Badwater 135 – Take 4 – Finding My Why

BW135 2018 Participants

2015 was the first year that I was one of the 100 runners invited to run Badwater 135, “the world’s toughest foot race,” and ventured out to Death Valley in June to prepare and acclimate, and back again in July, to race.  I was too nervous to fully appreciate the experience, although the imprint it made on my life, from the moment I learned I was “in” until the moment I crossed the finish line, was indelible. Fear abounded for me: I was fearful of the training schedule to prepare for the foot race, fearful of the heat that running in the “hottest place on earth” entailed, fearful of bringing a newbie crew out to the race, and if that wasn’t enough, I was in the midst of a career crisis as I had reached the verge of feeling stale in my career after nearly 12 years at one company. I was anxious all over the place, and to add to the mix, I had set my intentions to resign after completing the race. That year, BW135 served as a transition time for me, and when I crossed that finish line, the significance was vast and deep: I had not only traversed the desert, but I had crossed the threshold to the next chapter of my life.

Completing the race in 2016 didn’t illicit the same anxiety, but the commitment to training and respecting the magnitude of the 135 miles of winding road from Badwater Basin, at 280 feet below sea level, the lowest elevation in North America, to Whitney Portal, at 8,300 feet above sea level, took everything that I had. It was in 2016 that I began to enjoy the race more than I feared it. The majestic course with its soaring mountains, the landscape’s mirage of browns and reds and tans and pinks, and the magnitude of stars that illuminated the desert’s night sky, infiltrated my being, and I began to revere the journey and experience the desert’s solitude and beauty deep within my soul.

My third year, in 2017, I was once again in a place of transition. Weeks prior to the race, I had committed to returning to my former career, only with more responsibility and in a new state. The weeks leading up to the race, in between training, I resigned from an associate professor position that brought me joy; moved out of my condo on the beach in South Florida, where I had resided for nine years, during which time my mom received her cancer diagnosis through to her passing; moved my possessions into storage, temporarily settled into my father’s home, and secured a new apartment in Washington D.C., which I was to move into, with my cat, the day after I returned from BW135. I was to start work one day after that ordeal. Running the 135 miles that year was beyond cathartic for me; it signified the forward motion of my life, the highs and lows, the struggles and accomplishments alike. The course offered me time to reflect and mentally and emotionally prepare for my transition. Pushing up Whitney Portal Road, I made peace with all the noise within me, and crossed that finish line ready to embrace my next adventure.

When I was accepted into the 2018 race, what would be my fourth Badwater 135, I cried. The course, the heat, the family has become a part of my being and my drive. Over the past year – in fact, since I left Badwater 135 in 2017 and flew back to Florida for a quick pit-stop to say hello and goodbye to my dad, pick up my cat and a few additional suitcases, and fly out to Washington, D.C., all within 24 hours – I have felt disconnected from the world I knew.  New city, new apartment, new routine, new scenery, new job, new team. I crave change and create it often in my life, but there comes a time when I also need to ground – when going where everybody knows my name is the antidote to my spinning world.

This year has been everything at once, all the time. I am in a constant state of scarcity: when I am in DC, I wish I could be in Florida helping my dad. When I am in Florida, I wish I had more time to see my friends and relax, hang out. When I am at work, I wish I had more time to live and that I wasn’t always working 15-hour days. Being human is a tall order. There is so much to do in this life, and time doesn’t always have the elasticity that we wish for. Days lost are just that: lost. We don’t get to redo them, and knowing this, I try to make each day count. But sometimes, the days come and go without any real movement, other than meetings and being hectic. The knowledge that Badwater loomed a few months in the distance forced me to stop, reassess, and carve the hours into my day to train so that I would be prepared. Beyond that, the idea of returning to the magic of Death Valley soothed me. There is something to the grandness of those mountains and that earth that enables me to acknowledge how miniscule my place in the world is and reflect on what I can do to make my small life a stepping stone for bigger things.

