The Rich Roll Podcast - Badwater: Running 135 Miles Across Death Valley With Josh Spector

Episode Date: July 20, 2013

Today on the show I sit down with my ultra running friend Josh Spector to talk all things Badwater. Widely accepted as the “World's Toughest Foot Race”, Badwater is a 135 mile running race across Death Valley — the hottest place on Earth, where temperatures average 120+ in July and can reach as high as 130 F with pavements temps typically in the 170-180 degree F range. Starting at Badwater Basin — the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level, approxmately 100 invitation-only runners from across the globe begin a jaunt that will take them across bleak and scorching desert terrain as well as three formidable mountain passes, including the culminating 13-mile ascent up the portals of Mt. Whitney — the highest peak in the lower 48 — to finish at 8,300 feet. Yeah – it's that insane. I had the honor & privilege of being a member of Dean Karnazes' crew this year, along with Jason Koop, Brandon Friese and Nathan Peerbolt. Together we paced, fed, hydrated and generally did all we could to help Dean complete this unbelievable race for the 10th time. It was an extraordinary experience — one I won't soon forget. Simultaneously, Josh — himself an accomplished ultra runner with three 100-milers under his belt — returned to Badwater for his third crewing experience, this time for runner Ray Sanchez. In this episode we swap stories about the experience, giving the listener a rare peek at exactly what it's like to have a front row seat at what I have to say is one of the most incredible displays of the indomitable nature of the human spirit I have ever seen — and will likely ever see. Enjoy the show! Rich

Welcome to Episode 40 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Josh Spector. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. I am Rich Roll. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. Welcome to the show. I am Rich Roll. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. If you've been following along, then thanks for tuning in again. For new listeners, who am I? Maybe you're tuning in, you just saw it on iTunes, you have no idea what you're in for. Well, I am an ultra endurance athlete, runner, triathlete, cyclist, swimmer. I am the best-selling author of the book Finding Ultra. I am a plant-based nutrition advocate, wellness advocate, lifestyle entrepreneur, and family guy. I just celebrated my 10-year anniversary. My wife, Julie Pyatt, who will be stopping back in for the next episode

of the podcast. It's been a while since she's been on the guest and has been a guest on the show. And I'm going to have her back soon. And I got four kids living in Southern California in Malibu Canyon and pursuing, pursuing in pursuit constantly of my best, most authentic self, which is kind of a theme of this podcast. How can we be better? which is kind of a theme of this podcast. How can we be better? How can we unlock those dreams deferred and become the most actualized version of ourself? And that's also a major theme in my book. And the idea behind the podcast was kind of to pick up and take off where the book left off. As a result of the book's success, I've had the great opportunity to do a lot of travel, meet a lot of amazing people,

wellness warriors, pioneers in health and nutrition and fitness and athleticism. And the podcast is a great forum for me to bring those people and personalities to you, not so that they can become your guru, but so that you can glean some insight from them, find what works for you, apply some of the tools and insights that they provide, and hopefully improve your life so that you can be, like I said, your best, most authentic self. Today on the show, I have my buddy, Josh Spect Spector who's a good friend of mine

he is a fellow ultra runner and Ironman triathlete slash triathlete I've known him for a couple years through various venues the endurance community is pretty strong pretty strong it's pretty strong but it's also pretty small

and I've had the good fortune to spend a little bit of time with him do a little bit of training with him. And, uh, I also just got back from the bad water one 35. What is the bad water one 35? Well, the bad water is widely considered the world's toughest foot race. Uh, it's 135 135-mile run, and if that's not enough, it's straight across Death Valley, starting at the lowest place in the continental United States or in all 50 states, I'm sure, 282 feet below sea level at Badwater Basin,

crisscrossing Death Valley with a couple gigantic ascents, a couple 4,000 to 5,000-foot climbs, and then segueing into Lone Pine, California, and ascending Mount Whitney, more than halfway up Mount Whitney to 8,300 feet. It's an incredible, incredible race, not to mention the heat temperatures ranging in the 120 plus range throughout the race. And why was I there? Well, about six months ago, Dean Karnazes, the legendary ultra marathon man himself, emailed me and asked if I would be interested in crewing for him. And of course, uh, it's quite an honor to be asked and a privilege. And I was not going to decline that. I jumped at the chance to get a glimpse, uh, not just of Dean in action and to

be able to have the opportunity to support him through this race, but also experience this race in all its glory, uh, up close and personal. And I do not regret the experience. It was quite, quite amazing. Um, and, uh, I wanted to do a little bit of a recap of the race. I got a lot of tweets and emails, um, sort of posting on Twitter throughout the race when I could. There's not cell service for most of it. But, you know, what was going on and I was getting a lot of replies like, I hope you can get Dean on the podcast. And, you know, I hope you can interview this guy and interview that guy. Well, I didn't bring my podcast recording equipment to the race.

