Badwater Ultramarathon - July 22, 2003

"Why Badwater?" That was the question everyone asked. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to temperatures of over 120 degrees on a seemingly endless 135 mile road? Why go to this place where you couldn't even survive without a crew of people in a van meeting you every mile with cold water and ice? Is this some sick idea of fun? Badwater is billed as the world's toughest ultramarathon. Forget your crazy 100 mile trail races through rugged mountain terrain, this run on a hot road is tougher. Maybe that's why some people do it. I think most people have trouble answering the question. The obvious answer is, "Because I can," but there is so much more to it. I crewed for Don at the 2002 Badwater. He had set out with the goal of finishing under 48 hours, which is the time limit for the buckle. 60 hours is the overall race time limit. He was on pace for most of the race, but by mile 90 he started to lose it. It showed up in his conversation first. He was confused about the location of Lone Pine, which is the town you reach at 120 miles in the race. In fact, he didn't want to go to Lone Pine. He was pointing at the mountains in front of us and asking why he couldn't just go up there. Or, if he had to go to Lone Pine, then why not take a car? As this second day of the race wore on, he got more confused and argumentative. By nighttime, he was trying to walk back the way we came, refusing to move forward, flipping off the other crew person, and taking off his reflective gear. After several hours of this struggle, we decided to take him to Lone Pine for a rest. In the Badwater race, you can leave the course as long as you stake out your spot and return to pick up where you left off. Some people don't return. Don came back to life in the morning and went on to finish Badwater in 55 hours. He was happy. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. I swore I would never crew for that race again, and I would certainly never run it. In the middle of the race, I said to a visiting friend, "Never, and if I change my mind, shoot me." Later that year, I was in a plane from Las Vegas to San Jose. As we flew over Death Valley, the captain decided to explain the sites below. He mentioned Badwater, the lowest point in the US, and then Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous US. It was then that I changed my mind, that I knew I had to cover that distance. I wanted to be able to look down on that same scene the following year and say, "Yeah, I did that." Badwater takes a lot of planning for one person. Since both Don and I were running it, we had twice as much to do. We had two weeks before the start of the race, and we still didn't have complete crews. We needed two rental vans, and four crew members each. We had Ron from Vancouver, B.C., who had decided to volunteer for us after he saw my posting to the ultra list a couple months earlier. Blair and Kent, who had crewed for Don last year, had also said they would crew. Mike Henebry and Chris Rios confirmed that they could help. Mike ran Badwater last year and Chris had crewed for the race a few times. I made another post to the ultra list with an advertisement that Don created. Two more volunteers came in through that: Lezley from Misouri who drove out to California to meet us, and Martin from Novato, north of San Francisco. Don's friend Brian agreed to do it afer we showed him the Badwater movie, "Running on the Sun." Another friend of Don's, Edward, was coming through town and also wanted to help. We had a total of nine people to organize. This was our enticing ad/plea for help: http://www.dclundell.net/running/badwater/crew/ The last days before the trip to Death Valley were hectic. We coordinated where everyone was meeting and who would crew for whom, who would travel down in the rental vans, who would stay in what room, who wanted to leave when. For at least a week I had a continuous feeling that we were behind. And we were still trying to fit heat training in our schedule, which meant spending over an hour at the gym. I had to work through Friday that week. We took care of last minute items on Saturday. We picked up the Chrysler Town and Country minivans from the airport rental place, red for Don, blue/green/grey whatever the color was for me. Lezley arrived. Don picked up Ron from San Francisco airport. Edward was hanging out. I took Lezley with me to get one more cooler from my mom's house. We got food and had a viewing of "Running on the Sun" for Ron and Lezley. Sunday morning we set off. Martin was with Edward, Lezley with me, and Don picked up Brian. On the long drive, Lezley and I talked about all kinds of things, and I enjoyed getting to know her. I was relieved when we finally hit the intersection with highway 190 in Panamint Valley. That's when I felt like we had arrived. All that was left was a little drive over the hill to Stovepipe Wells. The roads were full of dust from the flash flood