This was a fun one. Justin asked me to crew him at the Badwater Salton Sea, an 81 mile, gnarly race that runs straight uphill into the mountains and finishes at the top of Mount Palomar. He was running it as a team with Dan, who has a whole bunch of ultras under his belt. And I'll tell you the truth, I was intimidated. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I didn't know how to support someone in a race like this. I didn't know anything about anything, really. A lot of those nerves quieted down quickly once we got there, but we'll get to that. Needless to say, when Justin asked, I immediately said “heck yeah, dude, I'm in”. Not a whole lot of prep beyond a couple of conversations, and the rest is history. Let's get into it.
The Night Before
Justin, Dan and Boris picked me up midday on Friday, and we made a stop at REI for a few final pieces and parts, sunglasses and knickknacks, before heading out to the race check-in.
A few firsts for me here. I have been to a TON of race events in my life, but I had never been to an ultra race briefing like this one. And it is something. Usually at shorter ultras you get a quick little talk right before the gun. This was a full hour, the night before, highway patrol and all, walking through an event that for some people will last close to 28 hours. More than a full day of running, in brutal conditions, and it can get legitimately dangerous. They do not treat it casually, and now I understand why.
Then came prep, which for us was a little haphazard. I didn't fully know what was going on yet. We were filling 5 gallon jugs with water, loading tons of ice, loosely planning how we'd get MORE ice, how much fluid and nutrition we'd burn through, and so on. We stuck the crew stickers and the team name on the car, had a nice dinner, and turned in reasonably early.
The one thing I'll say is that I think I slept better than Justin did. No matter who you are, the nerves before something like this are going to have you staring at the ceiling. But we both got reasonable sleep, we got up, and it was go time.
The Race Start
We drove right up to the Salton Sea, and I had never been there before. It is desolate, it is ugly, and it SMELLS. The Salton Sea has a fascinating backstory, actually. I watched a documentary on it once. It was never supposed to exist. It accidentally formed in 1905 when the Colorado River breached a poorly engineered irrigation canal, the water had nowhere to go, and then over the decades the whole thing started dying off. Long story short, it's an interesting place. And that's where this race starts.
Here's a funny one. Like I said, I've been to a ton of races, but never an ultra quite like this. I went to take a leak in the bushes, and what I realized is that NO ONE cares. Some girl came over, got about three feet from me, and just took a leak right there too. What is happening? At marathons and triathlons everyone waits in a nice orderly line for the porta’ potty. Out here? Everyone's just winging it. This is more my speed.
We got the boys to the start line. A couple photos, a couple little videos, the national anthem, and they were off. At that point we hopped in the car and drove up to the first aid station, which was really just us parking somewhere the guys knew to look for us. That's how this whole thing works. The crew IS the aid station.
The Next Forty Miles
It GOT HOT. The day went from a 6 AM start to full desert warmth by midday as the course crept up into the foothills. We settled into a rhythm: stop, wait for the boys, load them up with ice and water and whatever else they needed, then scoot up another 3 miles and do it again. A big game of hopscotch. Scoot up, meet them, scoot up, meet them. That went on for hours, all the way to the true base of the mountains. And that's when things got particularly interesting.
One thing I'll note here, and Boris and I talked about it at the time. Over the last 10 miles of that stretch, their pace dramatically increased. I still don't know if they were even aware of it. And it was probably not a great idea, because waiting for them at the end of that stretch was the gnarliest section of the entire race.
Hellhole Canyon Trail
This is where things got real. At roughly mile 45 we had to bring our athletes to the ranger station and check them in. Before they could head off, they had to have everything on a list of about 15 required items: 1600 calories of food, a set number of liters of water, all the safety gear, a phone with at least 80% charge, the works. Because for the next almost 9 miles, they would be essentially unsupported, in rugged territory, in the heat, going straight uphill, with very little chance of us reaching them unless things went really wrong.
Once we sent them off, I knew the grind they were in for. But it also gave us our only real break of the day. We had about 3 and a half hours to kill, so we went back into town, reloaded supplies, and Boris and I got a burger and a beer, well earned, because it had been pretty exhausting up to that point.
