"There is no cowardly woman in this house."
A slogan, an atmosphere, and a way of life were given to me by my mother during the growth process of my sister and me. She would say that after completing some power feats that ordinary mothers would not dare to do, bend her biceps, such as dragging thousands of pounds of wet carpet onto the basement steps and onto the front lawn after an unfortunate storm. Let dry. My mother did not wait for anyone's help. In fact, she may find your proposal very frequent. She will do it herself.
Her two daughters? We absorb and become that motto and bluff. You see, tenacity is a family value.
Do you want an origin story? Because this is the beginning of everything.
Fast forward to July 19, 2021. I am 38 years old and feel brave and ready, and in the best state of my life. When I waited for the infamous Badwater 135 to start at 8pm, the outdoor temperature was 113 degrees. Known as the toughest race in the world, Badwater is a 135-mile ultramarathon that traverses Death Valley, California, the hottest place on record on earth.
In order to successfully complete this race, I will have to endure the melting heat of the face and relentless climbing. The race starts in the Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America (282 feet below sea level), and ends at the entrance of Mount Whitney (8,374 feet above sea level), the highest mountain in the Lower 48. All in all, bad water includes three climbing parts, accounting for nearly 20,000 feet of elevation.
Yes, it is intense. But this is the point. This is all I have. As an athlete, a tomboy, and a lively kid from Jersey, I think you can say that I was nurtured to treat toughness as currency since I was born. I want to know how much money is in my account.
The beginning of the night is the first real mind to experience bad water. But before we even hear the word "Go!" we are about to be overwhelmed by the next one: a low-lying, hazy brown cloud heading towards the starting line. I have never seen anything similar.
You said it was Habu? What is haboob?
A violent, suffocating sandstorm? Is it suitable for us?
Cool. Cool cool. Super cool. Perfect, even. Dive headlong into the natural disaster, just like we drew it!
I have trained for high temperatures and mountains, but how can you train for weather that you have never heard of? ! Too bad, idiot, because you are in it now.
With new legs, no hills to climb, and all the pent-up excitement, the beginning should be one of the easiest parts of the game. You remind yourself of the slower part-relax! ——Because this is an ultra-marathon, not a marathon, let alone a sprint. But this haboob and its headwind threw my pace chart out of the window from my first step. It feels like being pulled back by a set of invisible resistance bands, and these "easy, jogging mileage" are slow, but not so easy. My work rate is higher than I want, but what else can I do? Stand still?
I only need to complete it step by step, hoping that fatigue will not catch up with me too quickly.
At about 12:30 in the morning, the first feeling of lethargy fell on me. I haven't run for five hours, so I know I have to fight with it. Taking a nap now means less time running while the sun and all its anger are still hidden. Now dozing, there are 115 miles—plus three mountains and two sunrises—and it will be very soft before going.
And I have not trained for two years to become soft.
"Find it," I told myself. It's dark, but I'm not talking about finding the next checkpoint, the road ahead of me, or even the hand attached to my arm. This is a catch phrase that I accidentally fell into in this game. Find the energy to stay awake. Find the rhythm that feels right. Find anything inside you that keeps you upright and moving.
I don't know why I feel so tired all of a sudden. I did a good job at the Furnace Creek checkpoint less than 2 miles ago. Maybe that haboob is really useful to me. Maybe I have been awake for 17 hours. Maybe I just need to suck it.
I look behind me, hoping that another runner can catch up and accompany me, but only me and the white line on the side of the road. All I saw was the faint shadow outline of the mountains in the distance. The same mountains trap the hot air here, making you feel like you are standing under a hair dryer.
I think the desert, as the name suggests, is desolate, but I am shocked by how quiet it is now. The only thing I can hear is the whistling wind and the sound of my own footsteps. I secretly like this feeling. It feels illegal, like I broke the curfew. My very mediocre headlight casts a small cone of light in front of me, enough to prevent me from spraining my ankle or snaking while off-road. Anything outside this luminous sphere is a mystery, and it won’t be solved until I pass through it.
