Badwater  
Badwater Ultramarathon – A race history  
No-one can complain afterwards that he hadn’t been warned: “This is probably the most physically taxing event in the world”, according to the runners’ handbook, which is given to every participant in the Badwater Ultramarathon.

The most challenging opponent of the desert-runners is heat illness and heat stroke. “It can cause death, kidney failure and brain damage”, warns the handbook. A look into the race’s history shows: no-one yet has died. But quite a few athletes have gone through unimaginable tortures.

In 1977 the first person to cross the 217 kilometres that separate the small desert-town of Badwater from the Mount Whitney Portals was Al Arnold. It took him 84 hours to complete his journey. Ten years later an official race on exactly that track at the border of the Mojave desert was held for the first time.
In the past years this race of tortures has gained more and more popularity. Numerous journalists, photographers and movie makers will escort this years 80 runners on their blistering way through the Death Valley. According to experiences in the past years, at least a third of them won’t reach the finish line at Mount Whitney.

In 1996, for example, US-Marine Curt Maples had to lay down his arms to the extreme conditions. He quit the race after he had vomitted up a bunch of pink, fleshy tissue that turned out to be a part of his stomach line. “In this race, no matter what shape you’re in, there’s no guarantee you’re going to finish”, Maples said afterwards. The “Major” – how Maples is commonly known among the Badwater racing community – is a regular guest at the ultramarathon since. In 1997 he humbled with a blooding knee over the finish line, but last years race came to end for him after “only” 60 kilometres: The “Major” wasn’t able to drink anymore and he needed IVs. In this point the race-organizers are inexorable. Using a fluid-replenishing IV at any stage in the race is grounds for immediate disqualification.
Besides the “Major” there are a few more “originals”, which can’t be missed in Badwater.

For example the “Pajama Man”. Dr Dale Sutton, 60, a dentist from San Diego, is coming back every year for the ultimate challenge. He owes his nickname to his self-willed running togs: pinstriped blue pajamas sliced with ventilation holes.

This year once again Sutton is competing in Badwater an he’ll try to break his personal record from the 1999 race, where it took him 36 hours and 11 minutes to get to the Whitney Portals. The official race record is 26 hours and 18 minutes and was set in 1992. But that race was started in the evening, so that the runners passed the hottest spot of the track at night time. This year the race will start at 6 am and the runners will cross the Badwater depression when it has 50 degrees Celsius. The road there will heat up to about 100 degrees Celsius. For a so-called AM-race the record is 27 hours and 9 minutes, a time Dušan Mravlje is confident to top. “If everything goes the normal way”, as he says.

But what is “normal” in an ultramarathon? Well, blisters are normal and chronic dehydration. At the finish the faces of the racers look more like a dried bun.

Hallucinations are a common phenomena, too. Especially at night, when the runners are extremly exhausted from 18 hours of running and look for a fix point somewhere in the dark of the liveless desert-landscape, then it might happen that tiny green men appear. Jack Deness had a weird experience of the “third kind” in last years race: “I saw a space-ship which had smashed into the mountain-side. Smoke was still raising from the crash. Around the space-ship were these tiny aliens.”

Ephraim Romesburg, aged 68 when he ran last year, thought, that a policeman warned him of snakes. “So the rest of the night I worried, and I saw snakes on several occasions.”

Others have seen herds of cows blocking their way, cactuses magically transformed into rocket launchers, pink dragons up in the sky, etc. Lisa Smith told after the 1997 race of a long conversation she had with her dead grandmother.

People who saw Lisa running towards the finish line in that race, believed they had a hallucination themselves. Due to unstandable pains at her heels she had to walk backwards up the final ascent. Inch by inch she made her way to the Whitney Portals. There she was wellcomed by a handful people with applause and a huge bouquet of red roses. But she had to hand them away quickly. “Can’t hold them,” she whispered. “They’re too heavy.”