula Abdul was but one of his clients), and stockbroker Norman Archer Hunte—were all “gym-fit,” as was Mark by then, but only one person on the team had ever partaken in a long-distance endurance race. Susan Hemond, a sports TV director, had competed in the Raid when it was held in Costa Rica. Initially, the other teammates’ lack of experience didn’t seem to be a big deal: back then we thought the only thing that mattered was fitness. Mark, the team captain, devised demanding training courses that mirrored events in the upcoming Raid.

Weekend regimens started at 5 A.M. After I made Mark breakfast, we gathered together all the equipment, then headed out to a barely-marked mountain trailhead. Dropping off the team, I navigated to the other side of the mountain, using crude trail maps and a compass—the task was much more difficult then, in the era before Google Maps and GPS. For twelve hours or more, the team raced across the rugged terrain, climbing up cliffs or rappelling down them. They often showed up late to our meeting point, leaving me to pace in the parking lot, rechecking my map, peering through binoculars, imagining that they were trapped, or surrounded by rabid coyotes. I’d had the clever idea for the team to carry walkie-talkies, but they were usually too far out of range to reach me.

Early one weekend morning, the team members—dressed in Team American Pride uniforms—were readying their kayaks at Marina del Rey, the launching point for a 22-mile excursion to Santa Catalina Island, when Mark Steines from Channel 9, whom I’d tipped off when I ran into him at the gym, showed up with his camera and microphone to report on that day’s session. He interviewed each team member, questioning them about what had motivated them to compete in such a grueling race. It was our first media attention, and everybody was pumped.

As the team paddled off in the kayaks, I followed behind on a friend’s boat, my binoculars trained on them. All was fine on the way there, but on the return, the tiny specks in the vast Pacific at one point disappeared. I panicked—convinced they’d flipped over under the ten-foot-high swells or had been attacked by sharks. In fact, they’d simply ended up way off course, and finally showed up back at the marina, hours late and shivering.

The next weekend, we set off for a ranch in Palmdale to train for the horseback-riding segment of the race. Located at the edges of the Mohave Desert, Palmdale is hot, dusty, and dry. Mark’s parents and I waited patiently in the blazing 110-degree sun, making sure the team had plenty of water and sunscreen. Mothering is second nature to me, and I liked taking care of my husband.

In retrospect, I realize that this was where I began to lose my identity, although I didn’t see it at the time. I thought I was helping to build our future, but I was actually starting to get lost in the shuffle of “Mark’s World.” He was a loving partner, and I happily shared in his dreams, willingly pitching in to support his goals, but I didn’t notice that I had stopped pursuing my goals, such as acting. I was so enmeshed in Mark’s identity—and the identity of “us”—that I sometimes caught myself telling people that we were competing in the Raid Gauloises, when in actuality, Mark was competing, and I was an actively-involved spectator. I didn’t see the irony of my choices for many years: I was living in one of the few eras in human history when women didn’t have to give up their identity, but I was doing so without question.

As the Raid drew near, we made our final preparations. Each of us had to get costly shots to guard against tetanus, hepatitis A and B, malaria, rabies, cholera, encephalitis, and dengue fever. The Raid rules required that we send letters to family members, telling them what we were about to undertake and exactly where we would be. We also had to sign our lives away in a lengthy 50-page document that released organizers from all liability.

At the airport, we met up with Brian Terkelsen, the team’s logistics man, who was busy organizing the camping supplies, cooking stoves, Ziploc bags, dry food, and hiking shoes. We’d already shipped over our bikes, paying thousands of dollars in fees. It was a massive undertaking.

En route to Oman, we stopped in Egypt. Our first night in Cairo we took in the pyramids at sunset, a wondrous hour to marvel at the creations of the ancients. There we stood, in utter awe at the giant formations built thousands of years ago. It was impossible not to wonder, How did they design these? How did they build them? What was their purpose? Nothing I’d ever seen in my life compared to the magnificence in front of me.

When the laser show started, Mark pulled me close, whispering the words of “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” in my ear. We slow-danced in the moonlight, gazing into one another’s eyes. In the midst of a hundred other tourists, we were alone in our bubble as a spectacular light show was projected onto the monuments.

“Would you like to go for a climb?” (And let me take advantage of some dumb tourists!)

The guide escorted Brian, Mark, and me to the base of the pyramid, where we met two men with machine guns! For a young woman from Long Island on her first night in the Middle East, this was terrifying, but exciting nonetheless. Here I was, in an unfamiliar land, already breaking the law, trespassing on an international historic preservation site, and being escorted by men with automatic weapons.

“More money for them,” said our guide, gesturing in the direction of the two men. How could we refuse? Mark paid both of the armed men, and we were given the okay to scale the Great Pyramid of Giza. After this adventure, I felt like I was ready to hang out with Ali Baba and the 40 thieves.