a couple days before. But we just barreled on through and then we were there. Stovepipe, in all its hotness, somewhere around 120. We had three rooms and slung our stuff in. We agreed that dinner might as well consist of food we already had, so we gathered in the largest room to sit and eat. A tiny guest joined us--I could have been hallucinating already--it was a kangaroo mouse. Monday consisted of the race meeting and van organization. The race meeting was fairly short. At the end all the entrants for Badwater had to stand up on the hot, stuffy stage for recognition and picture taking. A German runner who ran last year had tattooed Badwater on his butt. We're not talking some little tattoo. This was about a foot long! I was impressed. Also, I was happy to meet three of my ultra list heroes sitting in a row together: Ray the K, Geri K, and Blade Norman. Blade was running, the other two were crewing. Back at Stovepipe, we had dinner in the restaurant. I was happy to see that most of the crew ordered beers and seemed to be having a good time. My next task was to tape my feet--the soles and all the toes, while the crew got things organized. We arranged who was sleeping in which room based on wake up times. Ron, Lezley, and Mike were going to get breakfast in Furnace Creek before the start. Brian would come with us. The others were on the late shift and could sleep in.

On the drive down, it was warm already, even though our start was at 6 am. We took a guy with us who needed a ride. He turned out to be a massage therapist who worked mostly on rehab cases. I thought it was a great application of that skill. I liked hearing him talk about it. He was on Anita (Princess) Fromm's crew. She also had a physical therapist, Troy Marsh, who I got to meet in person at the start. That was fun putting a face to the email correspondences. So there I was at Badwater, 282 feet below sea level, with 20 or so other runners wandering around waiting for our race to start. At this point I thought the hard part was all the organization it took just to get there. I would be relieved when we got to start running. Ben Jones also had the 6 am start. He is a strong guy. Just as I was coming out of the bathroom he pulled open the door to go in and flung me out along with the door. He now calls me jigglebutt Gillian to remember how to pronounce the G. Suddenly, the race had begun, and I was smiling and laughing. That lasted a little while. I was happy to finally start on my journey, and I was laughing because the whole thing was totally insane. Most runners were walking, pacing themselves from the start for anywhere from one to three days of heat. At least half the runners were dressed in Sun Precautions suits, including hats with neck drapes, long sleeved tops, and pants. The material has built-in SPF that protects your skin better than sunscreen. Sunscreen just melts and evaporates. My crew of Lezley and Mike met me every mile with a fresh water bottle and a sprayer to cool me down. After a few miles they gave me ice wrapped in a bandana to tie around my neck. When I needed to eat solid food, I sat down. I wanted to make sure that I had time to digest things, and tried to keep my stomach from going south. Keeping electrolytes in balance with water would be a big challenge. You can learn how much to take in a regular ultra run, but Badwater is different. You don't know how your body is going to react to the extreme heat. I wasn't sure I had it figured out at all. How much was too much salt? How much was not enough? Either case would be bad, causing swelling and bloating, stomach distress, and in the most extreme cases, death. From the start I tried adding up how much sodium I was taking--340 mg from a Succeed! capsule, 100 mg from my sportsdrink mix of Cytomax and CLIP--but I couldn't keep adding things up for the whole race. I had to trust my crew people to follow the general instructions I had written for them. My solid food was ham and cheese wrapped in a flour tortilla. This became one of my staples for the race. I realized there was a man on a bike going along with us. I thought he was crazy for riding a bike through Death Valley. That must sound funny coming from a person who was running 135 miles across the desert. But I was in a race. Somehow that made it not crazy, that I was with these other 72 people doing the same thing. I felt constricted by my clothes. My pants felt like they were rubbing me funny, so I wanted them off. Mike said it was ok to expose my legs to the sun, so off they came. I took the opportunity to change shoes as well. I moved up to the next largest pair, labeled Medium Foot (I'd started in the ones labeled Small Foot). With plenty of freshly applied sunscreen, I set off again. Mike's routine with the bandanas was that one went on my head and the other around my neck. As the neck one was used up, it went to the head, and the new one on the neck. I liked having the ice directly on my neck. Furnace Creek at 