Marathon Melt

Shannon Farar-Griefer and her pacer, Tamara Aarin, 80 miles into the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon, through one of the hottest places on Earth. (By Stephen Osman -- Los Angeles Times)

Last year, Jack Denness of England became the first 70-year-old to complete the race. Asked the greatest asset for a Badwater run, Denness said, "Pure pig-headedness."

A few minutes before the race, running coach John Radich, 52, says, "This race doesn't care how hard you train, how far you can run, or who you are." He has run it five times. "It actually changes who you are. It challenges you physically, emotionally and . . . spiritually."

His mental game? "I like to think of the race as a lady. You want to respect her. You can't be overconfident. But you also cannot be a wimp." Indeed. One race, after consuming "spoiled meat," Radich continued to compete for 70 miles suffering severe intestinal distress. Stop for a moment and consider: You are running from Washington to Philadelphia, with diarrhea.

Normal?

Christopher Rampacek, 54, a personal trainer and lifestyle manager from Houston, began doing serious long-distance running after his orthopedic surgeon replaced his hip 10 years ago and told him he would never run again. That was 50 marathons ago. This is his fourth Badwater. Last year, he recalls vividly hallucinating throughout the mountain stretch. What did he see? "A swimming pool," he says. "Oh, and the animals were cheering for me." He is wearing running shorts with a Texas flag and a puka shell necklace.

Neil Kapoor is running his first Badwater. The 38-year-old solicitor from Enfield, England, recently ran, for fun, from London to Paris with a backpack. "It is going to get hotter," Kapoor says. "Good. That's why we're here."

Kostman counts down the start: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Most of the racers begin by jogging, though some walk. The first check-in, at 17 miles, is the Furnace Creek Lodge. Along the road, the racers plod and begin to separate, and from a distance it looks like a fleeing force of French Foreign Legionnaires or Arab sheiks with their heads wrapped in floppy hats, towels and scarves. A few wear gloves. All of them carry water bottles strapped to their hands.

They try to stay on the white line at the road's shoulder because it is slightly cooler, but the heat radiating off the asphalt (145 degrees) still is capable of producing an actual burn on exposed calves.

Around 10:30 a.m., the temperature has settled on 117 degrees. The image of the Badwater race, from its iconic photographs, is of runners alone in a vast, hostile, treeless landscape of rock and sun. This is true, except for the alone part. The racers are all cosseted by their crews, who leapfrog along the whole course a mile at a time in minivans and SUVs packed with supplies.

If the Badwater Ultramarathon is a foot race, it is also a race for survival, and at times it has the feel of a rolling medical emergency. Every mile, the crews dash into the road and attend to their runners, misting them down with garden-style bug-spray pumps filled with water and filling their bandannas and hats with shovels of ice. The racers run dripping sweat, water and ice cubes. Think: human slushees.

"Our main job is to lie to her regularly," says Bill Lockton, a race veteran who was working in the crew for racer Xy Weiss, a 45-year-old district attorney from Los Angeles whose chase car is emblazoned with the words: DIRTY GIRLS GONE BAD.

By lying, Lockton means, "We tell her she's looking great." Lockton and fellow crew members keep track of everything Weiss processes. In go the sodium tablets, electrolytes, antioxidants, fortified waters and nutrition fuels. Every time Weiss urinates, they note it. If a racer stops urinating, it is a sure sign of dehydration or worse.

By early afternoon, most of the racers who will survive the day have passed Furnace Creek and are headed through the sand dunes to Stovepipe Wells. It is 120 degrees. The participants often describe the experience as "running into a hair dryer." It is apt, but doesn't quite do it. The heat and the silence make some feel as if they are trapped in an oven -- an oven with no door.

Rampacek, the Texan, has to take a break. He crawls into his crew vehicle as his team shoves wet towels filled with ice under his armpits, his groin and neck, struggling to get his body's core temperature down. "Man, I'm hurting now," Rampacek says. Because of swelling, he will go from a Size 11 to a Size 14 shoe during the race.

"You're going good. You're looking good. You're right on schedule." This is crew chief Manuel Casillas doing his job, which is encouraging his racer and lying to him, while at the same time, being a super-alert mother hen for signs of slurred speech, dizziness, lack of sweat or urination.

"Can you take some food?"

Rampacek: "I don't even want to think about it."

It is notoriously hard to get many Badwater racers to eat. The body sends all its blood to the extremities to cool down, and the stomach revolts when food is put into it. Along the route, it is not unusual to see a racer stop and vomit. If it happens repeatedly, a contestant is in trouble.

At Stovepipe Wells, 42 miles into the race, some of the contestants jump into the swimming pool. It is hard to get out. Eric Pence, a 40-year-old from Colorado, is lying at the edge as his crew encourages him to ingest a chicken finger. When he finally gets up and dresses, he is stiff and limping. Before him lies the challenge of Townes Pass, a climb from sea level to 4,956 feet, straight up, along a road lined with signs warning motorists to be wary of overheating and to turn off their air-conditioners.

Most of the racers climb the pass and move on to Panamint Springs in the dark. There is a mercy in that.

At night, the Badwater changes. The sky fills with stars and meteors. The racers move along the road in reflective gear, sporting blinking red lights and headlamps. "It's great," veteran Macy says. "You hear the coyotes crying and howling. The cars are flying by. The tourists are doing a hundred miles per hour. You're hallucinating a little bit. It's just a great recipe for disaster." Macy is only half-kidding.

The race organizers worry, especially the medical teams, about heatstroke and heart attacks, but what they fear most is a car accident.

The elite athletes have pulled away. Scott Jurek, who won the race last year, comes into Panamint Springs, 75 miles, before midnight and immerses his body in a large Igloo cooler filled with ice water.

By Tuesday morning, the front-runners are beginning to cross the Owens Valley and ascend Mount Whitney, where the temperatures plummet into the 80s. Jurek wins the race again, in 25 hours 41 minutes and 18 seconds. The runner-up, Akos Konya of Hungary, finishes 17 minutes behind him. The female winner is Monica Scholz, a 39-year-old Canadian, at 32:07:01. As for the rest, a dozen runners were still on the course yesterday afternoon. Their reward? A belt buckle, if they finish in 48 hours. A T-shirt if they make it in 60 hours. They know why they run this race. We can only wonder.