SOUTH JORDAN — Even though he dropped out of the Death Race last week in Vermont, and lost the hundred grand he could really use, life couldn't be going much better than it's going right now for Holbrook "Hobie" Call.
It isn't every year that you discover someone invented something that combines everything you're good at — and you happen to be better at than everyone else.
Hobie, 34, who lives in South Jordan with his wife, Irene, and their five children and installs air conditioners by day, is an obstacle-course specialist by weekends, and by far the best the sport has ever seen in its young but burgeoning existence.
Out of six single-day events held in 2011 in America on the circuit known as Spartan Races, Hobie has won every one of them. He's the Lebron James … er, Dirk Nowitzki … of obstacle racing.
The only American event he didn't win was the Spartan Death Race a week ago in Vermont. Unlike the one-day events, which cover anywhere from three to eight miles and last a few hours, the Death Race covers a far greater distance, lasts at least two days and has a dropout rate of more then 90 percent. The entry form comes with this warning: "Please only consider this adventure style race if you have lived a full life to date."
Hobie joined the 90 percent after going slightly hypothermic after a fun first night that included a lengthy stay in 40-degree water. For a guy with about 6 percent body fat, enough was enough, although Hobie makes it clear he only dropped out because he knew he couldn't win, not because he couldn't finish. His goal for the race was to stay on course for the $100,000 that Joe De Sena, the co-founder of the Death Race and the Spartan series, offered to anyone who could win 14 events this season, including the Death Race. When Hobie mulled it over in the frigid water that the money was out the window, so was he.
"If I wasn't going to win I didn't want to risk hurting myself or burning myself out," he says with his perpetual grin.
Because not being able to Spartan race the rest of year would have been like shutting down his own private Disneyland.
"Oh my gosh, it's so much fun. I feel like a kid again for the first time in years," says Hobie.
Everything Hobie likes, the Spartan race does.
Crawling through mud underneath barbed wire? Check. Filling a bucket with rocks and carrying it up a hill? Check. Hauling yourself over a 45-degree wall that's slicked down by gooey muck? Check. Solving a Rubik's cube along the way? Check. Learning Greek to answer a question? Check. Hurdling fire? Check. Not knowing what each race will involve? Check.
And, oh yeah, running. Lots of running? Check.
All his life Hobie has been running. He ran his first marathon in St. George when he was 9. His dad, Michel, was a 2:34 marathoner, and Hobie just picked up the pace. In high school in Star Valley, Wyo., where he grew up after being born in Provo, he used to win races by such a wide margin he'd cross the finish line backwards. He was state champion at 1,600 and 3,200 meters. At the College of Southern Idaho he was all-American in both track and cross country. He clocked a 3:57 mile, a 14-minute 5K and a sub-29 10K. In the 2007 Top of Utah Marathon in Logan he ran 2:16:39, at altitude no less, to qualify for the Olympic Trials. His lifelong goal has been to become the first human to run a sub-two-hour marathon, but jobs, moves, injuries, life, and somebody faster — obstacles, in other words — always got in the way.
Then sometime last winter, Irene, a former cross country and track runner herself at College of Southern Idaho — where she met Hobie so she knew what she was getting into — saw an ad for the Spartan races.
She called out to her husband, "Hey, you might like this."
Hobie drove their Dodge Caravan to the first race in February in Temecula, Calif., and slept in the car. He was faster than the big, strong Navy SEAL-type guys and stronger than the lean, mean runner types. Plus, his brain could fly through the puzzles. Nobody was even close. He was hooked. In the next five races, roughly every other week, he financed getting to the starting line by selling his big-screen TV, his radio-controlled cars and for the Miami race, Irene and the kids sold cookies and tamales door to door while Hobie was holding down his shifts working for Kelly's Heating and Cooling in West Jordan.
As his streak has spread so has his notoriety. Last week he was featured in a full-length story in the Wall Street Journal, complete with one of the Journal's patented sketches.
At the out-of-town races people who have heard about him or seen him in online videos or who are about to compete against him pick him up at the airport, shuttle him around, feed him and put him up for the night. At the Georgia race a fellow racer gave up his hotel room. One man read about Hobie on the Internet and sent him $300, with the mandate that he continue to chase his dream.
For this week's event Hobie won't have to worry about the usual obstacles of just getting to the race. All he has to do to follow his bliss is get to Midway, site of Utah's first Spartan race (to enter, go to www.spartanrace.com). Irene's going to join him at this one, and the kids, who range in age from 2 years to 12, will finally get to see their dad in action. He shouldn't be hard to spot — he'll be the guy in front, who feels just like them.
Lee Benson's About Utah column runs Monday and Friday. Email: benson@desnews.com