It was night, and everything was pitch black. We climbed one block at a time, and I couldn’t bear to look down as we ascended. Since I hadn’t anticipated climbing that night, I wasn’t dressed for the occasion. My jacket kept getting caught in the cracks, my scarf was making me trip, and my loafers kept slipping on the aged stone. I kept reminding myself, This might be the only time you’ll have the opportunity to scale a pyramid!

We reached the top of the pyramid against the backdrop of a billion stars glowing in the night sky. How did I get here?

We carefully made our way back to the ground, with me slipping down almost every step. Upon completing our descent, the guide asked if we wanted to crawl underneath the pyramids to the tombs where the pharaohs were buried.

“You guys go ahead,” I said. “I’ll stay here. Somebody needs to know you’re down there.”

Because you’re probably going to trap my husband and his friend in the bowels of the pyramid, I thought. Having watched a few too many movies, I was convinced that he’d lure them down the narrow tunnel, promising they would see buried pharaohs, only to slam shut the three-foot-thick cement secret door, closing them in forever, enabling him to steal their passports and Discover cards.

At the entryway, I held the flashlight as the two thrill seekers slithered along the floor of the tombs in the dark of night. Fortunately, they survived to tell the tale. But I didn’t regret missing the experience. The next day, I wrote in my journal:

November 29, 1992

It’s our five-month wedding anniversary, and we’re really getting places: specifically, we are lying in bed in Cairo, Egypt. Mark has been training for the Raid Gauloises for almost a year, and today we’re flying to Oman, where the race will begin in a week. Looking back on the past few months, I am very proud of Mark. When he’s motivated, nothing can stop him! Being married to him certainly isn’t boring!

Flying into Oman, we gazed down over vast expanses of desert broken up with dramatic mountains, dotted with palm-fringed oases, and edged by cliffs. The terrain looked so foreign that it might as well have been a different planet. The capital, Muscat, where we landed, still retained a medieval air; the cannons that until the 1970s guarded it in front, dated back centuries to the days when it was a Portuguese port. Nomadic Bedouins camped out in the arid interior, racing camels for fun, and the ruler—Sultan Qaboos—is famous for his annual trek across the land to meet his people.

Upon arrival, we spotted Gerard and Nelly Fusil amid the crowds of men in white robes and turbans. They greeted us with the traditional Omani greeting: “Tasharrafna”—meaning “Nice to meet you.” All eyes were on Team American Pride, since we were the first all-U.S. team—and reporters from back home had flown in to cover the event.

We spent the first few days living in the army barracks with the rest of the teams, acclimating to the environment, wandering the souk (the market), and taking in the old-style wood boats that had once hauled trunks of frankincense, dates, and pearls to the Far East. We sampled balaleet—a popular breakfast dish of sweet vermicelli with egg, onion, and cinnamon; along with macboos—slow-cooked meat and rice with onion, spices, and dried limes—as well as cardamon-infused yogurt drinks. We also practiced riding on camels through ancient villages.

Even though we tried to relax, Mark and the team were anxious. All their hard training was going to be put to the test.

The day before the event began, we moved from the army barracks to our race quarters—tents pitched in the desert. Seventy-five teams, each with five people, were milling about with their assistants. Camping out under the stars with a few hundred people may sound exciting, but one important thing was missing: toilets. The absence of that luxury had a very unsightly consequence: there were piles of poop everywhere, littering the beautiful landscape.

As the race approached, Mark was tense, carefully studying the maps. The evening before the race, he stayed behind to study the topography, while I went with the rest of the team to visit a 15^th-century fort high up in the mountains. Afterward, we ate couscous and listened to Omani music.

That night, Mark and I slept together in a two-man tent. However, Owen, the tough New Zealander, crawled right in between and cuddled up with us. All night, I was restless, looking over at Mark, and praying that he and the team made it through the ordeal before them without getting hurt. The next morning, we were up before dawn, piling onto a bus at 4 o’clock.

The opening ceremonies that morning were grand in scale, with rose petals everywhere, and musicians played indigenous music against the backdrop of a stone castle as old as Jesus. All the teams gathered in a field as local women appeared, bearing huge baskets of fruit on their heads. Hordes of international media gathered at the starting line, where horses were running wild. For the beginning of the race, you actually had to catch your own horse!

At 7 A.M., the gunshot went off. The competitors raced across the sand toward the wild horses. I was looking for a big horse among the bucking broncos, but Mark had other ideas. “I’ll take that one!” he said, pointing at a miniature baby horse. Mark reasoned that if something happened and he fell off, at least he would be low to the ground. It was hilarious, if disconcerting, to see Mark, clad in hot-pink shorts, atop this tiny horse. Owen couldn’t believe it, and kept saying, “Oh jeez, give me a break!”