17 miles was the first checkpoint and major milestone. I asked Lezley to help me find my way to a bathroom--I'd been looking forward to actually sitting down instead of desert squatting. When I was back at the van, Mike gave me a strawberry popsicle and a reporter from the LA Times started asking me questions. I was just thrilled with my popsicle. I wasn't really feeling good though. The temperature was high, some said 130, and the humidity was very high for Death Valley: 13 per cent at that point, up to 25 later. I heard much later that people who lived there were having trouble breathing in the humidity. With weather that hot, you don't really notice that it's extremely hot, it just slows you down and makes things hard. It hit some people like a ton of bricks. I wondered why I was so slow, but I did not attribute it to the heat. I was unaware of the other dramas that were happening in this race. Not only were runners dropping out, but crews were requiring medical attention. But I only learned of this after the race was over. I kept walking. I thought my 5 hours to Furnace Creek was slow, but soon forgot about it. Thoughts didn't linger. Mostly I thought about the white line in front of me. My shoes wouldn't melt while they were on the white line. The road to Stovepipe (mile 42) was getting longer instead of shorter. It was mostly a blur, and whatever hopes I had of managing my stomach properly were gone. I plodded. The sky started to darken. I was looking for sand dunes to my right. Once I saw those I knew I wouldn't have far to go. A strong wind kicked up right around the sand dunes, creating dancing ghosts on the road. I was nervous that sand would blow in my eyes, nose, and mouth, but it blew off the road instead of at me. Chris walked with me. All I could think of was that when I got to Stovepipe I could lie down. And eat some real food. And then all of a sudden, it was true. I think I started complaining because they weren't taking me to the room I had planned on, but I walked along anyway with slight annoyance. I had chicken soup that under normal circumstances might not be very good, but here it was the best. The baked potato was great, and there was more steak than I could ever eat. I laid down in jogbra and undies for a nap. I must have smiled.

In what seemed like seconds I was shocked to find people in my room telling me to get up. This just didn't seem right. Who were these people? I felt horrible, and wanted to just curl up in a ball, but without thinking, I got some clothes and shoes on, and proceeded out the door. Because I was supposed to. There was no thought of not doing it. It just was. I had expected nighttime to be cooler, but didn't seem like it was. Everyone said I would feel better once I got going. That lasted about 20 minutes. Chris and Martin were my crew for the night, with Chris pacing me up the hill. No matter what I tried, my legs wouldn't go any faster. This started to become my darkest hour. Or hours. I was disappointed that my body had not sorted itself out back at Stovepipe, and going up the hill wasn't improving things. The wind was blowing harder. It was an oven blast of hot air, right in our faces. That didn't seem fair. Chris railed at the wind, telling it enough already. None of the food I tried helped. I kept drinking and lightened up on salt, but my stomach was not staying with me. I took bathroom breaks, and that didn't help either. After a lot of struggling I thought I might feel better if I just threw up. That is what everyone believes. But not much came up. I wondered where it all went. That actually started me thinking. Maybe my body was processing everything really fast, and this "race" was really a race to keep up with that food processing speed. How fast can you send food and drinks down to your stomach? I felt more positive that at least I was using whatever calories I could get in. I just needed more. I had another tortilla wrap. Chris would yell ahead for the things I needed at the next stop. And I do mean yell. The whole two or even three valleys must have known what I was up to at any given time. "We need TP because she's gonna make a stop!" That was a good one. Since I had asked the crew to log various things for me, food, water, salt, time, whatever, Chris would also yell that information over to Martin. My barfing was well announced. And my extended bathroom stops were logged. My thoughts were of stopping to sleep. There was a nice, self-inflating airbed in the van. Couldn't I just stop somewhere, anywhere, and take a nap? But the plan was not to do that until Towne's Pass. I started to half-heartedly argue about it, because at the rate I was going it would be broad daylight by the time I got there, and then the benefit of sleeping during the night and when I was tired would be lost. I guess what threw it all off was how late I had arrived at Stovepipe. Oh well. My pace was probably one mile per hour. The sky became light and my other crew (Lezley