Sunday, July 21, 2013

Pacing Badwater 2013

Prologue:

Yeah but it's a dry heat.
Tammy Massie was accepted into the 2013 Badwater Ultramarathon. I've known Tammy for a few years and I always said that if one of my friends was accepted, I was up for crewing. I regretted this a few times during those two days, but in hindsight, I am so glad I did it.

I flew into Las Vegas on Saturday morning and met up with Tammy, along with Susana, Tammy’s sister Cindy, Tammy’s husband Tristan, Tammy’s father Tom, and Henri and Diane. While waiting at the car rental office, I saw a number of other competitors come and go with their crews in tow, along with numerous coolers. It felt like a theme. We rented our cars and headed out to Sweet Tomatoes for a light lunch and pre-race discussions before we left for Death Valley. It was here where Tammy showed us all her preferred way of making icy bandannas, which is going to become a staple of my own hot weather running equipment. After that it was a quick stop by Whole Foods for miscellaneous food for the week and then off we went into the desert for the long drive to Death Valley.

Along the way, we took stock of the things Tammy had brought in preparation for the race. Tammy is nothing if not prepared. If there was something she thought she might need, she had three of it. Tammy also had a checklist for each of the 135 miles with predicted nutritional intake, and spaces to note her food, water and medicine intake as well as any notes on her condition. Tammy had a good breakdown of coolers for storing ice, for filling bottles and bandannas, for storing cool food, and for storing frozen food.

The weather for the race was supposed to be hot. Really hot. I knew it was going to be tough and all I could do was hope that my heat acclimation was acceptable for what I was about to embark on. Looking back, I had no clue what I was in for..

As we finally dropped into Death Valley, it was already late afternoon on Saturday and the open desolation of the place was both beautiful and overwhelming. Our route took us by Badwater basin, which is the lowest spot in the western hemisphere at 282 below sea level. This is also where the race starts. We stopped to get out and take photos and that’s when I got my first reality check.

This is only a tiny portion of what Tammy had
The hot air hit me and I stepped into the sun and I got scared. I had never been in air this hot. It quite literally felt like I was in a sauna. I looked at my watch and decided I wasn't going to spend more than 10 minutes in the sun without protection. I could feel it cooking me from the moment I stepped out. I went down to the Badwater sign to get a picture, but it wasn't pleasant. How was I supposed to pace a runner for two afternoons of this? I couldn't let the team down, but this was far worse than I had expected. A dry 110 feels roughly equal to a wet 100 Texas summer day. I could handle that.  But when you get into the high one-teens, it’s just different. There was nothing to compare it to. I was pretty discouraged and worried for the 17 mile drive to Furnace Creek where we checked in for the weekend.

We got to the Furnace Creek resort and all of a sudden I had five bars of AT&T signal. I also had access to pleasantly fast Wi-Fi. We settled into our rooms and I roomed with Tammy's father Tom. That evening, we unpacked and then split into little groups. Several people went to the pool. I cooled off and then went with Tristan down to the restaurant for dinner. Once the sun went down, the temperature dropped into the low 90s and the stars came out. Light pollution in Death Valley is minimal and the cloudless night sky was filled with stars and a half moon. I love a star-filled night sky and this was one of the better ones I've seen.

Me with Rich Roll
Sunday was spent prepping the vehicles and attending the pre-race meeting.  This was my first opportunity to see all the other racers, some of whom I had known about for years, but never gotten to see in person. Navy SEAL Dave Goggins was there.  Marshall Ulrich was present, of course. My friend Rich Roll was there not as a racer, but as part of the crew for Dean Karnazes. There were runners from all over the world. Some looked like you would expect someone to look like who was about to run 135 miles in the desert, but most of them looked pretty normal to me.
Me with Dean.  He's so little!

We finished setting up the car and when all the preparations were made, we called it a night and got ready for the race to come with the morning light.