The race was not about me and the podcast or anything that I was doing. I was there simply to be of service to Dean as best as I could. And so that was my focus and everything else, uh, was irrelevant. So I did, uh, have the opportunity to meet a lot of cool people and I hope to have them on the podcast, the podcast in the future. Uh, and I will be intent on making that happen, but it wasn't going to happen while I was there. And plus, even if people were open to it, there was no time. I mean, literally you're working nonstop without sleep the entire time. And like I said, you're there to be of service to your athlete. Um, and in my case, the athlete was Dean Karnazes himself. And that was incredible.

It was incredible to spend a couple of days with him, to be with him throughout the race, to see how he does it and what makes him tick and what makes him special. And he has agreed to come on the podcast at a future date. It's certainly one that I would want to do in person and not on Skype. So we're going to have to figure out sometime when we're in the same town to do it. But he said he'd be more than happy to do it. And I think that'll be great. We'll have a great conversation. I did, after the race, was able to spend a little bit of time with him. We had to drive back from Lone Pine to Furnace Creek to pick up my car. And he was on his way to Vegas to catch a flight, to go down to the Copper Canyon

in Mexico to do another race. Um, and I got the opportunity to get him and get to know him a little bit better. I'd only met him briefly prior to the event. So it wasn't like I knew him very well, but I did get a chance to certainly get to know him quite a bit better throughout the experience of the race and and like I said it was a privilege um you know it was his 10th finish uh he's had 11 starts he dnf'd one time but this was his 10th finish and he was going for his 10th belt buckle that's's what they give you. The belt buckle is the big prize and he got it. And it was a hard fought battle for him. Not an easy race. He had lots of ups and downs and was not really having the race that he wanted to have or expected to have. But his perseverance and his sheer force of will was astounding because the guy just never stopped.

He just continued on no matter what obstacle he was facing mentally, physically, spiritually. He just would not relent. And he pushed himself all the way to the finish line. And it was quite remarkable to play a small part in support of that effort and certainly an experience I will never forget. very accomplished out of Colorado Springs where he's a coach, a very experienced high-level coach at Carmichael Training Systems with Chris Carmichael out there, a wealth of knowledge and experience. And he was really the crew captain. Probably, not probably, he did do most of the heavy pacing throughout the race. He knows Dean Wiley knows what he needs and he has the

aptitude and the ability to log as many miles as needed. And he certainly demonstrated his metal throughout the race. Um, also Brandon freeze, who's a kind of a long time collaborator with Dean was with him throughout his, uh, run across America the other summer. And, uh, and, uh and uh uh nathan pierbolt who is the uh other guy on the crew who's a friend of brandon's and has done some stuff with dean and has worked with uh worked with uh brandon over the years and to spend time with those three guys working collectively uh as a team for dean was uh was really really great and i'm so glad that I did it. And I couldn't wait to kind of get back on the podcast and share some of the stories, um, and relate some of the experiences that I had. I learned, I certainly learned a ton about what it takes to do this race

and what it takes to be an ultra runner, um distance, you know, 100 miles plus, 100 miles and above. It's its own subculture for sure. It has a lot of, you know, it overlaps quite a bit with kind of the Ultraman community. They're very similar in certain respects, but it definitely has its own flavor. And there's something about being in Death death valley this sort of sci-fi remote you know alternative universe where it's so hot outside it feels like you have a hot uh hair dryer on your face at all times that um brings out a certain special flavor that is unique and very specific to this race but uh i'm back home in la and I needed a foil for, for, uh, for the conversation. Um, and thank, thank God, uh, Josh was willing to come on the show. He was, uh, he was there

crewing. It's his third time crewing the race. He was crewing for his friend, Ray Sanchez, who's also an experienced, uh, bad water runner. I think Ray was running it for his sixth time um and so i would see josh throughout the race on and off we sort of crisscrossed each other's paths a couple times and uh every crew has its own stories endless stories about what it was like to make that journey and i thought i'd have them on the show so we could swap tails and kind of uh I thought I'd have him on the show so we could swap tails and kind of peel the layers off what Badwater is all about. So for you people out there who maybe have never heard of it or have heard of it but don't know that much about it or think you know what it is, we thought we would kind of elucidate it a little bit further. And Josh was great.

