Badwater Forum

I hope this is not too much.

                           Badwater Bug 2007

                           The Badwater bug is something that once you get bite you will never be the same. I do not know exactly when I got bite, but I now know I was. I started running when life gave me the same results many people get. After going to the doctor for a physical I was told I was borderline hypertensive. Which as far as I can tell you meant if I did not get my butt in better shape I would be just another person prescribed pills to do what I felt I should do myself, get healthier. That was all I needed to start looking for my way to get healthier. I started looking for something I could do in a limited amount of time that would help me get in shape. I worked with weights for a while but found I was adding weight to myself as fast as I worked out. The muscle that was added out weighed the fat I was burning off. That made me think I was going in the wrong direction. Then one day my wife asked if I would join her at an event she was walking. It was four miles over the Coronado Bridge, I thought that would be easy. After all it was only four miles. That was the first time in over twenty two year that I had run for any reason. The only thing I found out was that I was not able to do any better then slow my wife down. As I saw the finish line get closer I looked over my shoulder only to see my wife walking right behind me. She did not want to crush my ego, so she followed just a few steps back. She offered me a drink from her pack and off I went. This was a wakeup call to me that I would never forget. No matter how well you are doing there will always be somebody just behind you waiting to pass you. I learned that day that you must always run your own race. No matter now fast, or slow. After I finished that event I wanted to do another. As most people do I started at the shortest event around and just kept adding distance. No matter how long an event was I knew I would never be fast. I was dragging over two hundred and twenty pounds across the finish line at every race. After I did my first marathon I looked at running in a different way. Some people run an entire marathon at a pace faster then I can run period. That alone made me think twice about running all together. I had a thought that made me feel better, the number of people I knew that had finished a marathon was one. It was my wife, she can walk a marathon faster then many people run a marathon. With her as my inspiration I kept at running. I can not always run as many miles as I should but I keep at it. As time went on, a kept looking for different races in different places. I think I hit the Badwater 135 Race webpage and thought that was crazy. Naturally I was at the next race. I showed up the day before the race, camped out and I was at all three start times. After the last person left sight I got in my truck and taped the first fifteen miles on a camcorder. I then drove to the finish line had lunch and went home. When I got home I showed the tape to my family, I had forgot that at about mile twelve I taped my response about the people running. I said this race was not for me because these people are crazy, and I am not crazy. That part of the tape is my wife’s favorite part of the tape. Within two weeks I was back in Death Valley with my family. We started my training for the 135 distance along the course. We would only go to DV if the temperature was over one hundred and fifteen. That started a habit that I have to this day, if the temperature gets over one hundred and five at home I run.  As time progressed I have learned a lot about running in the heat. As everybody knows there is always something new to learn. The more people you talk to about running, the more you hear about running. Some good some bad. I was about a year away from running at the level I felt necessary to do the Badwater 135. But something happened, I got bit by the bug. The “Badwater bug”, it was early 2007 and the Badwater Solo webpage had a list of people planning to cover the course that summer. That was all I needed to change my plans. I thought the Badwater Solo was the best chance I could hope for to get going on that goal to complete the 135 miles from Badwater to the Mount Whitney Portals. As time progressed I decided to rely on my family to crew me to the finish of the 135 miles. We worked out all of the details needed to get me to the finish. The only thing that kept us from finishing the Badwater Solo 135 was me. We did as we had planned, we went to the starting line with everybody else as planned. The event was thrown off track by the National Parks system. It appears that the same lure that hooked me, also hooked the Park staff. They had been monitoring the website also. As a non-event, not a race the rules were different. They felt thirteen runners with their crews would cause some difficulties for park visitors. I think if we had all started at the same time we would have spread out within twenty minutes. At 6:00 a.m. in Death Valley 282 feet below sea level on July1 you can understand that there was no traffic. The Ranger asked us to stagger our start, we did. As it was a couple of hours into the event a few crews would overlap a little bit. Still there did not

appear to be any problems for anybody at all. We followed our plans for the run for the first forty two mile. After we got to Stove Pipe wells we took a break to recover from the heat of the day. At one point near Salt creek the temperature got up to one hundred and thirty degrees.

           That temperature was about as hot as I have ever been exposed to when running. We did not even worry about the temperature of the pavement, I think that would have blown our mind to know how hot it was. I found the following information on the National Park Service webpage recently.