People always ask me why I want to run an ultramarathon, especially why I want to run Badwater. Why would I choose such a hard and difficult thing? Why should I suffer so much? Why am I not satisfied with 30 minutes of moderate exercise 4 to 5 days a week? marathon? 50 miles? 100K? 100 miles? Where does the madness end?
I never know how to answer these questions. They seem to be more rhetorical than curiosity, as if the person who questioned me has no way to express their doubts, awe or disapproval.
Part of the reason is that I knew early on that to be different, I had to really work hard. I don't have the unique height or the beauty of a cover girl, those physical talents that only require daily maintenance. After I enter puberty—or more accurately, after I enter puberty—my body is no longer the fastest or strongest. But I know one thing: I can work harder than everyone.
Effort may not get you everywhere—let us admit that the I-level scholarship requires some mix of natural, nurturing, and divine intervention—but it will get you far. Hope to work hard to get me somewhere near 135 miles.
I clicked on my headlight to see how dark it is. I looked up at the night sky, the sky was full of stars, as if someone was shaking and shining on a black drawing. I remind myself to drink it all up, because that's why I signed up for this game. To experience every feeling, every point of view, every moment, even a low point. Especially low scores.
Fortunately, I am not alone in this battle. Like every runner in Badwater, I have a support team to help me travel through this deserted, wind-ravaged desert. In the front, I saw the emergency flashing lights of our truck, which is a touring repair station that crosses every 2 miles during this journey. There are four fairy walkers in that van, and their job is to make sure that I don't die, disintegrate, or quit the game.
My member. my people. My lifeline.
You can't just grab four runners from the street and expect things to go 135 miles smoothly. Even if you entrust them with the darkest secrets, you cannot choose your four best friends, because one of the Dodos will inevitably be excommunicated. You must find the right combination of people who can cope with long distances, lack of sleep, and extreme heat. You need people who will challenge you and hold you accountable, but they also understand that everyone has limitations and they will be tested here. You need people who can follow the plan and thrive in chaos.
Enter Ricky Haro, my crew and the brain of this operation. Ricky is my first choice without hesitation. He and I already have the history of Badwater. In 2018, we worked with our friend Mosi Smith when he fell 95 miles. In 2019, Mosi climbed the damn mountain again. This is his personal best. Good time.
As the flight attendant, Ricky is the big wheel that keeps the rest of us moving. He is my coach, my meteorologist, my digestive expert, my therapist, my emotional support animal. In this game, Ricky is everything to me. Without him, I cheers.
Ricky is also the most cunning villain you have ever seen. He remained calm and low-key, but in some other lifetime achievement level achievements, this guy has completed two crossings in Death Valley, including one self-reliance. "What does'self-sufficiency' mean here?" you ask. A wonderful question, Interpol. This means that Ricky pushed all of his own supplies through Death Valley-in a beautified shopping cart with brakes-to the top of Mount Whitney on the dog days in August. There are no crews, no vans for naps or towing ice cubes. It's just that he damned himself pushing his own water, food and extra sneakers up and down the mountain for three days. Buddies are beasts. Your flight attendant will never.
In the second session, I went with Jimmie Wilbourn, my long-lost brother. Jimmy and I have been united in the universe since we met on the coast in the 200-mile team relay race Hood in Oregon in 2013. We are almost the same person, but Jimmy grew up in Texas and I grew up in New Jersey. He never scolds people, and I can't fucking help. He is a man, I am not. Otherwise, twins.
Jimmie and I are direct opponents of Hood to Coast, run the same part of the course on opposite teams, and keep talking trash. When Jimmy's teammates learned that I ran faster than him in the first round, their entire Air Force guys started to laugh at Jimmy. Of course, Jimmy was very excited, beating me in the next two games and cementing our competition-and unbreakable friendship. Since then, Jimmy has joined my relay team, and the rest is history. I am sure that he is my patron saint. I need his enthusiasm, jokes and brotherly love to travel through Death Valley.
It sounds strange, I have never met Kalie Demerjian or Brenna Bray before choosing them to work for me in Bad Water. For me, it is important for me to get more women to participate in sports and work hard to participate in the toughest supercar races, so I extend my tentacles to the universe and talk to everyone on the phone to understand their atmosphere and experience, voila . teammate. This seems to be a very dangerous way to make friends, but here we are.