There’s that, and the fact that running has always afforded me the opportunity to think, feel, see, listen, and attempt to understand. It enables me to soar beyond my day-to-day and provides me the space and time to dream, create, and define what I am capable of. When I run, I am not the workaholic that daily life often makes me; I am not the impatient person who gets bothered by delayed flights or traffic jams. When it’s just me and my legs hitting the pavement, I am more than the accumulation of episodes that transpire each day. I get to think about where I am. Who I am. What I seek. What matters to me. My creative self takes over. Sometimes minutes or hours go by in which I experience rather than think. I take in the squirrels as they scurry about; I take in the dogs, the sky, the trees. As the years progress for me, one thing is clear: I want my life to be simple. To laugh each day. To be surrounded by people who I enjoy, and if I am lucky, who enjoy me. When I run, I take less for granted. I engage in life and the world around me. I notice the little baby birds who seem to chaperone my adventures, I hear my breath, I think my thoughts.

Out of Sync

This year, the race didn’t align for me. The energies were off in the weeks pre-race and days and hours prior. It wasn’t clicking together on a number of levels. In mid-May, medical issues returned. I had battled hyperthyroidism and anemia from May 2017 through early 2018 but was fortunate to see vast improvement as 2018 progressed. I was feeling better, but if I was honest with myself, by May 2018, I was spiraling off track again – a blend of being tired and unsettled from travel and work. It started with the Keys 100, in which I felt off from mile 1 – headache, dizziness, overall flat feeling – and ended up pulling out at 62 miles in. The next afternoon, still feeling unusually exhausted, the medics clocked my blood pressure at 150/100. I decided to give myself a few days to rest, recover, settle back in, before I started the doctor visits. Blood tests showed all was clear and additional testing gave a green light regarding my kidneys and adrenals. But my blood pressure was sky rocketing in the vicinity of 175/110. There were visits to the endocrinologist, the cardiologist, amid other doctors. In the end, it seemed to be episodic hypertension. Then there was the what-to-do phase.

Some doctors were convinced my body would reset, but others didn’t feel so optimistic. The clock was ticking. May turned into June, with July, Badwater month, looming. I pulled out from racing my favorite the Great New York 100 ultramarathon in late June, obeying doctors’ orders to rest, regulate. On July 1, after experimenting with some meds, I signed up for daily beta blockers to get my blood pressure under control. Within a week, my numbers were normalized, but I still felt off. I pushed and tried my best to keep training, transitioning to a run/walk schedule, sauna, daily yoga. If I was honest with myself, I was not in Badwater shape as defined by the years past, but I believe in myself, in my persistence, in my ability to dig deep and push through, in addition to the base I have accumulated from completing over 30 races of 100 miles or more, not to mention a myriad of other ultra-distances. If I was going to trust in myself, now was the time.

Finding My Why

Chris Kostman, Chief Adventure Officer and BW135 Race Director, opened the pre-race meeting talking about his dad, who had recently passed away. He shared what we all know: we all have parents, and in some respects, we are all who we are because of our parents. It was our parents’ sense of adventure that led us all to be who we are, and to aspire to feats like Badwater. The lump in my throat and involuntary tears began to rise in me. I tried to keep myself under control, but the tears began to fall. No matter what was to happen regarding the race, I knew that I was exactly where I needed to be. Chris’s words brought me back to why I had started my ultra-journey seven years back: the days, months, and years of watching my mother undergo chemotherapy; the endless blood and platelet transfusions she endured weekly; her continuous visits to her oncologist.

My journey commenced because running long and far gave me a chance to tune out of the hospitals and tune into my heart and soul. I chose to run my first ultra all those years back because I am alive, and for the most part, healthy. Because I have legs and lungs and a desire to move and take the world in. My mother’s sickness and her constant optimism fueled my desire to live more; in some respect, to go the distance for the both of us.

My mother’s illness and her subsequent departure taught me about the fragility of life. Ultra-running taught me about one foot in front of another, and that even when I wanted so desperately to stop when the going got tough, it was in keeping going that I learned what I needed to know most: that I was and would be okay regardless of the twists and turns and highs and lows of my journey. The learning was in keeping going, in acknowledging those I was doing the journey with, as well as nature, which persisted regardless of moods and seasons and challenges.

2018 Crew

The Race

Walking down to that start line amid runners and crew, hearing the countdown, and starting to run up from Badwater Basin were a gift to me this year more than any other year. I had to go far and deep within myself to show up at that start line and push forward. I had never enjoyed those first 15 miles as I did that night. The rising mountains, the hollow of the earth, the cars decked out for Badwater runners, crews lining the road; I felt so grateful, so grounded – it was precisely where I needed to be at that moment of my life. I looked up at the sky and in that vastness, I thought about my mom. How she was everywhere and nowhere. How it was up to me to find her within and that although sometimes I experience her presence while others I do not, that says more about my self-awareness than reality. The gift of the living is that we experience and feel; the gift of the dead perhaps is that they are omnipresent.

