My Badwater 135 DNF
Embarrassment. I will say this is the prevailing emotion when I think about my experience at Badwater. I am embarrassed that I dedicated six months of my life to training for this race, embarrassed how much time with friends I sacrificed to spend time in the sauna, running, and hiking on the treadmill, embarrassed that I spent thousands of dollars for the entry, hotels, flights, food, car, etc, and just overall embarrassed that I wasn’t able to bring my best self to the start line.
I spent six months of my life panicking about the race, from the climbs to the heat to the night start and the strict cut off at mile 50. I was elated when I got in. I was chosen based on my previous race experience and answers to the essay questions. I was selected, and that felt good. But also, it put a lot of pressure on me.
My coach Brian did an amazing job getting me to the start line. I did the Miami 50/50 with Kevin as my last big long run and had zero issues with my legs after that 50 miles; I felt like a million bucks the next day.
I had the most amazing crew in place – Jada, Diane, Brian, and Kevin. They are all experts on ultras, Brian and Diane had crewed Badwater before, Kevin knew my moods, and Jada is a beast and very upbeat. I knew they would help get me to the finish. I had the A-team, but couldn’t bring my A game.
After I woke up from the fog post-DNF, I stated that the things that went wrong were as follows:
It wasn’t hot enough
There weren’t any alligators
I wore the wrong color sparkle skirt
There weren’t any cats on course
The minivan was silver
Obviously, it wasn’t any of that (well, the cat thing did play a part). I’ve identified three things that impacted my race: the cold I got, and my mental game when it comes to cutoffs, not being mentally/physically prepared for a night start.
The Head Cold
As always, I travel through airports and on the plane with a mask on. This is especially important out of Orlando because so many families go to Disney and the planes out are always packed to the gills with families. Being in a metal tube with a bunch of germy kids is a recipe for disaster.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t in total isolation the days following while Kevin and I had fun in Los Angeles. We spent two days there and somewhere between the museums, the improv show, the markets, and the stores I picked up some kind of virus. Kevin and I think it may have been covid since it is having a spike right now, especially in California, but the rest of the crew didn’t get sick, so it could have been a bog standard cold.
I noticed I was a bit sniffly on Sunday morning, but chalked it up to different outdoor allergens that my body wasn’t used to and my allergy pill didn’t work against. About 30 minutes into the pre-race meeting, I realized I was in trouble and it wasn’t allergies. I didn’t say anything to my crew, but I knew I had the beginnings of a cold and hoped that my body would fight it and it would go away before the race the next night.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. As the race went on, it got progressively worse, likely intensified by what I was putting my body through. I’m pretty sure I had a fever because it wasn’t actually *that hot* compared to how Florida feels and how much time I spent in the sauna. At that point, I couldn’t really run at all. I picked up Kevin as a pacer and he climbed with me up to the 50-mile cut off, which I made it with 30 minutes to spare.
The crew let me sleep in the car for about 30-45 minutes before rousing me and sending me on my way to the course. At this point, I felt even worse than I had before. My head was pounding and I developed a severe pain behind my right eye and my right ear. I was sure I had an ear infection, but it was likely the pressure of gaining elevation (even if it was only 2000’) without that ear being able to pop.
I have pretty bad ears. I’ve had a ton of ear infections and almost every time I fly back into Orlando, I experience pretty severe ear pain. The first time it happened, I was sure I was having an aneurysm and I was going to die. I’ve gotten more used to the pain now, but when I’m congested it is 10x worse.
I got into the car at mile 54 and said I wasn’t going to go a step further. It wasn’t getting any better, I felt horrible, the pain behind my eyes was intense, light was making it worse, and I knew there would be no speeding up from there (despite the fact I had more than enough time to literally crawl it in). I wasn’t going to be convinced otherwise and made the decision to drop.
I will give props to my crew, they really tried to get me going and stay in the race, but when I make up my mind it is damn near impossible to change my mind. I stopped my watch and we drove up to inform the race officials that I was withdrawing myself from the race.
My Mental Game & Cutoffs
One thing I have figured out about myself is that I do not do well with aggressive and early cutoffs in races. I first experienced this with LOST 118. It had a pretty aggressive cut off for the 100k mark, so I was running scared for the first 100k and once I made that cutoff, I found it nearly impossible to rally myself again (also, it was really cold and I do not do well in the cold). I ran some here and there during the next day, but my mental game wasn’t there.
I found this to be the case at Badwater as well. First, each person is put into a separate wave that the race director defines as Fast, Faster, and Fastest. No matter which wave you start in, you have to reach the first cutoff by 10am. People in the 8pm wave got two hours more than the people in the 10pm wave. A couple months before the race, I found out I was in the second wave that started at 9pm, which meant I would need to do a sub-13 hour 50-mile. I have never found that to be a challenge with my other races, my PR 50 is pretty good, but I don’t run like I used to six years ago.
I was very worried about this cutoff and everyone I knew personally was in the first wave. I looked up the ultrasignup and DUV results for all of the runners in my wave and every one of them had much faster PRs than me at every distance. This only served to make me even more worried. I had similar pacing of those in the first wave and I mentally wrecked myself about this cutoff before I even left Florida.