We had a really long conversation, like an hour and 40 minutes. So I'm going to keep this as brief as I can but I think that you will enjoy it also at the end of the show quick show note I forgot to call out how you can get in touch with Josh if you're interested in what he's up to and what he's doing so So, uh, he can be found on Twitter at, at Spector Josh, S P E C T O R Josh, J O S H all one word. Um, he's on Facebook and he's got a blog, J dash tries, J dash tries T R I S dash blogspot dot com so check that out wait let me make sure I got that url right

I don't want to misspeak for him let's see hold on there yeah oh no it's j-tries t-r-i-s dot blogspot.com so check out josh he's uh he's done three 100 mile races and he's preparing for another one in september um and he's a great guy so follow him

too uh also i will be in new york city next week uh julyrd through 27th. I'm doing an event at the Apple Store in Soho on the 24th at 6 p.m. It's kind of a wellness roundup. I think they're calling it Meet the Innovators, the people that are revolutionizing health. We're going to do a panel that's going to be moderated by Jason W walka the ceo of mindbodygreen.com and it's going to be me uh tara styles who's super uber uber not uber uber yoga teacher super popular uh experienced yoga teacher in new york city i think she was deepak chopra's yoga teacher uh she knows what she's doing. She'll be there as well as her husband, Michael Taylor.

Together they own Strala Yoga in New York City. I've been following Tara for a while, but I've actually never met her in person, so I'm looking forward to that. Julie, my wife, is going to be on the panel as well. And then we have Charlie Knowles, who is kind of a legendary meditation teacher. He's a son of Tom Knowles, who's a very well-known meditation kind of guru. And Charlie knows his stuff. I have met Charlie. He lives here in Venice, California. Super cool guy. So I'm looking forward to getting together with all those people and doing a panel i think the focus of the panel is going to be on the kind of business side of wellness how to

translate this healthy message that we're all kind of collectively putting out into a sustainable kind of enterprise that is of service to others so So that should be a fun conversation. Some cool stuff coming up with mindbodygreen.com too that I'm going to be telling you about. So that's it. I got other appearances coming up later in the summer, but not immediately. But I'll to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment.

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Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. That's it. Let's wrap it up and get into the conversation today's edition of the podcast is a bad water recap post bad water jam session with my buddy josh specter enjoy so we're back in la you survived i did yeah it was fun it was fun but you know it was a uh it was your third time yeah for it and just by way of background

you've run i know you did you recently ran a hundred miler which race was that i did uh san diego 100 down in uh east of san diego mount laguna right and that was was that in the beginning of the spring no beginning june june 8th i. And have you done other hundreds? I have. That was my third. Wow. I didn't know you'd done three. Excuse me. Sorry about that.

I didn't know you'd done three. I thought maybe you'd done one other one. No, yeah. I did one in summer 2010 out in Angeles Crest, AC100. And then last summer, last fall, I did Bear 100 in Utah. Right. So you're laying the foundation for your Badwater entry application. I don't know.

I don't want to try not to talk about that. Try not to think about that too much. You jinx it or whatever? Well, there's got to be a little bit of a plan. There is. I mean, it's definitely- You're too smart and, you know, I know there's something going on. I don't know if smart and Bad walk have anything to do with each other. You've got a strategy.

Yeah, I mean, from the first time I was there, it's an incredible experience. I was there before, I guess I was there about a month before I did my first 100. No, that's not true. The first time I was there in 2009 before I even thought about, or before I even really signed up for 100.