Soon after, everything shifted. I threw up, then I was fine. Until a few moments later when I wasn’t fine again. Waves of hot air hit me. Later, I would learn that starting line temperatures were in the 118-degree range, much hotter than prior years. I was hot, then I was chilled sitting in the van. I had to throw up, then I was too dizzy to see. I needed to close my eyes, then I was up again. I couldn’t move, then I was ready to run. It happened so fast, and without warning. We assumed it was heat exhaustion. I made it to Furnace Creek. I knew that I was losing time; I also knew that I could make it up as soon as I evened out. There was time with the paramedic, and he gave the sign off that all was okay. I was clear: I wanted to keep going. There were highs and lows as I pushed on, but when my crew shared that I had 19 miles to accomplish in four hours to hit the 50-mile cutoff time, I knew the math wouldn’t add up. I went through defeat, then possibility, then sadness, but I kept moving forward.

When I arrived at Stovepipe Wells, mile 42, I was sure I had to drop out of the race as I only had one hour until the cut off, but race volunteers told me that it was my choice to stop or keep going. So, I kept going! I felt rejuvenated and ready to tackle the course. Until Chris stopped and explained that I couldn’t go on, that I had missed the time to hit the 50-mile mark. I still had endless hours to finish the race – over 34 hours to accomplish approximately 85 miles – but the park’s rules dictated that runners had to move past certain points at designated times. I turned and walked back to the car. Adapting is the way of the world. It took me a few minutes to pivot physically and then emotionally. For me, the experience of running Badwater 135 is not about the buckle, it is not about the claim to fame of finishing; it is about being out there on that long and winding road. It’s about taking in the grandeur of that course. It is about experiencing love, hate, dread, optimism and ultimate peace and joy, all within the span of 40-something hours.

No longer a contender, we drove the course, gave away our coveted bags of ice to other crews, and got to cheer on and talk to some runners and crew who were in the thick of it. Then we stopped at Panamint Springs for lunch, mile 72 on the course, where we encountered other runners and crew who had been pulled or dropped from the race, in addition to those who were still in the midst of the race, who we got to cheer on. I was both destroyed and joyful at once. Although my journey ended, I still revered and prayed for everyone else’s journey. That is what Chris Kostman has created in the Badwater 135 realm: a tight-knit family who all wish the best for one another. I feel grateful and honored to be a part of this group of inspiring and determined individuals in our crazy, flux world.

Another Perspective

Not completing the race had its highlights: my crew and I were able to witness the lead runners – Michele Graglia from Italy and Jared Fetterolf of Texas – arrive at Dow Villa in Lone Pine, en route to the finish line at Whitney Portal. The next day, we got to witness mid-pack runners and crews crossing the finish line. Seeing the runners’ joy and relief was such a beautiful reminder to me of how hard this race is both physically and mentally, and how rewarding it is, too. My crew and I got to hike up to Lone Pine Lake with its breathtaking views.

Then there was witnessing Jennifer Nissen, the last finisher this year, walk into the after-race party and share her story about battling cancer and her Badwater journey. The magnitude of her courage stilled me. Hearing her talk, I had the most settling feeling that everything was exactly how it should be: as volatile as life often is, sometimes it is beautiful and brave and inspiring, too.

For those who cross the finish line and those who do not, Badwater doesn’t end when you return home. It lingers and captures your imagination throughout the year. Sure, you might wonder why you don’t aspire to go on a real vacation, as in sitting on the beach and hanging out come July, but if you have toed that line, or aspire to, you get it: Badwater is not something you do, but a part of who you are, and something that you strive for on the 363 non BW135 days. For those of us that are invited on this journey, runners and crew alike, there is nothing quite like that course and the grace and grit we accumulate along the way, whether or not we cross the finish line. I learned this year that although the result didn’t turn out as I wished, the lessons I accumulated were no less valuable, and the soul-searching that transpired was just as enlightening. Failure, like success, is a teacher, and in the end, perhaps what is most important is showing up, giving it a go, being kind to and acknowledging others, and in the end, celebrating all that life offers us.