The highest ground temperature recorded was 201° F at Furnace Creek on July 15, 1972.
The maximum air temperature for that day was 128° F.

 We had planned to break the mileage up into smaller sections to allow our children some rest. That plan worked just fine, except that I thought I would be the only person suffering. I think my wife dealt with the lack of sleep much better then I did. It became my greatest treat to be able to rest on the tailgate of the truck. Sometimes she would let me sometimes she would not. She was one tough mother when she wanted to be, other times she could tell that I needed a break. I would reach the truck and find a chair waiting for me with my family acting like a NASCAR pit crew. I have heard many stories about what it takes to run 135 miles, and I think crewing can be pretty tough as well. We were able to follow our planned pace until we got to the downward side of Towne Pass. As we came down the slope the wind picked up and the temperature went up as well. The combination of these factors were something that I had never dealt with before. Added to this were the elevations that I had just covered going up eighteen miles to Towne Pass, and nine miles down the other side. The elevation goes from 0 to 4956 feet. I think a raised body temperature was the last straw that gave me a bloody nose that would not quit. We worked to stop the blood flow but nothing worked. The final decision was to crank the A/C and get out of there. By relocating out of the area it allowed my blood pressure and temperature to reduce to a level that allowed my nose to stop bleeding. By that time I was not looking to turn around and soak another towel with my blood. Although I do have a very nice blood stained shirt to wear when I want to remember that day. As my wife drove us home I can tell now that I was getting delirious, I think it was from all the factors involved. About two hundred miles away from our departure location I started to plan my return. I could not leave the mileage uncovered for a year. We returned eleven days later to continue from the same spot I stopped at on July 2, 2007. We climbed over the Panamint mountain range in the dark and pushed on to the Darwin cutoff. We tried to continue with the same time line I had planned the first trip. I was amazed at how many scorpions were out on the road in the predawn hours. The early morning found us ready to go after a brief rest in chairs along the road. As the day progressed my sons got involved with getting me to the finish line by keeping me company along those lonely miles from Keeler to Lone Pine. We made our way into Lone Pine about 5:30 pm. We topped off our ice chests, and took the family to Carl’s Jr for dinner. I was happy to rest in the back seat of the truck while they ate. I was told that some of the customers in the parking lot could not figure out how I was able to be sound asleep with my feet hanging out the window in the busy parking lot. That was the best time I have ever had at a Carl’s Jr without eating. After the crew was ready to go they dropped me off at the spot we left an hour earlier and we were on the road again. We made it to mile # 128 at midnight, when I had to stop. The temperature at that elevation was about sixty five degrees with a breeze. It felt like I was standing in a walk in cooler, back to the truck to warm up and rest for a while. The increased number of cars blasting up the road woke me up, I guess it was hikers wanting to get an early start. We started up the road to the finish before sunrise. We made it to the finish as many of the hikers were trying to get started on their hike for the day. When I got to the last three switchbacks I was met by my two sons. They wanted to make sure I had the energy to continue up the steep mountain road. They also got to see what was left in my gas tank after climbing up to the 8500 foot level. It appears that some of the hikers asked why these people were standing with a roll of toilet paper stretched across the road just past the outhouse at the Mt. Whitney Portals. They were told that the person coming up the hill on foot, the same person that they all blew pass in their cars in the dark was finishing a trip from Death Valley one hundred and thirty five mile away. As I broke the toilet paper people

around had gathered and were clapping and cheering as if I had just won the New York City marathon. And for a brief moment I felt as if I had. It seems that there is a need for a chair at the finish line, as soon as you cross the
finish line all of the composure that has been bottled up is gone. It does not take very long to get over, but I could feel it drain me at that moment. It was a mental strength that got me to the end. The long journey to the top of that mountain flashed back in my mind as I walked to the truck. After 335:58 I was the (413) person recorded to cover the 135 mile course in the hottest time of the year. Right behind Connie Karras (412) great lady, and just before Terry Abrams (414). The elapsed time for me on the course was 58:42.The drive that compelled me to return and finish the course was the same drive that will bring me back next year to reduce my time by a few hundred hours.
     
   
   Even having the longest recorded time to finish is something I am proud of, because I truly know that if you run your own race in life you will always be the winner.  Greg Trujillo  Greg@run2Christ.com  8-18-07