Desert High

"I tried to cheer him up out there," Frank says, "but he wasn't having it. ... So after a while, I just gave up."

"Actually, Frank, you told him if he didn't harden the [expletive] up, you'd hit him in the ass with your trekking pole," Mike says. He punches his sleeping bag for effect.

Pete and Frank laugh. But Frank makes it clear that the outbursts have to end if they're to follow the race plan. He shakes his head, his tone serious: "None of this 'I've-got-three-grains-of-sand-in-my-shoe-my-feet-hurt-we-gotta-walk' stuff."

The Chilean team has its own worry. That evening, Pablo spends half an hour pacing through the middle of camp, clutching Matias's running shoes in his hand, furiously beating at their heels with a long, thick tree branch. He's trying to break them in. "They're giving him blisters. He can't run!" Pablo says. Thwack, thwack. "What else can I do?" Thwack. There's a hint of desperation in his voice; only two stages remain, and his team is still 27 minutes behind Trifecta. He turns the shoe around and smacks the front. Thwack!

THE FOURTH DAY'S COURSE CROSSES THE INFAMOUS ATACAMA SALT FLATS. Stories abound about how this crusty terrain has vexed runners: It slices through the soles of running shoes and cuts into the skin, breaks trekking poles and burns the eyes, sometimes causing snow blindness from the glare off the white ground, a knobbly, granola-like mix of salt and mineral deposits. Every step is a gamble. In some places, you crunch into dirt an inch beneath; in others, your foot plunges into ankle-deep sludge.

Trifecta sets off to make up for the previous day's loss. About three-quarters of the way through the stage, Frank looks out on the horizon and sees three black dots moving together a little more than a half-mile ahead. The tough terrain is Trifecta's main advantage: Matias can manage with blisters on flat ground, but here he slows to a limp. Frank gives the signal to ditch the race plan and pick up speed, and he, Mike and Pete start running, passing Matias and falling in on Juan and Pablo's heels. They stay for a moment, prolonging the smell of victory, then take the lead. The three men burst into the medical checkpoint tent 10 yards ahead. Volunteers hurry to fill their water bottles and mist them with spray. Within 60 seconds, they're ready to go. As they pull around the first curve in the road, heads high and laughing, their feet fall into step together.

Juan and Pablo reach the tent just after Trifecta, but Matias hobbles the last 50 yards, then slumps down on a stool to have the doctor rebandage his oozing feet. His progress never quickens, and eventually Juan and Pablo run on ahead and wait near the finish for Matias, who crosses nearly an hour later, tears streaming down his face.

The scene stirs Frank, and in an atypical display of emotion, he walks over to the injured runner to give him a huge hug, slapping him on the back and pumping his handshake. Afterward, when Pete asks him what he said to Matias, Frank says, "I told him he's the real brave one and he deserves a medal." Frank will say later that he felt moved by Matias's plight because he identified with him: If his shin fracture had acted up, he, too, might have been limping to stay in the race.

Trifecta's triumph is an emotional defeat for the Chileans, who realize that their last chance to rebound has faded. A few hours later, they drop out of the team race to test their individual limits on the upcoming 46-mile stage.

With the dissolution of their rival trio, Trifecta has secured the team victory ... if the men can finish together.

DAY FIVE BELONGS TO JUAN. Without an injured teammate to hold him back, he takes the lead at the start and never lets it go. His 2:26 marathon claims hold up, and he tears through the halfway point more than 45 minutes ahead of Dean Karnazes. Halfway through, a full marathon already behind him, Juan bounces on the balls of his feet while a volunteer refills his water bottles.

"All I came here to do was run," he says. "Now I can finally just do it. ... I feel like a desert cat! I just go and go and go." When Juan finishes a few hours later, the Chilean staff mobs him, elated.

