Heated competition

If your longing is a brutal ultramarathon, Badwater takes it to the extreme

Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Colorado's Badwater runners curse good fortune.

When the wind is at their backs, when clouds cover the blazing sun, when conditions aren't significantly miserable, they sigh in disappointment.

It's early July, and the training days are running out before they fly to Death Valley and join 83 others from across the world in arguably the toughest road race on the planet: the Kiehl's Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race in temperatures reaching 130 degrees.

There, they'll welcome good fortune, any respite to the heat, anything to help keep them moving from 280 feet below sea level to the Mount Whitney Portals, at 8,360 feet.

The five Colorado men who will attempt the absurd and improbable have the same goal: to finish and, if it's not too presumptuous, to finish in 48 hours to win the coveted buckle that avers you're one of the toughest, most stubborn, looniest hombres on the planet.

But for now, in Colorado, they pray for conditions that simulate Death Valley, to approximate the misery of the Badwater course during their training runs.

And although Colorado had one of its hottest Junes ever, it's never hot enough for these five.

Nattu Natraj, 43, of Lafayette, an operations manager, recently showed up for a five-hour training run, dressed in three long-sleeve shirts in 90-degree heat.

"It's not hot enough," Natraj said, regretting he hadn't worn at least one more long-sleeve shirt.

He sets his watch and starts running in Boulder. Three and a half minutes of running, followed by a minute and a half of walking, over and over and over. His marathon watch buzzes the intervals.

"Anything to keep from thinking," Natraj said, appreciative of the watch's steadfastness.

Natraj has helped plenty of ultramarathoners through their races, ferrying water, spoon-feeding nutrients, and now it's his turn.

He'll have a team of seven people helping him at Badwater, and he'll need every one of them.

"I couldn't do it without them," he said. "They gently prod you along" when all you want to do is curl up on the side of the road and go to sleep. "They motivate you."

They also keep the runner healthy and decide for the runner when it's too dangerous to continue. One person on Natraj's team is a doctor who will pay close attention to his feet, which take a beating, and a bleeding, during the race.

And he'll watch those shoulders scarred from the Marathon Des Sables in Morocco. Seems no amount of sunscreen is enough to deflect the burning rays.

Natraj looks like a runner, even though he never played sports at all in his native India and he didn't take up running until four years ago.

Since then, he has run seven official marathons, has 20 other training runs that were at least 26.2 miles long and has run the Morocco race, which vies with Badwater as the toughest race on Earth.

There, as he was running through the Sahara Desert, he suffered sunburn scars that still haunt him.

But ultramarathoning, for Na- traj, is the ultimate challenge, something grander than even earning his Ph.D.

Sure, there's the challenge, the curiosity about getting to the next level of a ladder that very few have tried to climb, and, of course, the friendships made in the tight community.

Beyond that, said Natraj, who just had returned from a training run between Badwater and Furnace Creek in Death Valley, "It helps me zone out of day-to-day stresses.

"There is no high or joy like being out there in the middle of nowhere and doing a great run, training or otherwise. I just experienced that feeling yesterday."

Jack Menard, 56, a house painter from Denver, gets the heat - intense heat - without the sunburn worries.

He has transformed his sunroom into a heat tunnel, equipped with a treadmill.

A couple of feet from the treadmill is a box fan blowing air through an oil-filled radiator. On the floor are two 500-watt halogen lights, to add a little heat and get Menard used to the bright Death Valley sun.

Facing him as he runs is a black electric fireplace "for another dose of torture," he said.

When Menard started running there last week, the temperature was about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, but it quickly reached 117 degrees.

Not miserable enough - nothing can simulate the hot tar that makes the feet blister and bleed - but not bad for a training run.

He sets the treadmill at a 7-degree grade and runs.

The heat training usually entails 10 miles on the treadmill, then outside to where his backyard meets the Highline Canal for a six-mile run. After that, he hops into his backyard hot tub, then back on the treadmill for his 4.5-mph runs.

Sometimes, he'll watch TV while he treads, other times, he'll listen to his MP3 player or study for nursing school, which he begins full time in August.

"I'll do eight hours some days," Menard said.

Menard will sweat almost a gallon an hour during the most intense parts of his heat training, so much that it runs off his fingertips in a steady stream.

He ran Badwater once before, in 2002, when he finished 11th of 43 male runners - in slightly less than 42 hours.

When he gets to Badwater, he and his crew of two will sleep on the desert floor, to further prepare him for the rigors of the race. The night before the July 24 start, he'll spring for a motel room - not for him, but for his crew.

Menard will sleep outside, with the heat from the air conditioner discharge blasting him in the face.

Menard was too busy partying in high school to take part in any sports, and while house painting "has been very good to me," he now wants another challenge.

