13,000 ft. of vertical ascent4,700 ft. of descent
in 135 miles

The Badwater Ultramarathon 2000, a 135-mile footrace across Death Valley, starts at the lowest point in the US — 282 feet below sea level — and follows the highway across Death Valley, California, to the trailhead to Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states.

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I was crewing, along with Kate White and Judy Luce, for Squadron Leader Ian Tripp, of the Royal Air Force, who before this had never run more than 55 miles. Coming all the way from England to attempt the Badwater, it had taken Tripp and his crew a year of logistical preparations. Kate, a flight lieutenant in the RAF, crewed for me in the '99 race "on a recon," as she put it.

"To quote Forrest Gump," Ian said, "I think I'll go home now.... And that was it."

Ian's race start was at 6am, and because this year's field was so large, the race started in three waves. The first hour or so was in the shade at a comfy 99 degrees. Gary Kliewer, a crew member for '99 2nd place finisher Marshall Ulrich, was standing on the side of the road with a meat thermometer. "It's a good way to measure the temperature here," he remarked. "Death Valley is off the scale of most thermometers." Despite the intense heat, the three top runners from the Russian Sports Club took off like they were doing a 50-yard dash. We all agreed they'd never be able to keep up that pace.

In the first hours of the race, Ian stayed on schedule with the nutritional plan, and we hopped out to run with him from time to time. As the meat thermometer crept into the 115 range, Ian complained of feeling queasy, which we had expected. By midafternoon most runners had slowed down and were walking — except the Russians. Ultrarunning-great Lisa Smith was sick. Returning runner Maria de Jesus, from Great Britain, was also having trouble with the heat. "She insisted on running in a two-piece red swimsuit and wouldn't wear sunscreen," one of her crew later said. "She was so bad off we pulled her from the race."

"Soon my nasal passages were swollen shut and my chest started feeling tight, making it difficult to breathe..."

Not long after Furnace Creek (17 miles and aptly named), Kate got into the car after running a stint with Ian. "He's talking about quitting!" she said with alarm. In an attempt to keep his mind off the scorching pavement and mind-boggling distance, Judy, Kate, and I kept rotating in to run with him. We thought if we got him to Stovepipe Wells (mile 41.9), a jump in the pool would refresh him and he'd be ready to make the assault on 4,956-foot Towne's Pass.

We arrived at the pool late-afternoon and all four of us jumped in. While the others stayed at the pool, I wandered off to see how the other racers fared. I noticed a man whose leg was bandaged from his knee down waiting to use the pay phone. It turned out he was Piergiorgio Scaramelli of Italy and he had torn a calf muscle and was out of the race. He was about to call home and give them the bad news.

Out at the checkpoint, I noticed a crew getting a cot set up. Sixty-three-year-old Dixie Madsen, of San Diego, arrived with a huge smile on her face. She laid on the cot to take a break and said she was going to keep going after a short rest. Dixie holds a number of American records and she had arrived at Stovepipe Wells a lot earlier than I had the year before.

I went back to the pool to find out when we'd be leaving again. Ian, sitting in the shade in a lounge chair announced, "I'm out of the race. This is boring. I can see no sense in walking another 90 miles on hot pavement."

"To quote Forest Gump," Ian said, "I think I'll go home now."

And that was it.

We spent the evening at Panamint Springs (mile 72) where we had a great dinner, some beers, and watched the front runners coming into the checkpoint. The Russians were first to the springs, within an hour or so of each other. They stopped long enough to have Cup-a-Noodles, Wonder Bread, and American cheese slices. I brought Irina Reutovich, the Russian woman, some goodies from the hospitality suite: fruit salad, cheese, and pastries. She stared at it, thanked me, and left it all uneaten. (Apparently the Russians knew what they were doing, by adhering to their diet, as they would go on to take three of the top-5 places.)

"I had hoped to gain more insight into why some people are so driven to push through torturous heat and mind-boggling distances..."

I assumed Dusan Mravlje, of Trzic, Slovenia, was sick when he arrived just after the Russians and rushed past all the media toward the restaurant. But when he plopped down at a table I should have known that he had heard the word "beer" in whatever language it was he was speaking. Mravlje proceeded to pour himself a cold one and guzzle it down. After a brief rest, he disappeared into the dark and would go on to take 2nd place, breaking the old course record.

Since our crewing responsibilities were over with Ian's DNF, Judy and I drove on to Whitney Portals, in the middle of the night, to watch the finish. I noticed my eyes and throat beginning to sting. Soon my nasal passages were swollen shut and my chest started feeling tight, making it difficult to breathe. Smoke from a nearby forest fire was filling the valley where the runners were heading. To add to that, we hit three miles of road construction in Keeler (mile 107.8) where crews would be laying hot asphalt the next day.

We arrived at Whitney Portals just before Russia's 42-year-old Anatoly Kruglikov was to cross the finish.

"Where's the finish line?" Judy asked.

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I couldn't see it, and neither could Anatoly Kruglikov. He was running so fast that the race directors weren't even there yet. Somebody quickly set the finish line up about 1/8 mile past where it should have been and recorded the time: 25:08, a new course record. Next were Dusan Mravlje (25:21), Kaname Sakurai of Japan (27:52), Ivan Labutin of Russia (29:42), and Irina Reutovich (29:48).

Irina Reutovich beat the women's course record by almost seven hours. "No sense in coming back to try to break that course record," Lisa Smith joked as she coughed violently and spit up red phlegm from all the smoke, after taking 3rd.

The smoke and repaving of the roads proved difficult for many of the runners, "They laid hot asphalt right when we got to Keeler," said runner Gerald Batchen. "The shoes I was wearing are ruined." Smith agreed, "With the hot asphalt and smoke, this was worse than the year when the temperature was 135. This is the hardest year ever."

As we watched 46-year-old Thierry Poupard of France cross the finish line, at 35:43:40, I thought of where I had been at sunset on the 2nd evening of my race last year: crying on the side of the road somewhere outside Lone Pine (122 miles). Poupard was one of the "fast" runners who wouldn't have to spend a second night on the course like most of the others. As a journalist I had hoped to gain more insight into why some people are so driven to push through torturous heat and mind-boggling distances simply to get 135 miles from point A to point B. And why others like Ian Tripp had no need for it whatsoever.

The most common answers were: "the physical and mental challenge," "it gives me inner peace," and "the feeling of family with other ultrarunners and crew." As someone who has finished Badwater, I'm not sure I have the answer myself. But now, whenever I'm doing something which makes me feel tired and miserable and I want to quit, I think back to how much worse I felt at Badwater. And I keep going.

— Cathy Tibbetts, MountainZone.com Correspondent