Night falls 10 hours after the start of the stage, and only Juan and Karnazes have crossed the finish line. Matias has dropped out at mile 20. The 63 remaining competitors plod forward by the fuzzy beams of their headlamps. Trifecta is exhausted. Pete, however, gets a sudden burst of energy as he leads them uphill through a narrow canyon. The others struggle to keep up; then, Pete crashes.

"I'm not running anymore, boys," Pete declares. "I think I've snapped a tendon." Frank and Mike laugh, but Pete is spent. Mike says he's ready to walk, too, and within a few minutes the Team Trifecta Mutiny (as they'll later refer to it) is complete. They walk the last three miles, gravel crunching loudly against the dark silence. With a mile to go, another competitor overtakes the team. Frank slams his trekking pole into the ground in anger. "I just wanted to scream [expletive]," he says, "but then I didn't want whoever it was to know I cared."

They finish about 10 p.m., and Frank storms off to his tent. He'll be even more frustrated when he looks at the team's finishing time: 13 hours 0 minutes 11 seconds. Eleven infuriating seconds earlier, and they would have had the satisfaction of being in the 12-hour bracket.

Mike and Pete see it differently. Sure, rough luck with the 11 seconds, but that's 5 hours faster than their last long stage, in the Gobi. "No way Mike and I would have done so well if we weren't all a team," Pete says.

By the next day, Frank, too, has let go of those 11 seconds. "I don't think I've ever felt this good on Day Six of a race," he says.

THE FINISH LINE AWAITS at one corner of the main plaza back in San Pedro de Atacama, a tiny, picturesque town with an urban population of about 2,000 people that has become a tourism center in recent years. Single-story adobe houses and storefront travel outfitters line the streets, and the main drag is a pedestrian plaza.

As they start the last 6.2 miles, Frank finally feels the pinch that he has been dreading in his leg, but not in the right leg. "How is it possible that I ran 150 miles on a stress fracture, but ended up hurting the other leg?" he groans.

But the smell of chicken roasting on a spit is enough to push him through the last mile, when the pain is worst. He, Mike and Pete sprint in together, hands raised above their heads, grins of pure relief stretching across their faces.

Karnazes wins the crossing in 31:49:44, edging out Rob James by 37 minutes. Mimi Anderson easily tops the women's division in 43:15:16, to place 20th overall. Trifecta's official time of 42:00:51 earns them 14th place overall. They accept their trio of engraved trophies at that night's awards banquet, where ravenous competitors and volunteers tear through an all-you-can-eat buffet with piles of grilled meat. The pisco sours flow freely, and the restaurant makes a killing on the racers' thirst for local beer, any beer.

Tomorrow they'll all board flights headed to six continents back to their other lives. Back to friends and loved ones who don't know the agony of arriving 11 seconds beyond the 13-hour mark; who wouldn't dream of heading off to Chile or China to race in a desert; who measure their runs in miles, not marathons, if they run at all.

"My wife's gonna see these feet when I walk in the door and throw me back out of the house," Frank says, laughing. His left ankle has swelled to twice its usual size and has taken on a bluish tint. Frank's feet are not the only ones in distress: On account of the last week's constant pounding, the three Trifecta men will collectively lose nine toenails.

But the lion's share of his glee that night, Frank will later say, comes from the realization that he doesn't always have to pursue his passion alone and single-minded. "You just remember the camaraderie. You can spend a week with someone, sweating buckets in a tent in the desert; you're so miserable, you have these huge ups and downs, you're vomiting. But when you leave, you're just as good friends as the guys you grew up with."

A slew of races lay ahead: a half-Ironman and the Mohican Trail 50-Mile in June, Colorado's Leadville Trail 100-Mile in August. And he'll close out the year with Trifecta, at the 4 Deserts: Antarctica in November, because the shared agony of the past seven days just wasn't enough. It never is.

Lauren Keane is the editor and producer of PostGlobal at washingtonpost.com. She can be reached at lauren.keane@washingtonpost.com.