With wind-tangled brown hair and eyes of different colors, Kalie is your gentle elf dream lover. At first glance, you might think that she is too small, too dignified, and too passive for evil water. But maaan, you are the most wrong. Kalie is a quiet storm. A small power station. A 24-year-old super running stallion ran her first 100-mile race, fast enough to qualify for the national championship. Bonus: Kalie is introverted, which is a severely underestimated feature for anyone who wants to spend three days in a truck. Because sometimes, everyone just needs to shut up and run away.
Last but not least, meeting Brenna, her boundless energy could have settled in the Wild West. She is the ultimate teammate: Minnesota is very good, full of excitement about even the most mundane aspects of this bad water adventure. Need water? watermelon? Sugar watermelon? Just say a word and Brenna will run over. She is ready for everything the desert brings her: more heat, more miles, more climbs. Just tuck it into her backpack and she will carry whatever you need with you.
When I approached my support car somewhere around 1am and 22 miles away, I dragged my ass. I drank some Coca-Cola and a bunch of candies, hoping that eating like at a concession booth in a movie theater would refresh me. In my real life, when I don't run supercars, I really never drink soda. The last time I cared about candy was when I retired from the trick or treat game in sixth grade. But in the ultramarathon, the most important thing is the easy-to-digest high-calorie food. Give me your sugar, your carbohydrates, the packed pop pies you crave to be eaten. Just like Buddy the Elf is your nutritionist.
But the sugar high has not yet reached. As a final effort, I asked Ricky and Jimmy to pass me my headphones.
Prosperity. We will be back soon.
It was like the ghost of Whitney Houston entered my body. I want to dance with someone. I want to run to you. I am the Queen of the Night. I sang in the desert wind, making high notes, ignoring any lizards or long-eared hares that might have been sleeping. Although I can't see another runner a few miles away, it's an all-out party now.
Repelling that groggy wave filled me with confidence and kept me going for miles and hours. "You see, KC." I call myself in the second person and the third person, as if my mind and body are separate entities.
To run an ultra-marathon, you must listen to your body and solve the problems that it attracts your attention. Whether in flight or under stress, you need to be able to solve problems large and small: soreness, pain, fatigue, digestive problems, bruises, blisters, overheating.
It is very likely that I will face every challenge in this game. But this is the purpose of our training.
Back in February, I started to increase my mileage. I have run 100 miles, but we are talking about running 35% more miles under very difficult conditions. I must start to exercise my body and mind to meet the challenge. In the middle of spring, I run 85 to 100 miles a week on a regular basis. Six days a week, I get up early and run as far as possible-based on my physical feelings and my free time before starting work, because despite the time and energy I have put in, I made zero dollars from this strange hobby. Marketing Food is on the table, your girl must eat.
In order to keep up with my metabolism, I ate everything that was not fixed. I sleep soundly almost every night, exhausted from exhaustion, my muscles desperately need to rest and recover.
To be clear, I like such hard training. The feeling of collapse and reconstruction. Empty the water tank. People may tell you that less is more, but I am not. I am a "more is more" person. I want extra mileage, extra soreness, extra spice.
Besides, fasten my sneakers and go out is freedom. Think or don't want. Go where I want to go. Listen to podcasts or playlists or listen to nothing. It's my turn.
In the past few months of training, I have spent slow days, and my legs feel heavy and tight. On cold days, the wind blew my face and almost froze my lungs. But there are no bad days. Because I am moving towards something that makes me have a sense of purpose. Things that I have worked for, things that have rejected me. I don't want this game to make me lose more without fierce, knock-down, and procrastinating battles.
That's right, the team. Because although this is the first time I have entered the starting line, this is not the first time I have trained for Badwater.
In 2020, I applied and became one of 100 runners selected to run Badwater. I completed the entire cycle of training, and then, 10 days before the game schedule and three days before I was about to leave, the game director sent an email. We had been scared and sweating for months.
