Prologue:
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| Yeah but it's a dry heat. |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The race start was 17 miles beyond Furnace Creek. |
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| This was around 10am on Sunday. |
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| I'm riding while Cindy is driving. |
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| The van was loaded to the gills. |
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| A thermometer at midday in Furnace Creek. |
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| Hello ladies! |
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| Runners in the foreground. Tammy in the background. |
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| Yes, I am shooting salt straight from the shaker. |
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| Mt. Whitney at sunrise about 30 minutes after Tammy finished. |
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