Badwater, here we come!!
Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading up to Furnace Creek, Death Valley for the pre-race preparations for the Badwater Ultramarathon. As I mentioned last month, I’ll be part of Blake Benke’s 6 person crew, helping him make it to the finish and – do I dare jinx him – compete for the win.
Blake’s wave goes off at 10AM local time. If all goes well, he’s hoping to finish 22-25 hours(!) later.
If you’re curious, badwater.com has tons of information about the race – a map of the route, history of the race, race reports, etc. And if you’re really interested, you can track the race’s progress at through a live webcast at http://www.badwater.com/2009web/.
Finally, I’ll hopefully be twittering and/or updating my facebook status from the race. I’m new to twitter (I just signed up on Wednesday) and am not sure (a) if I can figure it out or (b) if I’ll be getting cell reception out there. If you’re interested in that, my twitter username is spectorjosh.
As part of my “preparation”, I just read “To the Edge: A Man, Death Valley, and the Mystery of Endurance” by Kirk Johnson. It’s about Johnson’s Badwater journey at the 1999 race. Two years ago I wrote a review of “Running on the Sun” a documentary about the same 1999 race. Johnson’s book is interesting because of his perspective – this was his first Badwater; and his first race longer than 50 miles. In fact, he only ran his first marathon about eight months prior to Badwater. Johnson was a journalist who started running after his older brother killed himself. Soon after he started running, he found out about Badwater (because he was going to write a story about it) and one thing led to another and was able to get the race organizers to let him race (despite the fact that he didn’t meet the usual qualifications). At first he was just going to experience the race – as much of it as he could in order to write his story – but the race quickly took over. It became a quest to learn more about his life, his brother and his family. The first half of the book – when he’s learning about the race, talking about his family and describing his psychological and physical preparations – was a little slow. But really, you don’t read the book for that part, you read it for the second half, where he details his race, mile by agonizing mile. No offense to Kirk Johnson, but I think I prefer the movie – watching the struggle, seeing the landscape and listening to the pain was just better than imagining it all through his writing. That said, it’s a good read and he definitely earned my respect. And it definitely made me even more excited to be there on Monday.
Go Blake Go!
Swim – July 8
Distance: 3,171 yards (2,900 meters)
Time: 1:00
Indoor bike – July 9
Time: 1:00
Average heart rate: 123
Brick – July 10
Total Time: 6:07
Bike:
Distance: 96.3 miles
Time: 5:34
Average heart rate: 127
Course: PCH, Las Posas towards Camarillo, back, Mulholland, through Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Old Topanga, Topanga, PCH
Transition Time: 5:08
Run:
Distance: 3.5 miles
Time: 28 minutes
Average heart rate: 149
Run Course: Ocean Ave
Conditions: Sunny and warm, going up to sunny and damn hot!