The race started out how I expected, watching all of the second wave people take off without me. It didn’t take more than a mile for them to leave me in their dust. I think for the first 20 miles I only had one person in my wave behind me. A few hours later, the third wave of the super fast folk caught up and passed me and I felt like I was the last person on the planet. At this race, you can see for miles and miles. I could see all of the blinking lights of the runners and the lights of the crew vehicles from so far away and I could see them constantly inching away from me and me never catching up to any of them.
By the time I got to the cut-off point, I had expended all of my mental energy fully focused on this one small goal and didn’t have enough mental toughness to focus on the rest of the race. I’ve identified this as something I really need to work on and maybe stay away from races with aggressive cutoffs until I have come up with a solution.
The Night Start
Anyone who knows me, knows that I get the sleepies in a major way as soon as the sun goes down. I am not a good night runner. Every nighttime in a race I have struggled. During ACFL200, I slept 5 hours the first night, 7 hours the second, and 8 hours on the third. At HOTS and VolState, I slept quite a bit every night. I also get the mid-morning sleepies when it starts to warm up and my body tells me I should take a nap.
I always run slower in the dark, so the combination of being sleepy and moving slowly wasn’t a good setup for success for me. I think it was around 2 or 3am, I found myself weaving a little bit and sleep walking. Not a good sign. I tried to rest during the day, but it wasn’t a great nap and didn’t do much in the way of banking sleep for the nighttime.
Either I need to figure out how to go through the night and rally afterwards or I need to avoid races with a night start. Caffeine helps a little, but it’s tough to rely on something like that so early in the race knowing that you’ll be going through a second night.
Post-Race
Once we got back to the hotel, I crashed for about 15 hours solid before getting up the next morning (I ate some dinner in the hotel at some point, but it’s hazy). Since we had a whole day of nothing, we were all looking at something we could do. Mount Whitney is basically in the middle of nowhere, hours from anything, so if we did a day trip, it would include at least 4-6 hours of driving. Brian suggested we go up to the Whitney Portal and do a hike with an amazing view. Hikers can go up about 3ish miles before a climbing permit is required to continue.
Of course, the hike started at the finish line of the race. It was very bittersweet seeing people come into the finish and complete something I couldn’t. Again, I was awash in embarrassment, but still okay with my decision that I had stopped when I did.
I was still extremely congested, my head hurt, and I just felt icky in general. By the first half-mile I was wanting to take a break every few minutes, but I didn’t want to slow the group down. I figured I would go a mile and then climb back down, letting the rest of the group go on ahead. I didn’t want to disappoint myself or my friends, so I continued. I asked for several rest breaks and concocted rest breaks by pointing out things: “Come look at this cactus,” “Wow, take a look at this view!” “Stop, let me take your picture!”.
In total, the hike was about 3 miles up and as Brian had said at the beginning, “The juice is worth the squeeze.” Boy, was it! Lone Pine Lake was serene, gorgeous, majestic, and so many other adjectives and I can’t even think of. It was awesome in the true sense of the word. I walked open mouthed towards it (not just because I couldn’t breathe through my house) and looked behind me to see Kevin doing the same. We were truly in awe. We waded in the lake, Kevin threw a snowball at me, and we took in the stunning view of the valley below.
After we finished the hike, my legs didn’t hurt at all. I had no issue with the climbing. My legs still felt fresh as daisies. Again, the sadness hit that I could do this hike and yet I didn’t have what it took to complete the event. We watched several people coming in around the time that I would have been coming in. The pain was sharp and I cried a little bit.
Race Thoughts and Potential Redemption?
Badwater is a big production and a big deal. Between the temperatures, the night start, and the climbs, I really do believe it is one of the most difficult races on the planet.
Immediately following the race (literally 5 minutes after, the entire drive through the course back to the hotel, and for the next week), I swore it off. It was dumb and I didn’t want to do it and I didn’t get why anyone would do it once, let alone almost 20 times. But…
I do want to go back. I want to take the best, most healthy version of myself and see how it stacks up to the world’s toughest footrace. I know exactly what I would do differently: fly directly to the race and not take time before for other vacation things, practice my night running skills, and toughen up my mental game to where a cutoff would not have me rattled.
I hate that out of 99 starters, I was one of six that didn’t finish. I was the first DNF. Several people have told me it was an accomplishment just to be invited, to have the guts to toe the starting line, to do 50 miles there, but I can’t accept that. It isn’t what I had set out to do. Failing is something I’m not used to and not good at. It hurts me that I couldn’t tough out what was going on with me physically and mentally.
Unfortunately, I don’t know if redemption will ever be in the cards. I doubt I’ll be selected again after my poor showing when there are such few spaces available in the race. I don’t know if I could afford to do the race again or if I should put money into going for redemption.
It is currently up in the air if I’m going to apply again, but as soon as I decide if I’m applying, I want to start training right then. If that means I decide to apply tomorrow, then I will start training tomorrow even though the application window doesn’t open until January.