What hasn't COVID damaged in 2020? During those hours of warm-up training, I wore six layers of sweat and sat in the car with the windows open. In those days, when it was dark, I woke up. All these miles and worn sneakers. All these squats and deadlifts. For what?
We didn't even get a refund. Not even the credits for next year. That's just a big and fat L.
I am very angry. I am a living version of Michael Jordan, the "I made it personal" meme. I want revenge. I don't want this game to beat me, so I use my vendetta as a motivation for the entire calendar year.
The anger at the situation before and after the cancellation of the 2020 game should not be confused with the actual craziness of hot training, which is both absurd and necessary.
For a race like Badwater, it's not just about the number of miles on your lap. It allows your body to adapt to extreme heat so that it does not shut down or, you know, die. It is learning to recognize the difference between "Wow, this is miserable" and "I may be experiencing organ failure." Typical, completely normal stuff, right?
In June, I ran every time-wearing a sweatshirt and trousers, and running in the hot and humid streets of Washington, D.C., I looked confused and unstable, like the kind of person who doesn’t know what season it is. , May wear a tin foil hat to prevent brain goblins. I make sure to give a thumbs up to the Secret Service agent standing near the White House-guys, everything is fine! ——But they still stared at me with suspicion and confusion.
As the game day approaches, I spend an hour in the gym’s 200-degree sauna every morning, hydrating and sweating through every pore to train my body to process moisture faster. I sat in the soft light and read paperback books until their bindings melted and the pages curled. My heart rate increased, like I was doing interval training, but I just sat quietly, roasting like a turkey. Although this is not my goal, I live longer than everyone who stepped into that cedar box. This is my current house.
Speaking of my house, sorry to my support partner Josh, but I turned off the air conditioner. The good news is that our electricity bill is almost zero; the bad news is that the temperature has never fallen below 84 degrees. However, I still put on a hoodie, trousers, woolen socks and slippers, closed the door of my home office, and turned on the space heater. Three times a day, I had to put my laptop in the refrigerator to cool it down so that it wouldn't break. I? I am a constant sweat ball, but other aspects work well. What we do for love, right?
When I arrived at the Stovepipe Wells checkpoint at Mile 42.2, it was already 4:30 in the morning on Tuesday. When the sun rises, the desert will glow pink, purple, and amber, like melting rainbow sherbet.
Since I have run for 8.5 hours, I feel strong and efficient, and I am ready to smoke in the next section and climb 17 miles to Towne Pass. The temperature is rising steadily, and so am I.
"Why is it so hard?" I asked Brenna, who had been pacing beside me for the past 7 miles.
"You are crushing it," she said. "Look at how much you have covered."
For the first time in a few hours, I turned around, and everything behind me was going downhill. It's gratifying to know that this is not just slowing me down and forcing me to feel the fatigue of hard work. This terrain is no joke.
At 52 miles, Kalie jumped in and adjusted my pace for the next ascent, which was like lightning. positive energy. When she nudged me, I could feel her dizzy, almost as if I was punching her. She wants to move. You can feel it. I kept going, and soon we climbed to the top of Towne Pass, the first of the three mountains between me and the finish line.
58.7 miles still feels great. At an altitude of nearly 5,000 feet, it was gradually acquired from below sea level, and when I bombed from the mountain, most of it was about to evaporate. I leaned on the downhill and walked on steep turns, focusing on my leg flips. I don’t need a road sign every 1,000 feet down; when my knee rubs like a molcajete, I can feel it. There is no point in fighting gravity. It is best to use this free speed, even if it will be hurt.
When I reached the foot of the mountain, Ricky jumped in for a strategic jog.
"Jimmy will drag you through Panamint. We will not make any crew stops because I want you to go through the kill zone as soon as possible," he said. "It will be difficult, but you get the idea."
Compared with the front mountain and the back mountain, the next 7-mile straight section appears flat and relaxed.
But girrrrrl, don't deceive yourself. You go straight to the heart of the beast.
Jimmy and I started walking through the Panamint Valley, and I immediately sweated like my father in the YMCA. "The Hurricane Harbor here has been terrified all day," Jimmy said, spraying me with cold water every few steps.