Race Day 1:

I waited around by the road at Furnace Creek (mile 17) for any sign of Tammy or her crew vehicle. Tristan and Tom came out to watch with me as the early speedsters started to trickle into the first check-in station. It was only about 10am and the temperature was already approaching 110 degrees, but the sky was overcast, so there was hope that maybe we might catch a break this year.

As the runners came through, I recognized a few names on the sides of the crew vehicles. Shannon Farrar-Griefer was the first woman to double Badwater, meaning she ran the entire course, then turned around and ran back to the start. Her crew seemed to consist of a bunch of college girls in tiny tiny shorts. It certainly caught the eye.
Eventually, Tammy's crew van pulled up with Cindy and Susana inside. As we waited for Tammy, they gave me a quick rundown of their strategy so far: They would pull about a mile down the road and wait for Tammy. Tammy would say what she wanted and they would give it to her, then when everything was clear, they pulled ahead.  And so it would go on like this, leapfrogging the runner a tiny bit at a time for 135 miles.

It's Cindy in the desert.
As Tammy arrived, I grabbed my Frog Tog cooling shoulder wrap which had been soaking in the water and I felt the coolness immediately.  I threw on another layer of spray-on sunscreen, grabbed a hand spray bottle and trotted off after Tammy.  Well, maybe “trotted” is an ambitious term.  We primarily walked, although Tammy walks briskly. It didn't really matter, though.  18-20 minutes per mile would see her through to the finish well under the cutoff and there was a lot of road ahead of us, so walking suited us just fine.

Tammy would walk and we would chat.  I would pump the bug spray bottle and spray her down with a cooling water mist every few minutes. I had on my hydration vest and it was suited for carrying her excess bottles so that she could keep her hands free and minimize her burden. Unlike most races, the pacer is allowed to carry the runner’s equipment. Badwater plays by its own rules.

Tammy wanted to rotate pacers every hour or so in order to keep us fresh and to constantly change up the stimulus she was getting along the way. I think this was a good policy and it largely worked, although an hour in the heat felt like forever and an hour in the car felt like no time at all. After a little over three miles, my hour was up and it was time to rotate pacers. Cindy got out of the car and I got in and Susana brought me up to speed on how crewing worked. Another hour went by and Cindy rotated in and Susana went out to pace. By this point, it was early afternoon and it was getting HOT. The morning cloud cover had burned away and there wasn't a shadow to be found. Temperatures were above 120 degrees and that is when we had our first casualty.

The heat took a toll on Susana, who found herself struggling to keep up with Tammy.  She and Cindy had already been working for about six hours at that point and the heat compounded the fatigue of all the crew work she had been doing. Once we got her back in the car, we decided that Susana would work the rest of her shift as crew instead of pacer. This really didn't throw our strategy off by much and Cindy and I picked up the pacing and driving slack since we now had a dedicated equipment/food/water prepper. At 2pm, Cindy and Susana rolled off their shift and Henri and Diane came on as I stuck around for my second shift of the day. I was four hours in and feeling pretty good.  Having run twice already and knowing it was the heat of the day, I really wanted to go last in the rotation and let some fresh legs pound the pavement for a while. Henri went first while I caught Diane up on our crew routine.

During this time, Tammy had been steadily moving forward. The second check-in was at Stovepipe Wells (mile 42). The entire course had been pretty flat up to this point and the hardest thing was definitely the heat. Tammy's demands were pretty low. Every mile we would give her a new icy bandanna, plenty of water, and some sort of sports drink depending on what she wanted. There was a lot of food, but she really wasn't eating a lot of it yet despite being eight hours into her race. Henri finished his hour of pacing and Diane took over. While we were a mile up waiting for Diane and Tammy to run up on us, a race official car pulled off to the shoulder in front of us and Diane steps out of it. It turns out she had been carrying so much stuff for Tammy that it had become a bit of a hassle to stay up on her own drinking and with very little warning, the sun knocked her down. Diane is no rookie runner. She has done several 100 mile ultras herself and she is a race director. It just goes to show how fast the sun can smack you down if you slip just a little.
I'm trying to eat a hummus and avocado sandwich in the middle of a sandstorm.