Then we drove to the top to meet them, and I have to tell you, that drive was unbelievable. Switchback after switchback, straight uphill, something like 4,000 feet of elevation gain. And the whole way up I kept thinking, the guys are HIKING this. On foot. After 45 miles. By the time we reached the top, the temperature had dropped a solid 15 degrees. It was suddenly a lovely mid-70s up there, and it completely changed the game.
The Team Effort
We sat at the top of the trail and waited, watching other teams pop out here and there and head up the road. Eventually our guys emerged, and for the most part, they looked GOOD. I was impressed. I think they got through the canyon in just under 3 and a half hours. We got them sorted out, they sat down for a quick minute, and we swapped shoes and socks, trail shoes to road shoes, since the rest of the race was mostly pavement. All told I think we did the shoes-and-socks swap three times over the course of the whole event. Long story short, they came out of Hellhole looking strong.
Then, a couple miles down the road, we stopped at a big white Yeti. And this is where I started to get nervous, because I started to see some chinks in the armor. Dan, Justin's teammate, and in this race you finish as a team or not at all, was starting to show the race. He looked really tired, and he was having a hard time getting water and food down. I knew enough to know that's a bad sign. If you can't stay hydrated and you can't get calories in, things usually only go one direction. That was the first uh-oh. That stop stretched to a good 10 minutes, and things really slowed down from there. I think that canyon took a lot of life out of the boys.
The Next Twenty Five Miles
The next 25 miles were tough, and I felt genuinely bad for Dan. We went back to hopscotching, but we dropped it from every 3 miles to every 2. There was a lot of walking now. And this is when Dan started dry heaving, throwing up whatever he had left in him. That's when I got truly nervous. I had never seen anyone in that condition finish a race. I'll spoil the ending here: he DID finish. But it was hard to watch, because I knew that if you can't eat and you can't drink, it only gets worse from there. And it did.
Everything slowed dramatically. We'd drive up 2 miles and wait considerably longer than before. Dan and Justin started stopping at the car to rest at every other stop, and we were trying desperately to get fluids and food into Dan without much success. I kept quietly wondering: at what point does this end?
Dark Is Now Upon Us
The transition to evening was a strange one. We had been up when it was dark that morning, and here it was, dark AGAIN, and we were still out there. Fourteen hours, sunrise to just shy of 8 o'clock when the sun went down. And we knew there was a fair share of running left. It turned out to be six more hours, exactly.
The night brought a whole new set of circumstances. Fortunately we had this really neat magnetic bar light that we attached to the tailgate, and it lit up our little roadside pit stops beautifully. The boys ran with their headlamps on, and this is where the red blinkies earned their keep. We had fastened red blinky lights to their fronts and backs, and off into the dark they went. But I knew the last 10 miles of this race featured a pretty sinister climb, and I was curious, maybe anxious is the better word, about how they'd handle it.
The Last 10 Miles & Finishing
The last 10 miles is another gnarly ascent, all the way up to the top of Palomar Mountain, and it doesn't flatten out until about three quarters of a mile from the finish, where you finally get a slight downhill. Otherwise it is relentlessly up.
Boris and I started tidying up during the waits. Emptying extra water, organizing the car, putting gear back in the overhead bin, quietly getting ready for the drive home. The boys were walking a lot now, occasionally running, moving at maybe 3 miles an hour. Progress, just really slow progress. At night, crewing becomes a game of staring into the darkness waiting for headlamps to appear in the distance. Sometimes it was our boys. Sometimes it was someone else's.
As we got really close, we gave the guys their last pit stop and drove ahead to scout the finish so we wouldn't make any mistakes in the final stretch. The finish line is at a house up top, and we walked right in among all the race officials to scope out the last few turns. Then we backtracked and brought our boys home.
That last little stretch was a BLAST. We parked the car and ran them in, all the way to the finish line, and I peeled around front to get photos of Justin and Dan coming through. What a sight.
The Finish & Exhaustion
And that's when it hit me. The moment they crossed, my exhaustion completely settled in. The adrenaline finally let go, the cortisol calmed down, and I just CRASHED. I had driven the entire way, and Boris offered to drive home, which I was so appreciative of, because I honestly don't know if I could have driven safely. I was that wrecked. And I didn't even run the thing.
So thank you again, Boris. And to Dan and Justin: WOW. I was incredibly blessed to have been there, and I'm super proud to have supported two amazing athletes through something like that. Just a great, great experience.