This is so interesting. This may be interesting. Then, all of a sudden, it was not fun.
Panamint Valley is a place where dreams die. The air temperature is 114 degrees, but it is much hotter than the road just paved in black. And there is no cross wind in hell.
I think I'm just rubbish. It's like I want to stop--not stop--but stop running, sweating, and slowly melting into glass.
Poor Jimmy always splashed water on me and pushed me away. He wears long sleeves and long pants to protect himself from the sun, and I wonder why he hasn't dried into jerky-a literally slim Jim. What a good friend. Without Jimmy, I would be dead now and would be picked up by some willful coyotes.
I can see our next checkpoint at Panamint Springs Resort, and my eyes tell me that it is about a mile before I get there. But then I saw a signpost that almost ruined my life.
PANAMINT Hot Spring Resort - 3 miles
I lost my mind. how? Why did I give up halfway? Am I on the backward conveyor belt?
I am angry with everything and everyone, because how could it take so long? I want answers, but Panamint Valley has no answers. This is the closest place I have ever experienced to Azkaban prison.
I cursed the sky and screamed at the sun, as if I was the protagonist of Shakespeare's tragedy. I ignore you, stars!
Jimmy had just crossed the road to replenish water and ice, which made me anxious for a few minutes alone. So now I look at the van-four generous, kind people trying to cheer me up-I only know that one of them can say something nice.
Listen, I am not proud of it, but I am ashamed of strikeouts in a slow softball game. When this happens, I don’t want anyone to pat my back and tell me it’s okay. no. This is shameful and humiliating. I grew up in New Jersey, and our state motto might be "Cut off the bull—". Therefore, when people patronize me or tell me lies to make me friendly, it offends me deeply at the molecular level.
I can tolerate heat and bruises, lack of sleep, and blistering toes. But what I can't stand is that my staff lied to me and tried to protect me from the fact that this is bad now, and it will be bad before I use my two feet to get from here to there.
I can't deal with false claims. So I preempted them and yelled and crossed the road into the van before they had a chance.
"No one better tell me I am doing well now!"
When I walked by, they looked at me, dumbfounded and silent.
Driven by my anger, I finally crossed the sandy beach of Hades and immediately took a nap in the van. There are red swirls on my thighs, not sunburn, but flash heating. I just want to take off my shorts. The friction on the back of my sports bra feels like someone has ripped off the wings of an angel, and it feels good for traveling through hell.
I stretched in the passenger seat, covered my face to block the sun, and closed my eyes.
If I remember correctly, the boys’ attitude changed around the fourth grade. Before that, they only thought of me as one of them: athlete, competitor, teammate. On track and field day in our elementary school-the de facto Super Bowl at Applegate School-I was the main force in the sprint relay. In physical education class, I am always one of my first choices. I love sports as much as those boys, and even more love sports than them. During the National Fitness Test, I ignited most of them in the mile race.
I'm still that kid, so I don't understand why Danny Pires, my best friend since kindergarten, suddenly started yelling "Girls can't play ball!" to me during the break. I don't understand why I am no longer invited to their athletic birthday party in the American Grand Slam.
When I recalled it, it suddenly occurred to me that at the budding age of 9 years old, the boys in our class finally absorbed that kind of flesh. Boys are better than girls, especially the old and hurtful narratives about sports. This information has been instilled into them in toy advertisements, sports broadcasts, and history textbooks. Boys can become adventurers, and girls can cheer for them and bring them water cans.
I managed to avoid this just by competing. Therefore, when suddenly my time and performance are not enough to prove that I belong to the game, it stings.
I never cried about it then or now. But every time I never get an invitation to play a pickup. Every time someone thinks I am just a short girl who does not belong to the court, the court and the conversation. Whenever women and girls engaged in sports are marginalized, neglected or excluded, it will add more fuel to the already raging fire. No wonder I am angry here.
Healthy, unhealthy, who gives f ---? The point is, this is how I sublimate all these feelings. I'm still in this game, still trying to prove them wrong to those who don't even think about me. I am stronger than they have ever been. They will never beat me.
