Badwater Forum

I submitted the following letter to the Ultra ListServ today, with cc to Chris Kostman.

At Badwater this week, I served as crew chief for John Tyszkiewicz (#44) from the UK. John was DQ’d just after the Darwin checkpoint. Rumor has it that John and the rest of the crew (my husband) abandoned me at the Darwin checkpoint because I was sick. I’d simply like to set the story straight publicly. I want to be clear that my intent is not to or point fingers at anyone involved. I believe it was a simple misunderstanding.
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Somewhere after mile 80, I started feeling bad. Very quickly, it progressed to vomiting and diarrhea. I could see that I was becoming a liability rather than a help, so I decided I needed to get off the course. My husband was on crew with me at that time, and I asked him to drive me up to the Darwin checkpoint, in hopes that a race medic might happen to be there, and could do something for me. If not, our plan was to drive down to Lone Pine, where I could rest and rehydrate. So we drove John’s stake into the ground (so he could leave the course) and drove up to Darwin. No medic was there, but someone offered me a ride down to Lone Pine. I accepted. At that time, I had uncontrollable bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, but it was not a medical emergency. I was not seriously dehydrated (I weighed myself and found I was less than 1 pound below my starting weight.) I was walking and talking.

On the way down to Lone Pine, my condition deteriorated rapidly. At one point, I asked the driver to pull over. I got out of the front seat of the truck, onto the ground, and huge quantities of fluid poured out of me from both ends. After that, my decline was frighteningly fast. Since I was coated in vomit and diarrhea, the driver suggested that I lie in the bed of his pickup truck. I agreed, and climbed in. I had a couple more serious bouts on the way to Lone Pine, and by the time I got there, I was so weak I could barely speak. The driver delivered me to Dr. Lisa Bliss, the race doctor. At that point, I could give my name and other vital information, but was too weak to give the entire story in any detail. In the next hour or so that I was there, I continued to decline rapidly, and by the time she called 911, I could barely even make my lips move.

I was taken to the hospital by ambulance. In the ER, I received seven liters of IV solution. The doctor couldn’t tell absolutely, but he thought the likely culprit was food poisoning. My husband came down with the same symptoms about an hour after I did, and ended up in the hospital as well. After giving it much thought, I am fairly certain that the illness was caused by fruit smoothies we had bought along the way. At the time, I thought mine didn’t taste quite right. Then, immediately after drinking it, I thought it just didn’t agree with me. It was not long after that that my stomach went entirely south.

In any case, after I arrived in Lone Pine, I was too sick to tell the story of what had happened. I think everyone assumed I had been “dropped off” (i.e. abandoned) in pretty much the same condition that I was when I arrived at Lone Pine. That was not the case at all. John was DQ’d for crew negligence. The next day, I was able to explain the whole story, but the race staff still felt that we did the wrong thing. Their view was that the crew and runner should have brought me into Lone Pine themselves. I respectfully disagree. At that time, I was not seriously ill; John and my husband could not know the future. And since we would have had to rearrange the gear in our vehicle to transport me comfortably, my taking the other ride was the quickest way to get me off the course.

The remaining fact is that after I left, the runner only had one crew member with him. (Our third crew member was in town resting, and could not be contacted.) The race rules state that the runner must have two crew with him at all times. At the time, I had forgotten the “at all times” wording of the rule. Because of that, we certainly could have been DQ’d. My aim here is not to argue the ruling, but to put an end to the rumor that my runner and my husband abandoned me on the course. It is simply not true.

In the end, I am very sorry that John was DQ’d. There was no way he could legally finish the race with two of his three crew members in the hospital, and there was no way we could have prevented the illness. Unfortunately, John was the one to suffer for this. I wasn’t there when he received the DQ notice, but when I saw him afterward, he had accepted the ruling gracefully, and his only concern was for my welfare. In my eyes, John came off as a good sportsman and a gentleman.