Late at night and high on the mountain, all that seemed to exist for Brenda Carawan was throbbing pain — in each muscle, in every joint. She had to muster everything inside to simply move one foot in front of the other.
“How much farther?” Carawan asked.
Elite marathoner Michael Wardian explains his philosophy on running as he trains for the Badwater Ultramarathon in California.
“Two-point-six miles,” she was told.
“Argh! I need to sit.”
“You can sit when you’re done.”
Carawan, 34, her sweat-drenched ponytail poking out of her hat, had come so far. Years earlier, she’d locked her sights on this race, a 135-mile torture exercise through the California desert known as the Badwater Ultramarathon. She’d spent years planning, training, dreaming. It strained her marriage at times. She’d quit her accounting job. She’d spent more than $8,000. All so she could suffer.
In a day and a half, Carawan had run, jogged and walked more than 130 miles through the heart of Death Valley in 115-degree heat, in what many consider to be the toughest footrace on the planet.
She hobbled only a few more feet before again asking, “How much farther?”
“Two-point-two miles.”
An expletive echoed through the canyon.
“I can’t keep going,” Carawan moaned. “I’m gonna die.”
* * *
At breakfast before the race began, Carawan tried to calm her nerves by regaling her crew members with a scene from “Rocky II.” A reporter had asked the monstrous boxer Clubber Lang, “What’s your prediction for the fight?”
Carawan, who is a sprite and looks nothing like Mr. T, mimicked the mohawked actor: “Prediction? Paaaaaaain.”
In Death Valley, that much was guaranteed when 94 racers from 14 countriesconverged on a blistering July morning. Runners crowded together at the starting line, sweating through their running clothes before any had taken a single step.
Carawan had made the cross-country trip from her home in Virginia Beach, where she had recently left her job at a corporate accounting firm. Behind her, Michael Wardian, an accomplished runner and ship broker from Arlington, triple-checked the watches he wore on each wrist. Not far away, David Ploskonka, a general engineer from Baltimore, shifted his weight from side to side as he glanced at the nearby salt flats.
Badwater Basin is 282 feet below sea level, marking the lowest point in North America and the one of the hottest, driest spots on the planet. Chris Kostman, the race director, likes to call Death Valley “Mother Nature’s greatest sports arena,” though a race of this sort presents challenges that few athletes ever encounter.
At 135 miles, no footrace in the country measures longer. Runners have a 48-hour time limit. They run through the night and stop only for short breaks. Then, there’s the elevation change, going from the lowest point in the Mojave Desert and climbing over three mountain ranges — a total elevation increase of 8,642 feet — ending at Whitney Portal, which leads up to Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States. All the while, runners must somehow control their nutrition, hydrate constantly, limit their exposure to the sun and keep their body in working order until the finish line.
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