Eventually Tammy caught up to us and she was very worried about Diane. She told us she would be fine to run solo for a while and that we should put Diane in the car and drive around for 45 minutes with the air conditioner on. I should point out that while crewing, the car is idling so often and so much time is spent with car doors open that air conditioning is completely ineffective and is not used. So yeah, we’re all out in the desert inside a car with no AC running nearly the full time.

I truly believe that Diane would have been fine after a brief rest and recoup where I took a turn pacing and then Henri did as well, but Tammy was pretty freaked out by it and demanded that Diane was to do no more pacing. There’s no point in stressing out the runner by arguing with her, so we decided the best thing to do was for Henri and I to each take a turn pacing and then the sun would be down and we could make another appeal to Tammy once the heat was lower. We did end up doing this and Diane was fine to pace that night.

I also ran into a little bit of a scare around 9 or 10pm where I felt like my kidneys didn't feel quite right and I had a little bit of nausea. After having Rhabdomyolysis at a 100 miler last year, I am always very sensitive to my kidney health. I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, the discomfort was a 1 or a 2, which is to say it was extremely minor, but I was troubled that I noticed it at all. Tammy elected to run solo again for the last half hour of the time I was allotted for pacing.  Luckily, this turned out to be a false alarm for me and after sitting in the van for a few minutes, I realized I had just bonked due to not taking in enough calories over the course of a long hot day.  I had been eating and drinking almost nonstop, but my eating was more like grazing here and there with no real thought to the day in general.  After nibbling on some cashews and one of my Amrita bars, the nausea went away and within ten minutes, I felt recharged and ready to pace again.

Panamint Springs' biggest claim to fame--outrageous gas prices
By the time midnight rolled around, Tammy had been on the road for 18 hours. I had been on crew for 14 hours and I was beat. I felt that my usefulness was questionable for the last few hours, but I wanted to try to pull my weight. Just after midnight, Cindy and Susana drove up to relieve us for the night. We weren’t due back until 8 the next morning.  We jumped in the car and drove up to Panamint Springs (mile 72). We arrived at Panamint around 1am, just in time to see ultrarunning legend Dean Karnazes come running through with his crew in tow. A quick shower and a short 4 hour nap later and the sun was back up and Tammy had passed through in the night. We had breakfast at Panamint and then hopped in the car to chase her down and start our shift once more as her crew.


Race Day 2:

We reached Tammy just as she was nearing Father Crowley Point at mile 80. This is the second of the three major climbs on the course. Having reached the top, now there would be a bit of downhill and the long flat run through the Town Lake basin. Another decision was made that Cindy and Diane should switch shifts. Cindy, who had worked through the night would stay on for a second shift and Diane would sit out during the day to come on for the second evening. Diane wasn't happy about this as she and Henri were used to working together, but we were this far into the race and she agreed to the compromise. For the record, I feel that Diane would have been fine to work the day shift, but again, it's all about putting the runner at ease and I recognized that.

The race start was 17 miles beyond Furnace Creek.
A flag to offend both Americans and Canadians.
So the Day 2 morning shift became me, Cindy, and Henri. I jumped into pacing duty to give Cindy a break since she had already been going all night. Tammy and I ran for a while and I took stock of her physical and emotional situation. She was tired, but still coherent and in good spirits. We passed the mile 90 check-in at Darwin and then moved into the Town Lake basin.

One of the neat unexpected things about Death Valley is that it’s in the flight pattern for the local Air Force base. This means that we got a free airshow as F-18 fighters flew low and loud over our heads all morning. Sometimes they flew so low they were below the rim of the distant mountains. Also, several times during the race, a pack of half a dozen identical Porsches would come driving by on the road. I realized they were stress-testing new models in the desert. The drivers gave us a wave. I told Tammy that the drivers thought they were awesome because they were driving cool sports cars. Then they saw her and they realized she was awesome because she was driving no car at all.