and Mike) came back. I started feeling better, because of the light. It was also a little cooler because we were at higher elevation. Finally, we reached a huge turnout at the top. This was where I could sleep. Lezley made soup while I rested. This sleep was so much better than Stovepipe. I dozed off, and woke up gradually, still lying on my back and feeling kind of warm. Ok, very warm. I think I was smiling. The world seemed better. I eventually sat up and was ready for Cream of Tomato soup. As I was almost done with the soup, cars started pulling in to our area. One was shrouded. I think they were Mercedes. A guy got out and asked us about the race. They were testing vehicles and wanted to know where the runners were. They were heading to Death Valley. I thought it was funny. They wouldn't have to worry about running into anyone over there. I was last. They all drove off. Then another car I recognized pulled up. It was my mom and Paul. They had found me, luckily at a fairly decent moment. At least I was smiling and not barfing. It was all pretty quick because my rest time was up and I had to start moving again, but at least they got to meet Lezley and Mike. The next part was downhill, and I was happy that I had some good salty soup inside me. I managed to trot some on this section. Mike ran and walked with me for part of it, and Lezley did for other parts. We headed down into Panamint Valley, where the road was long and straight ahead of us. There was no way to guess how far it was to Panamint Springs by looking at it. It just seemed long and hot. The temperature was creeping up again, and my calves were burning.

For a lot of the time I felt like there was total nothingness. But it wasn't always like that. There was the occasional visitor. Kari Marchant came by offering ice. This was a good thing because Panamint Springs was out. Then when I was in the hottest part of the Valley, Norm Haines came by. He had dropped early on, and was well recovered by now. He was at the van when I reached it, asking how I was doing. I said I was fine. He wanted to get a good look at me. Then he said, "I'm going to be frank with you. You're not going to make it." I can't imagine what my face showed. Maybe confusion would be the best word for it. If I kept going I would make it. The only thing that would stop me would be if I stopped. That's all I thought. Mike told him that was a load of shit. So he left, still wishing us good luck. I said I didn't care. The reason I was out there was to get to the goal, to Whitney. If it took 65 hours, it didn't matter. It's the distance, not the time. We moved on. We saw tourists posing for pictures in the middle of Panamint Valley. They seemed unaware of my struggle. They took turns standing out in the sand in their flip flops and shorts, and then they jumped in their vehicle and were gone. The distance to Panamint Springs seemed to get longer. The sign saying I still had 3 miles to go seemed impossible. Finally, the road bent around and I could see the top of the gas station, which was the first structure. A small crowd on the porch cheered for me, yelling, "Red lantern award." Yes, I was last. They asked me to sign the big time-keeping board they had, just to prove that I really was there. I was due for food and a nap. Real food was important, but I wasn't sure what to have. I was going to have a burger in Lone Pine, I knew that, but I felt like one now. I asked Lezley and Mike if I was allowed to have two burgers during the run. I'm sure they thought that was funny. The Panamint people said they would make me whatever I wanted, so I asked for a bacon cheese burger. The place to nap was a trailer across the road in the Panamint camping area. Lezley made sure it was all working again (it had pretty much been disassembled, with the air conditioning unplugged and the sheets taken away). I didn't notice. I just laid out and had another nice nap. I woke up gradually again, about 5 minutes before I needed to. Then Lezley turned up with my burger and I was in heaven. I also got to change out of some nasty clothes. It was evening and I could wear shorts again. It was time for the other crew to take over, Chris and Martin. There was one problem--because the hotel reservation in Lone Pine had gotten mixed up, they hadn't slept much. Mike was wanting to continue on, Chris and Martin looked sleepy and Edward was trying to sort them out. I knew I couldn't wait for whatever they were all discussing, and I was ready to go, so I went. Chris went with me. That was when I got the story from him. I was concerned about the crew, but I felt good, so I wasn't too worried. The next section was the climb to Father Crowley, and the temperature would cool off a little again. Other people were checking on me--race medics in particular kept asking how I was doing, but I smiled and (I think) looked good. Then I saw Denise Jones. She threw out some numbers and told me I needed to do better than I was doing. Math