But once I was there the first time I was there in 2009 before I even thought about, or before I even really signed up for a hundred. So, but once I was there that first time, it was always something sort of, whether it's on the fantasy list or actually to do list. Right. I'm not sure yet, but it's up there and you've kind of transitioned. I mean, you, you started out more as a triathlete, right? Are you you still doing that or are you pretty much focused on ultra running now just on the ultra running yeah i i last last triathlon it was in 2010 i did an ironman in 2009 i did ironman canada in 2009 as my third ironman and then half ironman in 2010 and i've spent nearly enough time on the bike since then now it's all about the trails pretty much yeah pretty much what do you think that why do you think that what what do you attribute that switch and kind of interest to i think that the uh you know i used to be able to say when i first started doing it

when i first when i first switched to running i used to be able to say that that running it was took a lot less time a lot less energy a lot less thought and then all the then all the planning for long course triathlon especially where you got to get in multiple workouts every day and figure out how to squeeze in recovery when you still need to get in that extra swim during that week um but now that i'm running i mean the amount of running i do now it's probably more than i actually training more. Well, it can't be as much as when you're training for Ironman and you've got to put in those long. I mean, it's the cycling that really chews up the time.

That's the big thing. Not just hours on the bike, but just getting ready to get on the bike and then taking your bike in for service and all the money you spend on that, whatever. I mean, it's just a bottomless pit of time, money, and energy. And that's the other thing that it came down to, really, is that, I mean, if I run, I usually run once. Sometimes I'll run twice a day, but mostly it's once a day. But as you know, with triathlon, you can't get away with one workout a day.

No. Or for long course stuff, anyway, for Ironman. And so it involved a lot more and and you're right and the bike just getting the bike ready and cleaning it and servicing it all that kind of stuff but i do miss it i miss the cycling i do yeah yeah yeah well i mean i think you know a lot of it is i mean for me like i'm, you know, I'm much more attracted to the ultra world than the kind of traditional triathlon world. I mean, it's just a completely different community of people.

I mean, you'd think there'd be a lot of overlap, but culturally it's extremely different. You know, like the sort of environment circulating around an Ironman or a 70.3 versus the people you're going to run into at the Hard Rock 100, never the twain shall meet, really, in a certain respect, I guess. Not to say that there isn't overlap, but I think culturally it's just a different vibe. It has a different energy. It's a much more relaxed,

kind of communally supportive environment, I guess I would say. I think that's true. I think that part of that has to do with just the way the sport works. I mean, nobody, as you saw Badwater, I mean, it didn't do 100. You can't, well, you can, but very few people do it on their own

without a crew, without a support. And even you rely on other runners. I mean, they rely on other runners and people at Badwater. And it was not share crews, but the crews help out other runners who are out there. Just much more of a community, I think. Yeah, I mean, well, I think just simply by virtue of the fact that everybody has to bring their own crew, that changes the kind of tenor of the whole thing from the get-go and it makes it all about like supporting each other across the

finish line is of course it's a race and you know it's competitive and there are people that want to win and and all of that but but it's but there's also this other thing where it's it's this environment of wanting to see everybody finish and be safe and have a good time and this kind of family feeling to the whole thing i guess yeah definitely definitely and bad waters i mean it's my experience growing is the biggest you know is the biggest biggest example of that i think just because it is such a so much harder than anything it's so crazy all right so let's get into it i I mean, the, you know, maybe the average person listening

to this has heard of Ultra Run or maybe has even heard of Badwater, but let's assume they haven't. You know, I mean, what is, explain to people what the Badwater 135 is. I mean, it is, I wish I'd written it down, what he, the race

director, Chris Costin, built it as the hardest foot race, the most difficult foot race on the planet or something like that. Right. And it certainly seems that way when you're out there. I mean, it's 135 miles from the lowest point in North America, I believe, to not the highest point in North America,

but close to the highest point in the lower 50, the highest road, I guess, point in the highest point in North America, but close to the highest point in the lower 50, the highest road, I guess, point in the lower 50 states. So it goes from an actual place called Badwater, which is in Death Valley, and there's a big sign in the middle, right off the highway there. And it's on roads all the way through into Lone Pine, California. And then

from there, you climb the Mount Whitney Portal Road to the Mount Whitney Portal, which is the beginning of the trail to top Mount Whitney. So to put it into perspective, we all know Death Valley is in the Mojave Desert, and it's very hot, but it's actually been recorded to be the hottest place on earth. And that's true, I guess, right? Like it was 134 degrees there one day in 1913. And I think, you know, temperatures reach close to that quite often. They've obviously never eclipsed that. That's the high or whatever.

