Pacing the 2021 Badwater 135 - It's a Dry Heat

The phrase "hot as f*ck" was originally coined by a borax miner in 1873 in Death Valley. Fun, made up fact, but it could be true. And we don’t know if he meant it as hyperbole or if he was describing one of his sordid donkey related activities. Anyway, one day, one of these miners couldn’t get his mule to drink from a briny salt water basin. So he called it "bad water" and the name stuck. Funny how toponymy works. Because we now have an extreme ultra marathon called Badwater 135 when we could have easily had one more aptly called the Hot As Fuck 135. Missed opportunity.

Years ago, my wife recognized my degenerating choices of recreational activities and essentially forbade me from either surfing giant waves at Mavericks or running the Badwater 135. But an opportunity came up for me to crew at Badwater. Loophole, consider yourself found! That it involved pacing was something I would discover was in the fine print.

For those unfamiliar with the Badwater 135, it’s a 135 mile road run, starting from the lowest point in the U.S., the Badwater basin, towards the highest point, Mt. Whitney. In between are two other mountain passes. The topography of Death Valley traps the heat in the two valleys and the canyon rocks on the climbs capture and radiate the heat back. The distance, the climbing, the winds, sandstorms, and the mid-July summer heat are just some of what gives the organizers of Badwater the bragging rights to call it the world's toughest foot race. And no, I don’t even like to drive that far.

Prologue

Crew chief William, pacer Deborah, and runner Daniel

Daniel, the protagonist of our story’s sufferfest, assembled his team entirely from strangers. I guess his friends know better than to get roped into his misadventures. The crew chief and one of our pacers hailed from Puerto Rico. Is it wrong, racist or gay that the first thing that comes to my mind is West Side Story? Don't answer that. If loving the works of Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins is wrong, I don't want to be right. Or all that straight, I guess.

Leftover from earlier thunderstorms made it hot and humid

We met in person on race day afternoon. Why afternoon? Because the race doesn’t start until evening: 8pm, 9:30pm or 11pm. Why evening? Because for a race that effuses enough challenges, why not add one more “f u” to this event?

More minivans than at an elementary school

Another f u element is that the race is unsupported. You have to scrounge up your own van-life crew to follow you and provide support from every other wide spot in the road. The surreal end result is that after the nighttime start, the road is lit up like a Christmas tree, dotted with white minivans. Finding your runner in this morass is another challenge, though with his tall frame, I heard he is either 6’8” or 8’6”, and steady stride, it was pretty easy to spot Daniel in a crowd, like finding Chewbacca amongst Ewoks.

Look for our octopus!

Episode 1: The Good

The night began like most of my mornings - with a stiff wind. Unfortunately for Daniel, this was not just a passing annoyance I blame on the dog, but an epic, dusty 20+ knot headwind for the first 42 miles towards Stovepipe Wells. Fortunately for we pacers, there is no pacing allowed until after Stovepipe, so the challenge of running against this wind will remain a mystery to me. Such sad. Not.

Following the white line of death

Yet another f u element to this race is that, other than in two villages, there is no cell phone signal for the first 100 miles. So even though we all got the COVID vaccine, I bought a Somewear gps device so that concerned family members and Bill Gates could track our locations online. Or as Puerto Ricans in my Bernstein world might sing, “somehow, some day, somewear…”  

Daniel arrived at Stovepipe by 5:30am in pretty good condition. We three pacers rotated duties every two hours. By the time I got to run, he was halfway up Towne Pass, the first major climb of 5,000 ft stretched out over 17 f u miles. Being still early and high in elevation, it was “only” 88 F. Like lobsters in a pot, we roasted so slowly, we didn’t even notice it was hot. Felt pretty comfortable to me, and it was already warmer than nearly all of my “heat training” leading up to this.

Episode 2: The Bad

“It's only 115…  Fuck!” - Daniel

Roasting from top, from the sides and from the road below

By late morning, Panamint Valley was on fire. On the Towne Pass descent, you could see the long straight road laid out before you - the downhill to the valley, the basin crossing, and the small uphill to the small town of Panamint Springs. “Preheat Before Baking” would be an apt name for this section. Or Roast To a Crisp Brown. It quickly went from a semi-comfortable 90F to 115 on the descent.

Panamint Valley looking back to Towne Pass

After Panamint Springs lies the ascent to Father Crowley Point. Now mid-afternoon, this narrow road winds through a rock canyon and then slowly crescents to the Point before continuing on seemingly forever to the top of the pass. While this is only 3,000 ft of elevation gain, taken in the afternoon following the baking in the basin, the radiant heat of the canyon walls took a toll on everyone as they discovered what the inside of a Hot Pocket feels like. At the top of the canyon section, where I took over as pacer, it was still 114 F despite the elevation. Daniel’s spirit was burnt to a crisp. It took all my creativity and a touch of jarhead drill instructor to get him to run at all. Such a nice pacer, am I. By the time my pacer duties ended, we gained enough elevation and distance from the rocks that it had cooled to a frosty 103F. Still not too late to rename this race to Hot A.F. 135.

Episode 3: The Ugly

“Why do they make races longer than 100 miles?” - heard at mile 105 

Hey, you can see the finish line... 40 miles away...

On paper, the next section to Lone Pine is the easiest. Absent the Death Valley heat and on a gradual descent, it should be easy. But not when that section comes at mile 90, and not when it lasts another 37 miles! The sun was about to set as we started this section. Shortly after, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Daniel was feeling sleep deprived and decided to take a small nap. Of course, he fell asleep right away and his 20 minute nap felt like half a second when he was woken up. Still, he was so refreshed that he and I were cranking out 9 minute miles… until the micro-nap and caffeine wore off. Anyway, by midnight, was not my problem. It was my turn to rest. Such a nice pacer, am I. 

I can do this run in 12 parsecs

When I woke up two hours later, shit, we were still on the same effin section to Lone Pine. Deborah, with her smurf like enthusiasm, willed his lazy ass to Lone Pine. By the time he arrived, it was 4am. That was essentially a 9 hour straight stretch. We didn’t even like driving this during course preview. We knew it was going to be miserable, but what a soul sucking experience for all of us.

"Haters gonna hate, potatoes gonna potate" - Pheidippides, probably

Speaking of soul sucking, Badwater ain’t done with you yet. The final f u is a little half marathon, gaining 5,000 ft to the trail portal at Mt. Whitney. My final pacing duty started here. As crew we also suffered from sleep deprivation though honestly some of us enjoy it more than we should.

I certainly “enjoyed” wobbling up the trail at 4am, half dream state, half hallucinating climb. Sure, not as fun as when I purposely hallucinated in college, but responsible adult now am I. Daniel hiked with remarkable efficiency surprising even himself when I told him we’d knocked out 6 miles in 90 minutes. Karl finished the remaining 7 miles with him, as the rest of our team enjoyed sunrise at Mt. Whitney.

Daniel finished in 34:18, 18th place overall. So after all that suffering, death marching, and nappy times, a remarkable finishing result - his own f u to Badwater. Kudos to Daniel, all other survivors of the Hot A.F. 135, and kudos to the rest of our team: Karl the efficient running machine, Deborah the energizer bunny, and William, our crew chief and ultra-endurance driver extraordinaire. Many thanks to the staff and volunteers, and many kudos to the RD, who even acknowledged the DNF runners individually for the efforts they put in. And many thanks to my wife who put up with this non-legally binding loophole (by that I mean our agreement, I’m not calling myself a loophole).