wasn't making a whole lot of sense to me though. It was still too hard to do calculations at mile 72. I had trouble with the basic one: what was 135 minus 72? I asked for my MP3 player and started listening to ABBA "Dancing Queen." I told Chris he didn't need to keep pacing me, but he still wanted to, so I suggested maybe he could help Martin, who still seemed a little tired. After a little while, they both perked up and we were back on track. The night was quiet. The music became intrusive and I turned it off. The Father Crowley turnout arrived quickly, but that wasn't the top. Still, I felt like I had made good progress in a short time and was happy with my energy level. In the darkness I was seeing things. Since Chris was there, I pointed them all out to him. I thought my hallucinations were kind of boring, sheep or other animals at the side of the road. The part that felt weird was that I was convinced there was a forest on the right side of the road. Big redwood trees. I could practically see them, and I could definitely feel them. Of course I was wrong. Darwin was the 90 mile checkpoint. I kept hoping it would pop up any minute. It took forever. I think Chris and Martin felt the same way. Somewhere around there we switched crews again. In the dark I couldn't picture the course from Darwin to Lone Pine. I had some more hallucinations. As I stared at the van out ahead of me, it looked like a house. For each one mile stretch it looked different. Sometimes I could see in through the house to the library, with elaborate archways. Other times it was a little log cabin, with a glowing fireplace. Morning gradually came and I hardly noticed. My houses went away. I was in the third day. Mike was doing more math to figure out what pace I needed. I started arguing about it. I didn't like his optimistic formulas, and I didn't believe that I would finish the last 13 miles in 5 hours, supposedly an average time for the climb from Lone Pine to Whitney Portal. That was miles away and I might be a mess again by then. Who could say. The road stretched out before us for miles. Sameness. It led to Lone Pine but it all looked the same. Except for one thing. A beautiful black horse trotted across the road in front of us and headed away toward the hills on our right. I don't know if Mike or I said anything. We were just amazed, not knowing where that horse could have come from. I was happy with Lezley walking along side me, because she kept doing all the little things, offering me bits of food, making sure I had sunscreen on my hands and face, and offering Bodyglide for my chafed bits. I was still struggling with my hat. By this point I absolutely hated it. The shade wrap part of it was good, but the velcro strips kept sticking in my hair and on my little twisties holding my braids. It was the most annoying thing. The road through Owens Valley was straight and never-ending. I kept moving. In my mind, Keeler was the next milestone, but I didn't really know the mileage of that point. 107? The mile markers were not a good indicator either, because they were miles to the turnoff. Not that I've ever been one to look at mile markers. Some more crew turned up. It was hard for me to tell what was going on. I wasn't sure if it was time for Mike and Lezley to switch over, or if everyone else had gotten bored waiting. I realized some of Don's crew had turned up. But where was Don? I found out he had finished many hours ago, easily achieving the 48-hour buckle we had both wanted. The extra vehicle went away again. I got closer to the Lone Pine turnoff. I was trotting sometimes. I picked a target and ran to it. It reminded me of my very early days of running. That was what I used to do--just run to a point that I could pick out up ahead of me. Then Don turned up. I was close enough to Lone Pine that now I could smell trees and feel some humidity. He was encouraging me to run. How could he run though? He'd already done the full 135 miles. I was mad that I wasn't done. The math was simple now. 15 miles to go. 5 hours to get up the hill. Get to the turnoff by 12:30 to allow a little time for a hamburger from Carl's Jr. Everyone knew I had to have that. I had mentioned it even before the start. We trotted into town. Some people noticed. A lot didn't. I felt emotional about that. My crew didn't seem to know where to meet me with a burger. I wasn't going across the road to the checkpoint at Dow Villa. I wanted it on the turnoff to Whitney portal. And that street seemed a long time coming. Finally, I was allowed to sit and eat. Earlier someone had suggested eating while I continued up the hill. I said no way on that. My mindset was that I had to stop if I was going to digest a burger. So I did. Just as I was finishing, my mom and Paul found me again. Good timing! I thought they already had left. My mom was happy that I was in a position to finish. I think I looked ok. They had been up to the finish and told Chris Kostman that I was on my way.

