135 Miles, 127 Degrees: Trek Is Only Latest Journey for Flores

“Step by step, stone by stone . . .”

His mind like cotton candy, his feet like coals, a childhood prayer was the only thing that came easily to Gabriel Flores Thursday as he ran 135 miles through Death Valley toward another foolish dream.

He had heard the prayer before.

While running from bullies in East Lost Angeles who didn’t like his fractured English.

While running from bullies in Hawthorne who didn’t like his discount tennis shoes, the ones he bought with the plastic tab holding them together, the ones he thought were the most beautiful in the world.

While running through South Los Angeles on his way to work at his father’s tire shop, 20 miles of darkness daily.

Now, years later, leading a road race with a history as inhumane as his own, Gabriel Flores was running to show them all.

“Step by step, stone by stone . . .”

The most amazing thing about Flores Friday morning was not that he crossed the finish line first in the 11th Hi-Tec Badwater Run, a 135-mile trek through the Mojave Desert and halfway up Mt. Whitney.

The most amazing thing was not that he endured the 127-degree temperatures in record time, 28 hours 9 minutes, with only two bad blisters.

It wasn’t even that after the race, he collapsed in a park bathroom and was carried moaning to a nearby tree, under which he slept for several hours.

The most amazing thing was that the next day, he was back at work selling tires out of a barred cubbyhole at the corner of Century Boulevard and Vermont Avenue.

“This country is for hard-working people, not lazy ones,” he said Monday from the closet-sized office where he runs Pacific Tire. “I [was] empty-handed and look what it has given me.”

Yet it is his country that has gotten the best of that deal.

Amid a sports summer dominated by underachieving midfielders, overpaid sluggers and billionaire meddlers, Gabriel Flores has given us a hero.

He has no coach, no salary, no endorsements and no media attention until just about this minute.

He trains three hours daily in darkness on the horse trails near Rancho Palos Verdes. He works 12 hours daily, running his tire shop while collecting from the four others he owns.

Those who show up to speak to him at work get his rickety chair while he stands.

“[Gets] me ready for the next race,” he says.

His 32 years of life, a race.

Last week was only another steep climb.

Especially when, after 41 miles, lying in the heat by the side of a desolate paved road, he announced he was quitting.

His two blisters had made it nearly impossible to even stand up. He was trailing six of the 29 runners in this invitation-only event.

“I had more than 90 miles to go,” he said. “I couldn’t do it.”

With help of a three-man crew that drove ahead of him and handed him water, he was handling the heat.

Thanks to occasional meals of bananas, watermelon and peanut-butter sandwiches--all eaten on the run--he was handling the hunger.

Wearing earphones tuned to Mexican love songs, he was handling the monotony.

With a wrist flashlight, he could handle the darkness.

He even figured out a way to handle bodily functions. He would urinate into his pants as he ran, then douse his pants with water to alleviate the odor.

“I ran, I prayed, I listened to music,” he said. “Whenever I felt bad I thought, ‘This is only temporary, this will go away.’ ”

But after 41 miles, what he couldn’t handle was the giant, sagging blisters.

Even the strongest of wills must accept that one cannot run if one cannot walk.

While lying by the side of the road, he was approached by his brother, a crew member, saying words only a brother could say.

“He said I had never quit at anything,” Flores said. “He was right. I thought, ‘I quit now, it will be easier for me to quit everything else.’ ”

After nearly 45 minutes on the ground, he stood up and starting walking, then carefully jogging. Through the heat came a cool blast that felt very much like that prayer.

“Step by step, stone by stone . . .”

Those words help him not only run, but remember.

He remembers, after being born in Southern California, his Mexican father returned the family to a farm in central Mexico.

There, until he was 10, he lived with no electricity or plumbing, his happiest moments spent chasing the cows for hours through the pastures.

When his family came back to the United States, the bullies let the small boy--he is now 5 feet 8--know that things would not be easier.

“I knew about running,” he said. “But I did not know running was a sport.”

By the time he entered Hawthorne High, coaches figured that this running could be put to good use.

But Flores figures he only competed in cross-country for two of his four high school years because he spent the rest of his time helping his father in his burgeoning tire business.

This included those long morning runs to work.

When he graduated from high school, he borrowed money to buy a piece of dirt in South Los Angeles and opened a one-man tire store similar to the ones operated by his father.

He worked so hard he moved into that hovel he still calls an office. Slept there for three years, fixing flats during the day, warding off intruders at night.

He stopped running altogether.

“I did not have time,” he said. “I had to make a life for myself.”

Six years later, he had turned his first store into a neighborhood success and began buying other stores. He had moved family into a small house in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Losing sleep over mounting pressures, he started to run again, even if it was just around a health club track.

Six months later, he ran a marathon. Today, as with many top ultra-marathoners, he runs about 10 long races a year. But when he entered last week’s Death Valley race, his wife Luz thought he had gone too far.

When he left two days before the race, she told him, “You will kill yourself.”

From the time the race began early Thursday, until the darkness of Friday, he was occasionally thinking about those words.

Then at the 81st mile, sometime around 3 a.m., he passed the leader.

For the rest of the race--more than seven hours worth--he said his prayers were dominated by those for victory.

Ultra-marathoners often talk of hallucinating. Perhaps Flores won the race because he said he only saw the finish line . . . and himself.

“Running cleanses your soul,” he said. “It puts you in touch with your best self. It makes you pure.”

Even if those last eight miles were pure hell. He said nearly every step of that final stretch, he asked a member of his crew whether he was almost finished.

Only when he saw the finish-line cameras did he finally have an acceptable answer. He says he doesn’t remember much after that.

His reward? The same thing everyone else won for finishing the race in under 48 hours--a belt buckle. That, and a lost toenail.

Only later did he begin to realize that this had been about more.

Often during his run, Flores said he prayed for his three young children, that his sacrifice would make them stronger.

One day after he returned home, he took the kids--ages 8, 7 and 5--to a nearby beach.

Once there, he told them that if they could run up and down a sand dune several times, he would take them to see the movie “Madeline.”

Watching their little legs begin the long climb, he sat back and smiled.

“Step by step, stone by stone . . . “

That was one great movie.