But, you know know it is pretty commonplace for it to be in the mid 120s and it certainly was when we were there yeah you know i mean i've never experienced heat like this in my life so a hundred people descend on uh this place bad water actually what happens is the race is organized by a company called Adventure Corps, which is run by this guy, Chris Gossman, who is also the race organizer for a couple of other ridiculous events like the Furnace Creek 508, a 508 mile bicycle race. If you've been listening to this show, you've heard Vinny Tortorich on the show. He's done that race a couple of times. So it's kind of under the umbrella of the same organization and bad

wall the bad water 135 has been around for what like 35 years 36 i think this was the 36th running something like that so you know it's been around for a long time and it has been dubbed you know the world's most difficult foot race for good reason and you know it's easy to kind of throw hype around but i i really think that this race like you know, it's easy to kind of throw hype around, but I, I really think that this race, like, you know, earned deserves its stripes. I mean, I've never seen, I've done some crazy stuff. I've heard of people doing crazy stuff that this thing took the cake for me in terms of what I witnessed, uh, in terms of human perseverance and suffering. It was intense, man, from the very beginning all the way to the end.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, you watch, there's no break. I mean, you're battling heat, and when it starts to cool down a little bit, and when I say cool down, I mean, did it get into the 70s, 80s overnight? Yeah, I don't know if it got any cooler than that. it i mean when i say cool down i mean did it get into the 70s 80s overnight yeah i think yeah i don't you know i don't know if it got any cooler than that so but let's just lay it out first so we you everybody shows up in this little kind of i hesitate to call it a town furnace creek you know it's literally this like bizarre resort it's not even a resort either it's like a hotel

oasis smack dab in the middle of the desert as far as you can see in any direction there's like nothing but desert and mountains surrounding you so you're in this bowl you're in this cauldron that focuses all the heat and then there's this little hotel where there's palm trees and and uh and grass and a lagoon and a pool you know like it's out of some bizarre movie. What is that even doing there? And by the way, why is there even a road through this place? Who built this road and why did they build it?

I mean, none of it makes sense at all, right? So from the get-go, you're in this surreal, you've set yourself into this kind of surreal world that doesn't really seem like it's part of the rest of the world at all. You're completely separated from everything. In most of the area, there's no cell service or certainly no internet or anything like that. And you go 17 miles down the road and everybody convenes at Badwater Basin, lowest point in North America, 282 feet below sea level.

So as you're getting, they started in three flights. So the race is limited to 100 people, invitation only every year, and explain to people the process of trying to get into this race, what you have to do. It's, from what I know, I've not applied, but from what i know it's but we were talking about this the other day yeah it's crazy it's so hard he's it's very selective i mean obviously i mean most years he he he does a good job or they the the committee does a really good job of making sure

that people who they led into the race have a are going to finish it and an amazing percentage of the people usually do um and i guess credit that to the application process but you have to you either have to have finished bad water or completed 300 mile races or have finished um brazil 135 which is sort of an affiliated race down in Brazil in January. But even then, that's just the minimum requirement to even submit an application. It says in huge bold letters on the page,

do not even talk to me if, do not even talk to us if you don't have that. And then beyond that, it says they want many years of ultra-endurance experience. And they specifically say, again, Ironman doesn't even reach the radar of what they're talking about.

They're looking for Ultraman or double-triple Ironmans or multi-day stage races or these ridiculously long bike rides like Fern Street 508 or multi-day adventure races or these ridiculously long bike rides like ferns creek 508 or adventure rate you know multi-day adventure races is what they're looking for to allow people to come race i mean you've winning it down to a pretty limited number of you know potential applicants at that point

right yeah is it really it's you have to have done three 100 milers at a minimum it lifetime three yeah that's that's a qualifications right now right you know it's uh actually i mean of course over time it's gotten more difficult to even apply but yeah right now it's three lifetime hundreds and there is some you know proximity where it's three three in your life but one of those at least one of those has to be within the prior year or something like that. Right. Yeah, so this insane filter is in place. So everybody who shows up is seriously vetted by Chris.