So, with this bunch of people, I started on the final leg of the journey--the road to Whitney Portal. Everyone was taking turns pacing along with me. Both vans were driving up the hill. The first thing I said was to make sure that nobody stopped me when I came to the van. I just wanted to get up the hill, and sometimes it took too long to get new ice in a bandana or a fresh drink or food. Martin took this to heart and made sure everyone knew how I felt. Then I got ornery about people walking along with me. I wanted to be in front. So I said so. If there was any time when a runner was allowed to have things her own way, this was it. I didn't want to be dragging along behind anyone going up this hill. I wanted to lead, to feel non-claustrophobic. The weather up at the top of the mountain looked bad. Dark thunder clouds seemed to be coming down to meet us. I was a little nervous about that. I wasn't hot anymore, but I was hot and cold. It would be ok to be cold, I thought. We could see down to the valley now, the view of where we had come from. It looked... big. I kept asking how much farther I had left to go, and kept getting different answers. This irritated me a little, so I assumed the worst and kept going. When anyone told me that it was really short to the finish, I just argued with them. Even at the sign that said one mile to go, I was convinced that it was a lie. "Someone could have moved the sign." Before the finish, my emotions got the better of me and I stopped to cry. The range of distance left to go was anywhere from 3 miles to 1 mile, and I felt like I couldn't take it anymore. If it was much more than one mile, it seemed like it was too much. I took a deep breath and continued. Then the vans went to park and we were almost there. When I saw the finish line, I started running and everyone else was running with me. I couldn't believe I finally made it. There was this funny little chair all by itself under a banner for me to sit in while everyone stood around me and looked at me. I felt like a freak. I said, "That was hard," which I found out later was the same thing winner Pam Reed said when she finished. Chris awarded me my race medallion and then Don brought out a bottle of champagne. For a second I wondered if he was going to spray it and I would get gross and sticky (as if I wasn't already), but he thought twice and just handed it to me. Everyone had a swig and we all smiled for photos. I couldn't stop smiling. When we drove back down the road into Lone Pine, I think I nodded off a bit. But I felt pretty lively. It took me a while to take my shower, and we went to the awards ceremony. I was the second person to get up when they counted from the back. I was hoping for last place! I had finished in 58 hours and 38 minutes. It was neat to share this experience with all these people. My feet still hurt though. We had pizza. After, we went to a restaurant to get some more food and beer. I suddenly realized I'd been up for a very long time. I guess I forgot to sleep. People kept asking me if I was coming back next year. At first I wouldn't answer, but when I thought for a minute, I realized I would be back. Why wouldn't I? I could do better, and it was a big deal. Repeating it would still be a big deal. I'm not sure why. The hotel where we ended up staying seemed wonderful. Homey and nice and cosy. I was happy for my crew, that they could finally rest and stop taking care of me. Although, I didn't feel very capable of taking care of myself. The next morning when we were trying to pack it up and move it out, the difficulty of just packing felt like a huge burden. I cracked again. I was happy to be home and sleep in my own bed, even if it was upstairs. The ugly heat rash was gone quickly, and the extreme foot pain subsided. I had some skin hanging off of my toes and feet, but no bad blisters. My butt chafing was probably the worst post-race problem I had to deal with. My legs felt good enough to walk, although it was a little slow. As for the crew, most of them returned home. Lezley and Ron went with Martin to stay in Marin and then hike the Dipsea Trail the next day. That was cool. See more pictures of Badwater