Hot on the Trail of 2nd Win in Punishing Race

It was 6 a.m. and already hot as a blast furnace when Pam Reed took her place at the starting line to begin the 2002 Badwater UltraMarathon, a punishing 135-mile footrace through the blistering heart of Death Valley.

The 100-pound mother of five broke away from her 79 competitors at a pace that had male veterans shaking their heads. A woman could never keep that up, they said, fully expecting her to soon collapse.

But more than 40 miles into the unforgiving desert, the 42-year-old found herself alone, running through an arid moonscape of sand and scrub with a personal dream of breaking the women’s record for Badwater -- 29 hours, 48 minutes.

She surprised everyone last summer, even herself. Reed’s time of 27 hours, 56 minutes, made her the first woman to win the competition, one of the world’s toughest footraces. She destroyed the rest of the pack, men primarily, beating most of them by more than 24 hours.

Today, the question is: Can she do it again?

On Tuesday, Reed aims to repeat her feat and win the competition at the far end of extreme sports events. To do that, she will have to brave temperatures that in recent days have climbed to 125 degrees in the shade, what little of it there is. She will face possible flash floods, and a seemingly endless ribbon of asphalt hot enough to melt shoes -- and make most human beings scurry for air-conditioning and icy drinks.

Forget that Reed a year ago vowed never to return to Badwater, at 280 feet below sea level the lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere.

“Yep, I said that; but that was moments after I crossed the finish line,” she recalled. “I’m doing it again not because I’ve got it out for men. I just want to do my best, and win.”

Seventy-five elite runners -- 16 women and 59 men -- have entered this year’s race, a field of veterans, rookies and adventurers drawn from North and South America and Europe.

Among them will be Jay Birmingham, the first person to best Al Arnold’s against-the-clock effort in 1977. Also running will be Marine Maj. W.C. Maples, 39, a three-time finisher just back from Baghdad. Lone Pine, Calif., physician Ben Jones aims to be the first 70-year-old to attempt and complete the race.

“My strategy is to just keep moving forward and to stay sub barf; if I don’t throw up, I’ll be all right,” he said. “Once you start throwing up, you lose electrolytes. Once you get that far gone in this event, you need an IV.”

Seizing a rare opportunity, Andrew Mojica, a researcher at the University of Texas, El Paso, will conduct on-site studies of runners’ hallucinations. In past years, some have had conversations with dead relatives or heard babies wailing. Others have seen herds of cows, 747s landing and miniature people pushing sleds.

A one-armed Marine captain who tried to run the course solo several years ago alarmed his wife and support crew, who were close behind in a motor home, by calmly lying down in a bed of cactus believing that he was settling into the back seat of a big black Buick for a nap. That’s when his wife called out: “This run is over!”

“What’s unusual about the hallucinations reported by some of these runners,” Mojica said, “is that they are interactive. I want to know more about just why that is.”

Visions aside, about a third fail to cross the finish line, defeated by dehydration, nausea, heat exhaustion, stiff head winds or even detached stomach linings.

It is predicted that the winner of this year’s event will finish in 25 to 30 hours. The average time is about 48 hours. To be counted as official finishers, runners must complete the course in 60 hours or less.

There is no cash prize, and runners usually pay for their own preparations, equipment, food, travel, lodging, vehicles and support staff. Individual costs for contestants can exceed $3,000.

So why do they do it?

To hear these runners tell it, they do it to stretch themselves to the limits of endurance without causing permanent harm to their minds and bodies.

Simple as that.

“Are we nuts?” asked Birmingham rhetorically. “That’s a fair question.”

The men’s course record is held by Anatoli Kruglikov of Russia, who completed the race in 25 hours, 9 minutes, in 2000. Reed shattered the women’s course record by 1 hour, 52 minutes.

“Reed’s was one of the most significant achievements in sports endurance racing in many years,” said Badwater spokesman Chris Kostman.

They still talk about how she stopped just once, for 30 seconds, to check a swollen blood blister; how she ate once, half a peanut butter sandwich; how some of her competitors walked and ran 2 1/2 days before they completed the course.

“Pam treated it like a race the whole way,” Kostman said. “Most people fall to pieces halfway through it, then just try to survive.”

The confrontation with Death Valley begins at dawn near Badwater, not far from places with names like Coffin Canyon and Funeral Mountains. It ends almost 9,000 feet up Mt. Whitney. The runners are lumped into three groups, the first of which leaves at 6 a.m. The others take off at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. They then follow roads that snake westward over scruffy mountain ranges and such places as Furnace Creek and Devil’s Golf Course.

By midday, temperatures push 125 degrees. Sweat loss, with the depletion of blood sugar and electrolytes, can exceed a gallon an hour. The temperature of the asphalt nears 200 degrees, morphing running shoes into deformed clumps of fabric and melted rubber.

“The intense heat and jarring of pavement make Badwater runners’ feet look like they’ve been boiled in water,” said Denise Jones, a three-time finisher, who will lead a support crew for her husband, Ben, this time out. “And they hurt like they’ve been beaten with a baseball bat.”

Psychologically, Badwater runners say they often come to feel as though they are “living in the moment,” like some plant or animal in a survival mode. Thoughts are reduced to terse personal acknowledgments: I need to drink. I need sunscreen. I need ice.

With their bodies under assault, they must try to remain alert for symptoms of potentially lethal heat stroke: heart fibrillations, vomiting, headaches, dizziness.

So far, Badwater contestants have been lucky.

The job of keeping the runners alive while fighting such obstacles as stomach cramps, chafing and blisters belongs to the specially trained support crews in vans, who play leapfrog with them, moving ahead a mile at a time.

Their vehicles are stocked with critical supplies dispensed throughout the course: gallons of water, salt tablets, blister pads, sunscreen, protein bars, Gatorade, sunglasses, several pairs of shoes, and bandanas rolled up over crushed ice.

Lone Pine physician Jones, for one, aims to enjoy “a slab a pizza” when he plods through his hometown on the way to the finish line. Reed, who completed her first marathon in 1988, prefers to run on a liquid diet, and a cheery state of mind.

“For some reason, this year they’ve put me in the group that leaves at 10 a.m., which suits me fine,” she said. “I’ll run as fast as I can, and pass everyone else, one at a time. I actually gain energy that way.”

In training for the event, the 5-foot-3 Reed has pounded the sun-baked roads near her home in Tucson at least three times a day, trying to stay as hydrated as possible while running at a consistent pace in heat reaching 109 degrees.

Weather forecasts call for high humidity and temperatures hovering in the 120s in Death Valley on Tuesday.

But then, Denise Jones points out that Badwater runners expect extreme heat, along with extreme exhaustion, extreme frustration, and extreme joy when it’s all over.

If things go as Reed plans, she said, “I may continue running another 22 miles past the finish line to the top of Mt. Whitney. We’ll see.”