Besides, house painting is wrecking his body - causing rotator cuff and shoulder problems that linger long after the sores from an ultramarathon disappear.

"My body's going to hell. I want to use my brain."

It was his success at Badwater in 2002 that convinced him he could face any challenge - whether it be academic or podiatric.

Until ultramarathoning, his life was unfocused. Here, he had something to give his days and his weeks structure. The five- hour Sunday runs, the calibrated meals, the daily training.

And after he had turned his body into an efficient machine and had finished Badwater four years ago, "It let me know I could do anything I wanted to. Why not nursing school?"

When he first heard there was such a race, he said sincerely, "That is something that is impossible!"

But he tried a 50-miler and found that his slowness in marathons wasn't such a handicap in the longer races.

"We're all slow-twitch-muscle guys," he said.

Still, the physical pain of Badwater is something "hard to transcend," and something that has to be experienced to understand.

His goals this time are at once daunting and modest:

"I want to try to finish in under 40 hours," he said. "And I want to really enjoy it. To just float."

Colorado's best and most well- known ultrarunner is Marshall Ulrich, 55, of Idaho Springs, who has won Badwater four times but expects to run this one several hours slower than his best.

Any wonder why?

He led a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro recently and then went to Switzerland for a speed climb of Mount Blanc and its vicinity. This month, he already has run another ultramarathon.

Ulrich finally found miserable enough conditions to suit him last month when he went to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where it was 101 degrees.

"I wasn't trained for heat, and my stomach was not emptying out the water," he said. "I just kept throwing up.

"If your body isn't using the water, you can get in trouble."

Still, the experience "kind of shocked my body into telling it what it is going to need to do" to get through Badwater.

That, and his usual routine - cranking his home sauna to 175 degrees and running in place for about an hour - should have him ready for the race that hurts so good.

He'll have trained his body to sweat out 40 ounces an hour, an amount that will be precisely put back into his body with the help of his crew. "You're teaching your body to sweat, teaching your kidneys to not let go of the sodium too quickly. You need the sodium to process the water.

"Your body is like a huge radiator. The heat training teaches the body to sweat earlier and sweat more but to excrete less sodium."

Also running are Scott Snyder, an emergency room physician from Littleton who frequently trains with Menard, and Eric Pence, a distribution manager from Eagle.

Pence, 40, barely finished Badwater in 2004, after having to rest for several hours at Stovepipe Wells so he again could start urinating. This time, he wants to finish without hitting the wall, without dehydrating. He's running to raise awareness and money for Parkinson's disease, which claimed his mother recently.

"I still think of it as running in front of an open pizza oven," Pence said.

Snyder, 51, who several times has done something Menard never has been able to - finish the ultra-high ultramarathon Leadville 100 - says he first contemplated Badwater when he crewed for Ulrich in 1994.

"I'd never seen anything so alien, so desolate and miserable," he said. "Honestly, I hated it."

But as he began to help Ulrich and other runners, he began to appreciate the desert race for its challenges, for the suffering and triumph.

"I've seen the anguish and I've seen the joy. I feel it's time I . . . present myself to the challenge."

Ultramarathons: the health risks

Although ultramarathoners often assert that the combination of walking and slow running in their races is easier on the joints than the faster paces of marathons and 10-kilometer races, there are unique risks associated with moving the body for two straight days:

Heatstroke

In 120-degree temperatures in Death Valley, if the humidity rises to 30 percent, the heat index - it's the apparent temperature felt by the body - rises to 148 degrees. The body sweats out water faster than it can be replaced. It can cause death, kidney shutdown, brain damage. Early warning signs include a decrease in sweating, or goose bumps. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, headache, dizziness, faintness, irritability, lassitude and rapid heart rate.

• Solution: Water, and a lot of it, supplemented by electrolytes from energy drinks. Runners will have to drink several gallons of water during the 48 hours or so they take to complete it. In extreme conditions, the body can sweat out a half-gallon or more an hour.

High altitude

Climbing from below sea level to higher than 8,000 feet can cause some runners to feel nauseous, short of breath and disoriented. In extreme cases, it can lead to severe lung and brain swelling, even death.

• Solution: The main treatment is rest and quickly getting to a lower altitude.

Hyponatremia

A rare condition, caused by the body becoming dangerously low in sodium, that makes the runner look mildly drunk. It's caused by runners drinking too much water - drinking excessively for four to six hours.

• Solution: Drink a lot of sports drinks, to replenish the body with sodium and potassium, along with plenty of water.

Blisters

The hot pavement can reach 200 degrees Fahrenheit, causing blisters and bleeding of the feet.

• Solution: Use Vaseline and other ointments, change socks frequently and often have a foot specialist among the race crews.

Sunburn

Can cause blisters and scars that don't go away.

• Solution: Sun hats and plenty of sunscreen, applied often.

scanlon@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2897