Because there are no cowardly women in this house.
When I woke up from a nap, it was an absolute revelation. Unless you have been toddling recently, you may have forgotten what a 30-minute nap can do.
Don't call it a comeback.
Ricky put an ice handkerchief around my neck and put a wet towel on my head. Kalie jumped up and paced me, and we started climbing the second section.
"Finally you look like you are running bad water!" Ricky said, and the race lasted 75 miles for 18 hours. Damn time.
There must be something in the water Kalie sprayed on me, because we are cruising around these mountain turns. At every turn, I looked back and saw the road behind me and the vast and magnificent scenery that I had walked on.
The scenery here is austere, reminiscent of what you might find on Mars-rugged rock walls, cloudless sky, the question of whether there is anything here that can sustain life. With this as the background of our dystopia, Carly and I talked about life and nihilism, and how free it is to believe that nothing matters. Below us—yes, below—we heard fighter jets flying over Rainbow Canyon, a common training area for military pilots.
It's like in a science fiction movie. But this is real life. my life. What is life?
Before I knew it, I conquered another 8 miles, and we reached Father Crowley's polling station at 80.65 miles. Jimmy told me that Sally McCray, who will continue to win the women's competition, left the parking lot crying. Judging by the piles of vomit that I passed by on the way here, I'm pretty sure she's not the only one.
I feel strong but very tired. I went ahead and ran flat shoes, feeling cooler than since last night.
"Can I take this off?" I asked, and handed the ice handkerchief to Ricky. The ice handkerchief has been refilled a thousand times and tied around my neck. I don't want to bear weight, I'm tired of being so wet. Friction, you guys. This is inhumane.
"It still has more than a hundred, so it doesn't," he said with a smile. Brother, Death Valley is really playing with you. It makes you feel refreshing at 107 degrees.
We arrived at the Darwin checkpoint at 90.6 miles on Tuesday evening at 7:30. We have officially left Death Valley National Park and entered the latter part of the game. I have been running for nearly 24 hours, but I still have 45 miles to walk before I can vividly call it a day.
Time and space become amorphous and meaningless. The sun rises, and the moon rises. The scenery looks the same-desert on the left and mountains in the distance on the right. But there is a mountain range ahead, and I know there is a finish line there. I just need to get there.
The sun has been directly attacking me all day, but now she is trying a new strategy. Twilight, the silent killer. After thousands of years of social and biological conditions, the darkness told me it was time to rest. But I can't stop now; I haven't even finished the game.
At 95.6 miles, I am a headless horseman. The race lasted for 24 hours and 55 minutes, and my body continued to move forward, but I am not sure who was driving it. Everything feels strange and upside-down. Although I have never been drunk in my life, I feel hit.
"I think I need to take a nap," I told my crew.
"If you can, I hope you can run 100 miles," Ricky said to me. He worried that if I doze now, I will lose ground, and the runners behind me will throw me in the dust. In addition, goals are important, and sometimes the urge to sleep disappears, right? So, I'm working hard, you guys. I really want to give up the next 4 miles.
"Find it," I said to myself. But I don't have it now. Resistance is futile. But, man, do I thank my team for always encouraging me, believing that I have it, and I really don't.
The moment I jumped into the passenger seat and closed my eyes, your girl fainted. Knock it out. unconscious. It disappears after 60 seconds. But when Ricky woke me up after 30 minutes, I suddenly appeared like a piece of golden toast, and it was done perfectly.
"Start hunting," he said. Only two runners passed, and all I saw were the flashing lights of their van. Turned on
BRENNA, KALIE, JIMMIE, and Ricky followed for the next 20 miles, and as we got further and further away from Death Valley, the night became darker and cooler. Miles is a slow motion blur, because fatigue really started.
Now that the temperature has dropped to the 70s, my body is no longer challenged by heat, which means that it is starting to perform other functions, not just cooling the engine. My digestive system is coming back to life, processing everything I have eaten. I feel a little stuffy in my stomach every time I eat.
But I need calories. Due to smoke and goodwill, I cannot drive another 20 miles. So, everything is balanced. Everything is a struggle.