The team shot off on the first leg of their two-week adventure—a 20-mile horse race, which would be followed by a 50-mile trek through the mountains. They would later kayak along the Persian Gulf, then climb up mountains, rappel down cliffs, and finish with a camel race across the broiling desert sands. Two assistants in a Land Cruiser followed behind Team American Pride: logistics man Brian, in charge of supplies, and counselor Leslie Pam, whom we’d asked along to help keep the team’s morale high. Spouses of the competitors could also follow along and meet up with the racers at various spots along the way.

When the team took off, I felt uneasy, and not just because Mark was already lagging behind on his midget horse, which a race official told me had not yet been “broken.” I was the only Western woman left at the camp, except for Leslie’s wife, Ann.

Despite all their training, the team didn’t get off to great start—particularly as one horse refused to be ridden and had to be dragged along. Team American Pride took seven hours to make it 20 miles, coming in among the last of the competitors. From that rough beginning, they faced a roped ascent up waterfalls.

While they were slogging it out, Brian and I ventured off on our own expedition. Hidden inside a beautiful grotto was a lagoon of startlingly blue water. The dome was 100 feet overhead, and a thin ray of sunlight shined through, glistening on the water. It was gorgeous. What Brian had failed to mention was that to explore the cave, you needed to swim underwater through a narrow passageway between two rocks. When I was a kid, my sisters and I used to have contests in the pool to see who could hold our breath the longest. I could swim one length of the pool without coming up for air. That was about 40 feet. The length of this passageway was much longer. Maybe I could do this?

“Dianne,” Brian said, assessing my outfit—a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. “You’d better take off those jeans or they’ll weigh you down. You’ll need all your energy to swim underwater.” I stripped off the Levi’s, and Brian led the way. I took a deep breath, and began pushing along underwater, breaststroke by breaststroke, thinking, When the hell is this going to end?! I felt like Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure (minus 100 pounds). Unfortunately, in the movie, she drowns. If I’d been wearing my jeans, I might have met a similar fate.

On the second day of the race, the team came in for a rest before heading out on kayaks. At this point, we were able to meet up with them.

Mark was getting together the kayaks just before dawn, already feeling exhausted, sick with a fever and a sore throat, and delirious from fatigue. I snuck up from behind and embraced him.

That was the moment I was at my lowest low, he later wrote in a letter to me. Then you came up and gave me a hug, and it gave me the will to want to go on. He had no idea we’d be there at the checkpoint, so my appearance was a big morale booster. Unfortunately, things only got worse for Mark and the team during the kayaking leg.

Just after the team set off in the kayaks, the skies grew black, the winds whipped fiercely, and an ominous storm blew up. Ann and I, worried that the team was kayaking in those conditions, found a driver to take us to meet them at the next checkpoint. We drove for what seemed like hours, only to find ourselves outside of a little village of straw-and-clay huts in the middle of the desert. The inhabitants appeared to be only men; we didn’t see any women or children. The driver stopped the car abruptly.

“What do you mean, ‘out here’!?” shrieked Ann, echoing my sentiments exactly.

Ann and I looked at each other. “I come back,” continued the driver. “You stay.”

“Great,” I said, looking around at our desolate surroundings. “Now we’re going to be abducted and sold as slaves.”

I wasn’t. I’d seen the Harrison Ford movie Frantic and on the movie screen in my mind, we were starring in the sequel.

Eventually, the driver returned and drove us along the shore, where we uncovered the latest saga of the race and actually rescued one of the victims. The teams had traveled along the Persian Gulf under dangerous conditions, their kayaks being knocked around like toothpicks in 20-foot waves. The others were teamed up, but Owen was in a kayak by himself. Owen had a strong, athletic build; however, mentally, emotionally, and physically, he had reached his limits. As the winds grew stronger, he refused to paddle farther. He insisted that the entire team head for shore to wait out the storm. Mark, however, believed that going to shore would be equally dangerous. Even though Team American Pride was far behind, Mark wanted to keep the team together and at least finish the race. Owen disagreed, and paddled alone to the shore, thus disqualifying the entire team, since the most important rule was that the competitors had to stay united and conquer their challenges as a group.

What’s more, Owen had disappeared. When Ann and I finally found him, sleeping by a rock on the shore, he was delirious. We pulled him into the car; at the main camp, all the journalists ran over to us when we arrived with the MIA competitor. Hours later, the rest of the team came in. Everyone was visibly upset and screaming at Owen.

“We could have finished!” Mark lamented. I’d never seen him look more morose. But Team American Pride wasn’t finished: Mark vowed that he’d return with a new team the following year.

Mark was still glum when we left Oman and headed off to see his parents in England. Our plan was to then celebrate the new year in Paris. But we’d learned something valuable that would become a key component in Survivor. Being fit wasn’t enough to succeed in endurance races. You had to put together compatible teams that could work together as one. It was something that Mark and I did extraordinarily well.