Behind the wheel of his big Dodge pickup, Charlie Henderson easily fits the stereotype of the Colorado cattleman: lean, solid and as weathered as the land he once ranched near Kremmling.

But when he steps down, in his yellow Sidi bike shoes, skintight Descente shorts and jersey with the Eiffel Tower motif, it's obvious this 68-year-old grandfather sits astride no ordinary saddle.

Although he is still in the livestock business, Henderson's favorite steed is his silver-gray Moots Vamoots, a titanium road bike on which he typically racks up well over 1,000 miles a month - as much as the average driver records in a car.

"I like the feeling of being on a bike," he says. "They used to call me 'Gotta Go Charlie' because I never got off."

Henderson, who lives in Ken Caryl Ranch, is not just a persevering pedaler, but an ultra-distance rider - a member of a small but growing cadre of endurance enthusiasts for whom a 100-mile century ride is "pretty routine" and even a 150-mile "brevet" is nothing to write home about.

Post / Kathryn Scott Osler

Cyclists head toward Larkspur early in the "brevet."

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What really greases their chains is an even longer ride, such as the "Grand Loop" - a 193-mile route from Golden to Estes Park, then over Trail Ridge Road to Granby, then back over Berthoud Pass to Golden.

On most organized bike tours, cyclists complete such a circuit over the course of four days. But ultra-riders do it all in one day, departing with lights in the dark at 3 a.m. and aiming to get back before sundown, barring head winds, breakdowns or run-ins with deer.

For the most zealous, the ultimate goal is to complete a multiday "super-randonnee," an extreme test of endurance that challenges cyclists to cover 750 miles - the equivalent of riding from Denver to Santa Fe and back - in no more than 90 hours.

"This is probably the one sport that takes more time than golf," says Henderson, who has taken part in seven such ultra-distance rides, including three runnings of the famed Paris-Brest-Paris race, a 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) jaunt that started in 1891 and gave rise to the first Tour de France 12 years later.

In such grueling events, which are ridden without vehicular support except at checkpoints, butts aren't the only body parts that take a beating. The feet of participants can go numb for hours. Their legs get as wobbly as day-old fries. Their hands feel stomped on. And their necks get so fatigued the riders sometimes duct-tape their collars to the backs of their helmets to hold their heads up.

A few may even fall asleep over their handlebars and go tumbling off into the nearest ditch.

"Toward the end," Henderson admits, "you get a little cuckoo."

On a chilly night some 50 miles from the finish line in the Paris-Brest-Paris ride last August, Henderson says, he linked up at a checkpoint with his son and concluded that his full-fingered gloves had gone missing.

"Where's my gloves?" he cried, the ground swimming beneath him. "Where's my gloves?"

They were on his hands.

Ultra-marathoners - most of whom are in their 40s and 50s - typically ride high-performance racing bikes that boast 30-speed drive trains, $5,000 price tags and frames so light they weigh little more than one full water bottle. (The Moots bike Henderson owns, made in Steamboat Springs, weighs about 18.5 pounds, including gears, wheels, handlebars and seat.)

At the height of the season, such cyclists generally train 15 to 20 hours a week, spending two hours in the saddle every other weekday and six to eight hours each Saturday and Sunday.

"It takes over your life. There's no getting around it," says Tom Foss, a 50-year-old Denver office worker who was infected by the distance-riding disease two years ago.

Despite punishing days of virtually nonstop pedaling, he says, the only ill effects most riders suffer are occasional saddle sores (in which hair follicles in the groin get inflamed) and "hotfoot" (in which the balls of the feet get very sore). To alleviate the former, they smear chamois cream in the seat of their shorts; for the latter, they may back off on their training regimen for a few days.

While high-mileage rides can be exhausting, Foss notes, they do offer participants one supremely inviting payoff: "If you do all this, you can eat just about anything - ice cream sandwiches, burgers, whatever."

Beyond this, ultra-riders say they relish these rigorous journeys for the challenge, the camaraderie and the competitive juices, as riders push themselves to post the best times possible.

"It's an extraordinary experience," says Mark Howard, 52, a Lakewood veterinarian who went from thinking "That's insane!" four years ago to actually completing the PBP last year.

Howard's best memory is of a fog bank hanging over a field in western France an hour before sunrise, with the bodies of two horses floating atop it like swans. The scene - which he insists he didn't imagine - reminded him of the Shakespeare line "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank," and kept him going for hours.

Henderson cherishes the memory of a Frenchman who came to his rescue on the first day of the PBP when the titanium Litespeed he was riding developed cracks above its bottom bracket, or pedaling axle, and had to be junked.

"He goes home, and about 10 or 20 minutes later he comes back with this bike and pushes it up to me and says, 'Here, take it,"' Henderson recalls.

"Well, it's a $7,000, carbon-fiber bike with electronic shifting - a full-on criterium racing bike. And here I am: a stranger, a foreigner ... and an American."

Like the Olympics, the ride from Paris to the western tip of France and back takes place only every four years. It attracted more than 4,000 entrants last year, including some 470 Americans - 28 of them from Colorado.

In North America, its counterpart is the Boston-Montreal-Boston ride, scheduled Aug. 19-22 this year. It also is 1,200 kilometers long, but most ultra-riders consider it tougher than the PBP because it is hillier and lonelier, with a field limited to 150 and far fewer spectators along the way.

Another option, the Colorado-based "Last Chance" Randonnee (Sept. 13-16), is lonelier still, with only a hardy handful of participants expected - all of whom will have built up their endurance over the summer with required rides of 200, 300, 400 and 600 kilometers.

The Last Chance, billed for the benefit of Europeans as a journey across the "Great American Desert," takes riders from metro Denver out to west-central Kansas and back on U.S. 36, a nearly traffic-free highway where the major attractions are tumbleweeds, prairie dogs and the crossroads hamlet of Last Chance.

Hunched over with their eyes on the white line for hours, cyclists say, they occupy their minds in various ways - from watching the scenery and calculating their finishing time to planning future rides and fantasizing about former girlfriends.

Three-time PBP veteran John Lee Ellis, a 51-year-old software engineer, jokes that he never gets too bored on such rides, however, because "with the hallucinations, you have plenty of company."

Get in gear with bike tips

Get a bike with a triple chainwheel.

"It's Colorado. Don't let any snooty bike shop pretend you don't need one," says Charlie Henderson, president of the Rocky Mountain Cycling Club. He recommends a gear ratio of 13-29 in back and 30-42-53 in front, suitable for climbing the steepest blacktop around: on the Fall River road below St. Mary's Glacier, west of Idaho Springs.

Develop a taste for liquid food.

"The high-tech ones are the best," Henderson insists. "Don't fool around with Gatorade; that's just a marketing gimmick. And Accelerade has too much magnesium." He favors a latte-colored carbohydrate-protein concoction produced by Hammer Nutrition; club secretary Tom Foss likes Ultra Slim-Fast and Assure for post-ride replenishment.

Invest in Lycra shorts.

"You just can't do it without them," says club member Pat Wilburn. Henderson likes the shorts recently introduced by Descente because they have good padding without ridges, which he says are a problem with some brands.

Get a bike that fits you perfectly.

"This is especially important for women, because we tend to have longer legs and a shorter trunk," says Wilburn. "It's very worth the $50 you'll pay to get a shop to do a custom fitting."

Find a frame that absorbs road shock well.

Carbon fiber, titanium and aluminum are generally better than steel, Henderson says, but he dismisses Cannondale aluminum frames as uncomfortably stiff on long rides.

Staff writer Jack Cox can be reached at 303-820-1785 jcox@denverpost.com .