But I signed up for this. I want this. I still want this.
When I reached 111 miles at 1:21 in the morning, I walked to the van and told everyone truthfully that I was taking a nap. "Wake me up in a few minutes," I said. I might fall asleep before my body touches the passenger seat. But 4 minutes later, Ricky woke me up, girrrrrl, let me tell you. That micro-nano? Give life.
We arrived at the Lone Pine Checkpoint before sunrise on Wednesday. I have walked 122 miles, and although I would like to think that completion is a foregone conclusion, the rest of the game is uphill. There is a vertical distance of 13 miles and 5,000 feet between me and the finish line.
I think now is a good time for my heels to get blisters. Those little moms must know how to spoil the party.
Look, there may be many great people in your life, and they will be by your side when you need them. But if you don't have Ricky, then you'd better go to Ricky. Someone will clean up your bubbly, pungent feet without any problems or complaints. True heroism.
Even in my case-wildness, lack of sleep and dizziness-I know this is a scene. I, kneeling in the passenger seat, eating pie, my heels hanging outside the door. Ricky, the applied tincture stings and makes me breathe like I'm in labor. I put on my third pair of shoes, ready to climb.
"You need to indulge in climbing these hills," Ricky said. he knows. He has been there. As soon as he said it, I was locked inside. Stop talking about it. We have work to do.
good news. This butt and these thighs are built for two things: denim and climbing.
I will do POWER HIKE alone for the next 3 miles, and my heart rate will be higher than the whole game. Then Brenna and Jimmie took turns in, encouraging me, telling me that I look strong, and reminding me to swing my arms. I have no breath or mind to stop the conversation. I just nodded and continued to sharpen it.
I reached the last checkpoint at 131 miles, and Kalie jumped into the car and took me to the finish line. "Go on," she said. "Nothing else is important now." Her small voice and quiet energy felt that they came from my heart.
I am in anger mode. Anyone between me and the finish line is my enemy. I say this not just to add drama. I'm going to shoot
We encountered a series of steep turns and I was catching up with the racer in front of me. I surpassed them when I turned, and a dash made my wind disappear. The air is thin and the mountains are steep, I am running empty. I am in a state of separation-between being awake and sleeping, between life and death, between here and disappearing. My nutrition is on the verge.
I don't want to collapse. I have gone too far and cannot fail now.
"Just toss a few more times," Jimmy said to me when I asked Jimmy how far I had to go for the third time.
I looked into his eyes and said, "That's useless." As if he was the customer service agent who refused my refund, not my good friend, he flew all the way to nowhere to support me. It seems that he doesn't know that the precise distance from this arbitrary point to the finish line is a personal attack. It was as if he was deliberately sabotaging me.
So now I am yelling. In my support team. The four people who kept me alive took care of every blisters and abdominal pain. Think about it carefully, I am the worst.
But you must understand. At this point, I have stood up and sweated for 37 hours. My mind is blurred; my body is a disaster; I am so tired, I don't even have the cognitive function to regulate emotions.
I'm less than a mile away from this breathtaking 135-mile race, and I want to cross the finish line. I became drowsy due to lack of sleep and insurmountable calories. If I don’t know how far I have to go, I just don’t have legs to kick.
Then Brenna walked over with a big smile. Who can laugh at this time? We are dying here, Brenna!
"There is a woman ahead, walking very slowly...you can pass her!" she said. She believed me and knew that I was very competitive. But I surpassed all of this.
Although I like Brenna very much, my relationship with her is not like the one with Jimmy. So I was furious at him instead.
"I don't care about a person now."
I think I was referring to the woman in front of me, but with such a general statement and foul-smelling attitude, I can't be sure. Honestly, I don't even remember to say it. But my crew can confirm that I was possessed by the beast inside.
Finally, I saw the finish line and the woman mentioned earlier, and as they approached the tape, she and her staff talked politely and gratefully.