As we approached the 100 mile mark, things were starting to crack a little. Tammy had been out on the course for about 27 hours in really rough conditions. She topped mile 100 and shortly thereafter, the word came down that she needed a break in a major way.  We cleared out the passenger seat of the car and I cranked up the AC for her to cool off.  It turns out that it was actually making her too cold because she was wet. She asked for the heater to be turned on so I did that instead. She needed about 15 minutes of downtime and we tried to rub some of the fatigue out of her legs while we took the opportunity to get some calories in her. As rough as she looked, I never really thought that she might consider dropping out. It just seemed like one of those situations where you have to stop and address the problem. As we got her back in order, she went back onto the road again.

I noticed our crew car kept getting leapfrogged by the crew for Badwater legend Marshall Ulrich so that meant he must be gaining on us. Marshall has run more Badwater races than anyone else ever to take part. He has also climbed all 7 continental peaks including Everest and run across the USA. I got a chance to see Marshall a couple years ago when he was in town promoting his book Running on Empty. I told Tammy that when he passed her, Tammy should tell him, “Hey Marshall, I think I’m running on empty. Do you have any advice?” Sadly, when I checked back with her later, she had forgotten to ask him. I’ll bet he’s never heard that one before, ha!

I took a selfie with Tammy around mile 110 or so.
I took a turn pacing her shortly after this and much to my surprise, my cell phone popped back into reception and I got the chime of about 20 messages that had been pent up for the last two days. Cell phone signal means Spotify.  And Spotify means music—any music Tammy wants. I told her this and she liked the idea. Unfortunately, her first request was for… wait for it… Michael Bolton. DOH! But at Badwater, Tammy gets what Tammy wants. So there we were, trudging through the desert listening to Michael Bolton on my cell phone as I held it up so she could hear it well.  This is a crazy race.

For some reason, Day 2 really got me going.  I’m not sure why, but when I paced Tammy, I felt strong. I was taking fluids and salt well, and I was in a really good mood.  Who knows, maybe it was the Michael Bolton music… NOT! At any rate, I finished up my hour and we were flying, relatively speaking. We did some quick math and came to the conclusion she needed to do better than 30 minute miles on average.  Keep in mind that a very casual walk is generally 18 or 19 minutes per mile.  I glanced at my Garmin GPS watch and checked our pace. We were holding sub-19:00 miles. This was good. We were building up a time buffer that might be much-needed later on.

I looked at my watch again and noticed it was only another hour until our shift change.  I announced I wanted to keep pacing Tammy. The crew was great and kept both of us cool and supplied and I kept Tammy moving forward. At one point, a race official drove by in a car and saw us acting weird so he pulled over and watched us.  At some point, he must have realized we were dancing to YMCA as we went down the road. I assume there was no rule against YMCA in the Badwater regulations so he drove on away as we laughed about it.

Around 4:30pm, the evening crew arrived and I took my leave after pacing for two hours and fifteen minutes. I actually felt pretty good and I took the shift during the hottest part of the day. I don’t know what the deal was, but I’m sure nobody was complaining. I know I wasn't. Tammy’s father and husband came by to wish her well. Cindy and I drove up to Lone Pine (mile 120) where our motel was. I took a shower and dipped in the pool. Lone Pine is a beautiful little town at the base of Mt. Whitney and I would like to go back there again someday with Alida. After some food and some rest, there was nothing left for us to do but wait at the check in station for Tammy to show up. The man running the check-in was great to be around. He did a wonderful job making the runners feel special. After dark, he would watch the bobbing headlamps of approaching runners until they were within a few dozen feet then he would yell out loudly, “Elite runner coming through!” and everyone would cheer and clap.  Tammy finally arrived around 11pm. She just had 12 miles left to go, but they included about 5000’ of elevation gain. It was going to be a slog. She also had "only" 7 hours left before the 48 hour time cutoff.

A view of the parking lot at our motel in Lone Pine. Lots of race vans.
The story came down that Tammy was having a lot of trouble with her feet, so we put the word in and a really good foot doctor was standing by at Lone Pine to help her out when she got in. She arrived hobbling and in quite a bit of pain. The medical room was a first floor room in our motel and they put her on the bed to rest while he worked on her feet. She rested and nibbled some food while he did his thing. We gave her some new shoes and eventually, we got her vertical and mobile and she started the death march up the mountain.

