"You all are heroes"
The pre-race meeting in Furnace Creek

26th of July, Furnace Creek. All of a sudden they are here. 74 sinewy figures from 12 different countries. Patiently they cue up to get their "goodie-bags" with the race caps, the official bid numbers and other stuff. On a TV set a video of last years race is shown, title: "Running on the sun."

On the TV you can see one of the runners, a handicapped Vietnam veteran, changing his leg-prosthesis. That's what makes the difference between a race and a myth. Many of the extremerunners, who came together in the visitor center for the pre-race meeting, have done more marathons and ultramarathons in their live than normal humans have gone for a walk with their dog.

Take Marshall Ulrich, for example. The 49-year-old businessman has been a nine-times starter only at the Badwater Ultramarathon - and a five-time winner of this particular race. Two years ago, Ulrich has completed a widly admired solo-run along the 217 kilometres of the official race course, without a crew assisting him. All the way he pulled a barrow with the drinks he needed behind him. In the official race-magazin Ulrich reported his nicest hallucination: a beautiful girl with a silver bikini was roller-skating next to him.

And what about Jack Denness. For the ninth time he has travelled from Rochester in the English county of Kent to the Badwater Ultramarthon. The 65-year-old lorry-driver, a participant in more than 100 marathons, still remembers on that particular race in the Death Valley, where he believed to see a space-ship crashing into a rock.

The runners know each other. Denness walks through the room. He's greeting some guys now and then, just to finally hug Lisa Smith. The 39-year-old is also well known to the Badwater family. This year she's forming an American team together with two male runners. Their opponents are - you guessed it - three Russians. The two fastest runners of each team will be clocked and their times added.

On the microphone Badwater veteran Ben Jones, introduced by the race-director Chris Kostman as the "mayor" of the race, recalls old times when the runners made their way to the Mount Whitney without any public interest. This year that's a different story: taking only Germany there are two TV-teams covering the race. And along as well as on the race course there will be as many spectators as never before. That's exactly what Kostman is worried about. One major accident with one of the accompaning cars and the National Park administration might cancel the ultramarathon for good.

But right now, there is no-one really thinking about this. "You all are heroes", Kostman shouts to all the runners, adding to the myth of Badwater a splash of emotional. No wonder that the race-director is planning to establish a "Badwater Hall of Fame". Kostman's first candidate to find entrance into that would be Al Arnold, the man who first ran the 217 kilometres from Badwater to the Whitney Portals in 1977. But the 72-year-old Arnold rejected Kostman's offer. "I'm feeling to fat this year", his reply was. Nethertheless Arnold told the race-director, that he would immediately start training for next years race.

Kostman is just about to explain the rules of the race, as the door of the visitor center opens. A man walks in, who looks quite a bit exhausted and clumsy. Kostman obviously expected the man and he indroduces him as Adam Bookspan. Bookspan just dropped into the visitor center on his way from Mount Whitney to Badwater, where he will start the next morning again in the opposite direction with all the other 73 runners. The 34-year-old musician from Florida wants to master the double. The double Badwater-Ultramarathon! It seems, every single piece of madness can be topped.