I swear I love my staff too, but I have an interesting way of expressing it. They got out of the car and ran to the finish line with me. I take off. Maybe there are 100 meters, but this is all I have left. I still have some fast muscles ready to launch. I not only jog but also try to cross the finish line. When I went back to check the race data, I was the sixth fastest person and fastest woman in that 4-mile journey. Is this an excuse to be a heinous zombie? maybe not. But to my crew, I am sorry and welcome you to leave memories.
I will not cry at the finish line. I am not overwhelmed or ecstatic. In fact, I didn't feel anything other than being wiped off. After taking a few photos and thanking my staff, I lay on the sidewalk and closed my eyes.
We did it. We did it.
From start to finish, I spent 37 hours and 37 minutes, of which I spent 64 minutes napping, at least 120 minutes singing and 25 minutes shouting unreasonable things to my poor excellent team. I drank 4 liters of Coke, 11 packets of Pedialyte, a pineapple and a container of strawberries, two sweet potatoes, four protein shakes, two packets of gummy watermelon, a can of kimchi, a cup of ramen noodles, and two emergency McDonald's hash browns.
We spent about an hour on the finish line, but I don't know why. I was minimally conscious, trying to eat pancakes, but just petting it. I put my head on the picnic table and tried to stay human.
Later that day, my team checked our Airbnb, where I finally took a shower to wash away the sweat, smell and dirt, which made me feel like a "wolf-raised girl". When hot water hit my raw, bruised skin, I screamed a little. Okay, very good, a lot. But the pain of feeling clean again is worth it. I curled up in the most important two-hour nap of my life.
That night, the five of us went to a sleepy cafe in a sleepy town. Only us, when the sun sets behind the ridge near the finish line, retell the story of this magical adventure.
That's when dreams start to become real.
I don't know you will feel cathartic and dizzy at the same time, but we are here, when I started to feel the warm and proud light, we laughed.
My staff will tell me what I missed while running. How despicable and angry I am, how hot, how sweaty and how tired they are. But we did what we were supposed to do, so the low became the high. This way we will always remember them.
Because we really did it.
I thought bad water would tell me how strong I was. But this is not about it. Bad water will not test your resilience. This is not a damn truck advertisement.
When you are there, you will see people collapse. Hollow eyes, cramps leading to exhaustion, heading towards the finish line. Vomiting, crying, and speaking in tongues.
Where did they summon their strength to cheer up again and again?
I knew it would change me even before I started the game. Because I have done some difficult things, but I have never seen myself standing on the other side of that line. Running Badwater is the only way I know how to learn the truth and ask questions about myself that I don't know.
Are you ready to see your internal organs exposed? When everything falls down, do you really want to know who you are? When you have nothing, can you trust other people to unite you mentally and physically? When all this is done, can you poop in a bag next to someone you want to respect you?
I left my part there. I thought I was just sitting in the discard pile somewhere between 90 miles and the finish line. But I found new works, new answers, and new reasons. Although I haven't figured out how they fit together, I know I won't exchange this feeling for anything.
I remember listening to an episode of the podcast "Invisibilia" in which Renato Rosaldo, an anthropologist, discussed his time spent studying the Ilongot tribe in remote areas of the Philippines. Rosaldo described a word, a feeling—liget—not directly translated from Ilungote into English. Rather, it is not sadness, joy, fear, or anger, but all these feelings or attachments to them. It is most closely translated as "high pressure".
Liget is primitive, strong, all-encompassing and difficult to describe. After the bad water, I can connect.
It's as if I experienced all human emotions at once.
Love and pain. Terror and victory. Anger and affection.
Humble but invincible. Close to death, but never more alive. And sweating very very very much.
I've always been a little afraid to let go, because it's scary to think about what might happen. But I learned that in order to prove myself, I don't have to be fearless. I just need to be less afraid.
I have to adapt to being completely exposed to my staff, exposed to various elements, exposed to the possibility of failure. Unimaginable fear that is not good enough for me, not strong enough. Those boys may be right about me.
I have to plunge into that fear, why not add a haboob when you do it. Because you may have to let it all in so that you can release it all.
The bad water showed me that it was not tenacity or hard work that made me different or defined me. I am willing to step on the stage and take all risks. My weakness is my superpower.
I just need to go out and find it.