Since I wasn't on shift again until just before 6am when we assumed she would finish (or else get pulled from the course) I had a bite to eat and went to bed with the alarm set for 3:50. It felt like it went off after about 5 minutes and I had yet another night of about four hours of sleep. The first thing I did was call Susana to see where Tammy was. She told me Tammy was about two miles from the finish so all of us hustled up and jumped in the car to drive to the finish line. We drove past runner after runner working their way up the mountain and finally we passed Tammy and the crew vehicle. Tammy looked catatonic aside from emotionlessly shuffling up the mountain.

We drove to the finish line and parked and waited while two or three runners finished the race. My fellow Texan Parvaneh had just finished and I went over to her to congratulate her. She recognized me, which kind of surprised me considering her state of mind and the fact that we had only met at other ultra-races. Shortly after, Kim Budzik finished. Kim is from Friendswood, where I grew up and went to high school. We were down to an hour before the cutoff and still no sign of Tammy.

Our little group started walking down the mountain looking for her. We made it about a third of a mile down before we saw the crew vehicle and Tammy walking like a zombie up the mountain escorted by Diane who was desperately trying anything to keep her moving short of physically carrying her. When we walked to her, Tammy didn't react at all. She didn't say anything. She didn't smile. Nothing. She just kept walking as we made the final few corners leading up to the well-lit finish line. The sky was lightening and the sun wasn't far from rising. Tammy walked up until there was about fifteen feet left to the finish line and then broke into an exhausted little trot for the final few steps. Everyone cheered and that was that.  The race allows 48 hours to finish. 47 hours, 29 minutes, and 18 seconds was the time it took her to walk, run, shuffle, dance, and trot her way from the Badwater basin to the Mt. Whitney portal. But she did it.  She made the cut. Chris Kostman handed her a T-shirt, a medal, and the world’s most coveted belt buckle. He called her up to get a photo with her and when she said, "Thank you," it was the first time I heard her speak the whole night.

She was asleep less than a minute later in a chair near a propane heater. A handful of runners finished after her, but they were all 8am starters. Tammy would go into the books as the final racer of the 2013 Badwater Ultramarathon.

Epilogue:

As for my own story of Badwater, I took away some very important and useful lessons about the kind of people who race this race and what they go through both before as well as during the event. Simply crewing was a miserable experience at times. I got very little sleep. I worked long hours in extremely uncomfortable conditions. I essentially lived to serve my runner. But along the way, I got to see breathtaking landscapes. I got to witness other crews help their runners as well as any runner who was near them. In fact, the camaraderie between teams was amazing. Aside from a few of the elite runners who were aiming to win the event, everyone on the course shared the same goal of trying to keep everyone safe and get each other to the finish.  Pacers offered to spray down anyone near them. When Tammy was running solo, her water bottle was filled by numerous other crews.

I also got to see a part of the country that I had never seen before and run in conditions that would be suicidal on most other days of the year. Looking back, it was a very positive experience and I am very grateful that Tammy let me be a part of her success. I firmly believe that crewing for Badwater should be a prerequisite for racing Badwater. Not only is it an act of paying one's dues, but I don't believe it's possible for one to grasp the scope and danger of this race without experiencing it first-hand by supporting a runner.

As for whether or not I want to run Badwater, I must have changed my mind at least four or five times along the way. But it is hard to stand there at the finish line and not get excited and inspired. It’s impossible not to pretend it’s you crossing the line and finishing such an incredible journey.


This was around 10am on Sunday.
I'm riding while Cindy is driving.

The van was loaded to the gills.

A thermometer at midday in Furnace Creek.



Hello ladies!

Runners in the foreground. Tammy in the background.


Yes, I am shooting salt straight from the shaker.


Mt. Whitney at sunrise about 30 minutes after Tammy finished.




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