Sports

In Motion: The Toughest Footrace in the World

Local runner Jess Mullen will compete in the Badwater Ultramarathon, a race that stretches 135 miles through Death Valley and up Mount Whitney.

When Jess Mullen toes the start line at 10 a.m. on July 11, the temperature will already be well above 100 degrees.

By midday, the thermometer could hit 130.

Mullen will be wearing a long-sleeve white shirt and long white pants especially designed for desert heat. A hat will shield her face and neck from the relentless sun. A bandana, sewn into a triangle and stuffed with ice, will cover her neck and throat and help to cool her core.

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Over the next 30 to 40 hours, Mullen will run 135 miles on scorching black paved roads, following the painted white lines to avoid melting her rubber shoes. Mullen will first cover the roasting flatlands of Death Valley, and then climb 8,000 feet up Mount Whitney.

If she succeeds in crossing the finish line, Mullen will have completed one of the toughest foot races on the planet. The Seattle ultra runner, Crossfit coach and registered dietitian will be taking on the notorious Badwater Ultramarathon.

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“I’m running Badwater because it scares me a little bit,” Mullen said. “Because it sounds really hard. Because it is further than I’ve ever raced before.”

Badwater dates to 1977, when a zealous long-distance runner named Al Arnold decided to run from the lowest spot in North America–Death Valley, which lies at 280 feet below sea level–to the heights of Mount Whitney.

Every year since, runners have been traveling to central California at the hottest time of year to attempt one of the most difficult, extreme endurance challenges around. The race’s notoriety continues to grow, boosted by popular books penned by celebrity runners Pam Reed and Dean Karnazes. Nowadays, most distance runners know of Badwater as the nuttiest endurance race out there.

In fact, the popularity of Badwater has grown so much, runners now must submit applications in order to be chosen for the race. Mullen began investigating the entry process late last year. She’d completed six different 100-mile races over the past year and won The Mother Road, a 100-mile road race in Oklahoma in November that follows the original stretch of Route 66.

Mullen figured that her success at Mother Road bode well for Badwater. While some ultra runners disdain pounding pavement, Mullen’s legs carried her through. She’d completed more than 50 ultramarathons, nearly 50 marathons, and craved the next level of challenge.

“I was at a place where I was up for a new adventure,” Mullen said. “I wanted a big goal for 2011.”

That adventure, Mullen decided, would be Badwater. In February, she mailed her application. To even be considered for Badwater, runners must have either completed three 100-mile races, finished Badwater a prior year, or completed a race called the Brazil 135.

Mullen qualified based on the first standard, but she worried about not meeting some of Badwater’s other selection criteria, including experience in multi-day running events or desert races. She tried to amend for it by listing all of her 100-mile finishing times and explaining why she’d be a good candidate in the essay question.

Knowing Mullen personally, I can vouch for her persuasive argument: She is one tough runner. She may be the toughest female athlete I know. Mullen won a race called Pacific Rim, in which participants complete a one-mile loop as many times as they can in 24 hours. Mullen ran 116 loops.

“It was mentally horrifying,” Mullen said.

In order to run that far, Mullen has learned how to become comfortable with both pain and boredom. She has dropped out of races before, and now knows that she’ll feel far worse beating herself up about the decision for months on end than simply sticking out the hurt and finishing.

When Mullen wants to walk, she asks herself, “Do you really need to? Because it’s just going to take longer if you stop and walk.” More often than not, she keeps running. When she feels truly horrible, she reminds herself that the bad feelings are temporary.

“My mental discipline has evolved over time,” Mullen said.

Fellow ultra runner and photographer Matt Hagen, who will be part of Mullen’s support crew during Badwater, agrees that she has what it takes to finish Badwater. During a recent Badwater planning dinner, he and the other crew members asked Mullen what it would take for her to drop out. After careful consideration, she said that if race officials decided she needed intravenous fluids, she’d be forced to drop out because of safety regulations. Other than that, she plans to keep on trekking.

“I give Jess a better chance of finishing Badwater than almost any rookie I could think of,” Hagen said. “She’s really taking this seriously.”

The Badwater race officials must have agreed, because Mullen was selected as one of 95 runners for the race. (The race permit limits the event to 90, but organizers figure at least five participants will drop out before race day.) Badwater race director Chris Kostman said the officials don’t disclose the number of applications or rejections. Those now registered include 30 women, and 19 different countries are represented. In Washington, Mullen (who lives in Seattle) and Terry Sentinella (an Anacortes resident) will be running.

Mullen, Sentinella, and the other lucky (unlucky?) 93 found out they’d been chosen on Feb. 18. Mullen spent the entire day checking her email every few minutes. Finally, at 11 p.m., she received word. She was in.

Since then, Mullen has begun preparing for the race by reading, researching, heat training, and forming a crew. The cool, misty conditions of the Pacific Northwest are a far cry from Death Valley, meaning Mullen needed to supplement local trail runs with other physical conditioning.

To prepare for the desert, she’s hitting saunas several times a week. Mullen alternates between the Green Lake pool sauna, the Allstar Fitness sauna, and an infrared sauna in a friend’s garage. Ideally, Mullen spends 45 minutes in the saunas in her desert-ready long-sleeve shirt and pants, but staff members have scolded her several times for wearing clothes in the public saunas, so she sometimes must revert to a bathing suit.

Mullen also decided to heat train by signing up for another scorching run this spring. On Saturday, she’ll be running the Keys 100, a 100-mile road race across the Florida Keys. She expects 90-degree temperatures and 90-percent humidity, guaranteeing a toasty training run.

“I do well in heat,” Mullen said. “I like heat.”

Mullen has also been preparing by carefully choosing and counseling her crew. She’s renting two cars for the race, so that a single driver in the first car can make trips to re-supply ice and water. The other three crew members will take the second car. Every mile, they’ll stop the car, wait for Mullen, and then meet her with fresh water, salt tabs, food, and an ice-filled bandana. After the first 30 miles, they’ll take turns running four miles at a time with Mullen. Since the car will overheat if they use the air conditioning, Mullen’s crew won’t be able to escape the heat any more than she can.

The thought of sitting in a roasting automobile in the 130-degree desert, staying up all hours of the night, and chasing after a weary runner with ice and a spray bottle doesn’t sound so appealing to me, but Mullen actually received emails from all over the country from runners asking if she needed more crew members.

Hagen explained the appeal this way: “You go on safari to get an up-close look at bizarre creatures in their native habitat, and you go to Badwater for exactly the same reason."

As a photojournalist, Hagen said, he couldn’t resist the chance to witness a race so bizarre and extreme.

“Badwater is billed as the toughest footrace on the planet,” Hagen said. “I want to have the opportunity to see the suffering close up.”


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