Sun Precautions Badwater 2000 -Ben Jones Story Fire at Both

SUN PRECAUTIONS BADWATER 2000-Ben Jones StoryFIRE AT BOTH ENDS     This year’s Racefeatured fires at both ends and plenty of heat in the middle. A few daysbefore the Race started; there was a national news report that there was afire in Death Valley. My original thought was,“Sowhat’s unusual about a fire in Hades?@At the same time, wild fires hit the southern High Sierra. A major fire tookplace in Kennedy Meadows just 50 miles southwest of Lone Pine. The sun waseclipsed during the second day by smoke and the sky was bright-orange atsunset with ash “raining” down on the last third of the course. In addition,to add extra heat, a road re-surfacing job was taking place on a 10-milestretch along Owens Dry Lake near Keeler (some call it “Killer.”). The hottar would stick to the under surfaces of the running shoes providing a sortof retread.  The temperatures in general were about as to be expectedwithhighs up to 122 in Death Valley and the lows no less than 95 for the firsthalf of the Race. The coolest might have been around 55 at Whitney Portalsat night.     Hi-Tec Sports,USA, Inc. put on the Race starting in 1987. Last year the Race Co-Directors,Matt Frederick and Karen Raby, left that firm. It took most of the summerfor me and Chris Kostman of AdventureCorps and the Furnace Creek 508 (bikerace) to establish that Hi-Tec was not going to pursue putting on the Raceany more as they were not marketing any products such as desert runningshoes or apparel for sun protection. Chris set up a website:http://badwaterultra.comand I kept mine going:http://www.badwaterbenjones.com      All the informationneeded for applying to the Race and anything pertinent was included. DanaPrieto Tanaka handled the marketing. Denise (Jones) and I spent a lot oftime corresponding by email with the applicants. We arranged for deserttraining clinics on Memorial Day weekend where we had 39 people and Fourthof July weekend where we had 24 people. All together, 15 of these wererunners and twelve had successful journeys during the Race itself. The otherthree, who did not do group participation, dropped. We feel that attendingthese clinics is very important and almost a prerequisite for race readinessand entry. Also, Denise, the First Lady of Badwater and the “Blister Queen,”put on a foot care clinic. She has been passing off her talents to othercosmetologists which will make it better in the future with so many runners.     Jodi Rods,Assistant to the Chief Ranger of Death Valley National Park, who handles thepermits, allowed us to have 90 entrants this year. That is more than doublethat of the previous year. (Eight to ten years ago there were only 12-14 inthe event). This year there were three wave-starts of 30 each at two-hourintervals. Actually, on 07-27-2000, there were 32 in the 0600 group, 22 in

the 0800 group, and 15 in the 1000 group. This was for safety reasons andalso to not impair tourist access to the Park. Rules and regulations wereclearly spelled out and a structure for penalties and disqualifications wasannounced.     The pre-racemeeting was held the afternoon before the race in the auditorium of theVisitor’s Center at Furnace Creek Ranch. Almost all of the 300 seats werefilled with 69 runners and their pacers, crew and family members, as well asvolunteers and Sun Precautions Badwater 2000 staff members. It took at leasttwo hours to get the race packets handed out and for announcement to bemade. Special recognition was made regarding Angelika Castaneda who set awoman=srecord last year and also completed the Furnace Creek 508 garnering her thecherished Death Valley Cup. The Russian Federation and USA teams of threeeach were introduced. A group photo was taken of the participants whoentirely filled the stage. Elyse Glickman of Denson Weissman Communicationsannounced that “Running On The Sun,” filmed last year of the Badwater 135Race, was going to be screened at the Hollywood Film Festival at ParamountStudios in the near future. It has been already been presented at severalFestivals and will be presented at several more in the next few months. Itis hoped that it will be nominated for an Academy Award as a documentary.During the afternoon, several Badwater personalities who had passed onduring the last year were memorialized: Bob Givens and Greg Jenkins. Thisyear=shero, Rick Nawrocki, was introduced. He had just completed extensivechemotherapy and IV radiation therapy for Hodgkins lymphoma and ran thisyear as a cured individual. Several runners were planning a double-crossing(=300 miles).       Many stories haveunfolded and are available on the websites. As it turns out, the first fiveplaces went to International athletes. The Russian Federation sent theirbest runners, who are among the best ultrarunners in the world. First placewent to Anatoli Kruglikov in 25:09:05 for a new record by 2 hrs 40 min!Second went to Dusan Mraljve of Slovenia in 25:21:20, only 14 minutesbehind. Third went to Kamame Sakurai of Japan in 27:52:14. All of theserunners broke the previous record set by Eric Clifton last year. Fourth wasIvan Labutin in 29:42:24. Irina Reutovich of the Russian Federation was thefirst woman in 29:48:27. This time broke Angelika Castaneda’s record of lastyear by seven hours! See the Race results below.     Then there was awave of US runners. Tim Hewitt showed up with only his wife to crew him.Fortunately, he inherited a great team of runners and crew members along theway to get him past at least 50 runners from earlier starts to finish at thePortals in a respectable time. Next was Dean Karnazes who entered late afterplacing 11th at Western States a month earlier. He took the placeof a friend who became injured recently. After him was Jay Grobeson whoalmost got wiped out at the Memorial weekend clinic session and then cameback for a spectacular performance.     It is alwaysinteresting to talk with the media. This summer I traveled some with MariaBiel, journalist with German Playboy. She wanted to know what type of persondoes Badwater. She was expecting to hear that it was some person like a“Universal Soldier” such as Dolph Lundgren or Jean Claude VanDamme. I had totell her that it isn’t like that at all. Most have inherited good genes andprobably good VO2 Max capabilities. Maybe there is such a thing assuper-slow twitch muscle fibers. This race is mostly about endurance rather

than speed. Mainly it is a mind-trip plus physical adaptation to heat andaltitude as well as the distance. Coming to Death Valley and the High Sierrato familiarize oneself with the environment are important factors. Crewingor pacing a runner and attending the clinics in addition to doing some 50and 100-milers are necessary. Many runners are over 40 years of age. Well,no telling what will appear in the European version of Playboy. Read thestories of the runners and see what it takes.Sun PrecautionsBadwater 2000 Results:Badwater, Death Valley,at 282 feet below sea level to Whitney Portals at 8,300 feet above sea levelover 135 miles. The trail to the top of Mt Whitney, at 14,497 feetelevation, is 11 more (hiking) miles.  # Name Age Sex Loc Time toPortals Time toWhitney