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Way off the beaten path

High altitude and extreme heat mark the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile trek in Southern California.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 25, 2006

NORTH BEND, Wash. - The sun has not quite risen on a cool, cloudy morning as Scott Jurek straps a water bottle to his right hand and starts running up a steep alder-lined trail, heading to the summit of Mount Si.

Most of the ultramarathons he runs take him through similar terrain. But he has been training for a race he spent years avoiding because it stretches across 135 miles of Southern California asphalt in the cruel midsummer heat of a vast desert.

On July 24, Jurek and about 90 other of the world's most seasoned long-distance runners took on the notoriously grueling Badwater Ultramarathon, which begins in the belly of Death Valley and ends more than halfway up Mount Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental United States.

With temperatures that often soar past 120 degrees, many runners wear hats and bandanas equipped with pockets for ice cubes that melt every mile or so. Five times during last year's race, Jurek spent several minutes sitting in a super-sized cooler full of ice water.

A running coach, pitchman for Brooks Sports Inc. and physical therapist based in Seattle, the 32-year-old Jurek ran Badwater for the first time last year, just two weeks after his seventh consecutive win at the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run in Northern California.

Few were surprised he won and set a Badwater course record of 24 hours, 36 minutes, 8 seconds. This year he's out to finish it in less than a day.

"I think his chances are excellent," said Marshall Ulrich, a four-time Badwater winner. "I think he may not just break 24 hours - he may break 23 hours or maybe even 22."

Some people thought Jurek was crazy last year when he ran it so soon after Western States. Even he acknowledged it was "a little bit over the edge."

This year, he skipped Western States and headed down to Death Valley 21/2 weeks before the race, spending more than double the time he did last year getting acclimated to the searing heat.

During the hottest hours of the day, runners rarely see their sweat. It evaporates that quickly. They have to monitor their electrolyte levels regularly, and hop on scales to weigh themselves every hour or two, to make sure their bodies are processing all the fluids they're sucking down.

At times, Jurek's weight was down three or four pounds - a lot, he said, for a man who weighs 165. He guzzled about a gallon of water every couple of hours, but figured out it wasn't quite enough. This year, he said he plans to drink more and weigh himself more often to make sure he drops no more than a pound or two at any given time.

Some Badwater runners take sleep breaks. Jurek lay down at one of his low points last year, but never snoozed. At one low point last year, he had a rare bout of vomiting. At other lows, he said it felt draining just to walk. He ran backward a time or two just to vary his stride, giving his muscles a bit of a break.

His goal all along was to win, but he held back and let others lead until mile 90 or so. That impressed Lisa Bliss, who served as the race medical director.

"He was able to plan and pace himself very well. I think in that respect he's a phenomenal runner," said Bliss, a veteran ultrarunner who finished Badwater two years ago.

Tall and trim but a bit less lanky than many hard-core runners, Jurek logs 55-70 miles a week on average, and 100-120 as he's peaking before a big race - running as many as he can on wooded trails. In recent years, he's added yoga, weightlifting and a vegan diet to his training regimen.

Instead of milk, eggs, steak and other staples of many meat-eating runners' diets, Jurek eats a lot of tofu, tempeh (a high-protein food made of cooked soybeans) and whole grains, and adds things such as almonds, hemp seed and protein powder to the smoothies he often blends up for breakfast.

It's all part of a regimen he says dramatically has improved how his body recovers from races and all-out training runs.

"Definitely the recovery is as important as training," he said. "I wouldn't say I had things totally wrong before. It's like a fine-tuning process I've tweaked and tweaked."

Jurek hasn't always been an avid runner. He used to hate it. Growing up outside Duluth, Minn., he did a lot of cross-country skiing. When he got into the racing circuit, he ran in the offseason, but only to stay in shape for the winter.

He decided to give long-distance running a try after a friend raved about his experience running - and winning - a 50-mile race.

Jurek entered the same race, the Minnesota Voyageur 50-Mile Run, a year later at age 20 and came in second in a field of about 100 runners. Despite the impressive finish, he wasn't sure he would ever do it again.

"Much like a lot of first-time marathoners, when you finish, it's like, "Never again,' you know, "That's it. I'm stopping here,' " Jurek said. A few hours after the pain wore off, he said he decided, "Hey, I might want to give this a go."

And so he did. He has run dozens of ultramarathons since, most of them ranging from 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) to 100 miles. Of 28 individual and team races he lists among his career highlights, he's won 20 of them and placed in the top five in the rest.

He still relishes the thrill of competing, but said the part he's come to appreciate most is "learning about how I can get my body to continue on, how I can just turn off the noise in my brain telling me, "This is too hard.' "

[Last modified June 28, 2006, 17:40:14]