And they line up. First of all, they weigh all the athletes. I'm not sure. Well, it's not like they weigh you throughout the race. I guess if you get into trouble when they weigh you later later then they can at least have a benchmark to compare it and i know some people carry scales we did i don't know if you guys know we didn't do that but some people do as a safety precaution but yeah they weigh you right they weigh you they take pictures and do all that and then and and as you're kind of as they're lining up for the start if you look against there's sort of this sheer rock wall that rises straight up from bad water basin right next to

where all the athletes start you know line up to start and you look way up you know like way up the side of this cliff that is jutting you know literally completely vertical from where you're standing and you see this sign like embedded in the rock halfway up the hill it says uh sea level you realize like how below how far below sea level you are and uh it's a it's a trip so um so uh so you're in this crazy place and every athlete has uh brings their own crew so in that respect it's sort of like Ultraman. So the one thing that was immediately different to me was that, you know, I was querying for Dean

and we had two vans, you know, instead of one. I was like, why do we need two vans? Like, what do we, you know, isn't that going to just make it more complicated? But I think we really did need two because one person was always kind of taking a break and they would take the van up ahead and rest a little bit. And that one was just kind of

filled with ice and whatever people didn't immediately need. Is that what you guys did? The past two times I did it, we had two because you're allowed a maximum of, you have to have your own crew, but you're allowed I think a maximum of six people and two vehicles. And that's what we did each

of the other two years when I was there is we had six people and two vehicles. And that's what we did each of the other two years when I was there is we had six people and two vehicles. This year there were four of us and one vehicle. So it was different. So if somebody wanted to catch a cat nap, that made it a little bit more difficult for it to happen. I mean, we slept. Like you said, in the prior two years,

there were times in the middle of the night where we would send one car 10 miles ahead with two people in there. And they could sleep for an hour or two hours or whatever, probably even more than that, 10 miles. But yeah, this year, there was no car to go ahead and there was no time. I mean, we slept for 15 minutes maybe once or twice. Right. And so the race is 135 miles and if you've kind of read about it or seen pictures you know it gets quite a bit of press coverage because it is just so

super gnarly you know like pictures like the washington post like it was on buzzfeed yeah which is like i tweeted that i was like i can't believe bad water's on buzz buzzfeed you know it's a trip so it does have this kind of cultural zeitgeist about it that distinguishes it also, I think, from pretty much any other ultra running race. And everyone kind of focuses on the heat and the desert and sees pictures of these guys that are running in what look like hazmat suits, you know, like full whites,

you know, like full pants, long sleeves, hoods, like the whole thing. And you hear about, you know, 130 degrees and all of that. But what people don't realize is that after the initial, you know, what is it, like 40 miles or something like that, 50 miles, you start hitting some serious climbing. You do, I think you do two 5,000-foot passes or 4,000-foot passes. Something like that, yeah.

And those are right in succession. I think you do two 5,000-foot passes or 4,000-foot passes. Something like that, yeah. Those are right in succession. You go, you trudge up this, is it a mountain? Like, what do you call it? 5,000 feet? I guess that qualifies, isn't it? You know? And then you go right back down, and then you climb right back up again.

And then you're on kind of some flats for a while as you kind of go into Lone Pine. And then you climb up to 8,300 feet up the portals of Mount Whitney, which is the largest peak in the lower continental United States, right? Yep, exactly. So you think about the desert, but literally when you end, you're in a pine forest. And I guess like it was warm when we finished, but I've heard it could be like 30, 40 degrees up there. I've heard that too, yeah. I mean, I've had the, luckily, I mean,

this year we finished 37 and a half hours. That was 8 a.m. starts. That was 9.30 at night. And it was cool. And, of course, the runner, Ray and of course the runner ray sanchez the runner right so i want to talk about him down but um it was it was cool then but i'm sure in the middle of night at 8 300 feet i bet it gets down yeah close to freezing right right they were uh my crew guys were like uh one of the guys on my crew, Brandon freeze, uh, Dean calls him crunchy

because he loves, like, he's like into like fish and, you know, like into like jam bands and, you know, like he's like, you know, excuse me. And Brandon's like, yeah, man, if you ever come back here, we'll crew and you, you know, we'll camp up here right after. And I will, we'll make sure that we got a, you know, a place to put the tents and all that. I go, dude, if I ever do this, I'm getting a helicopter up here and I'm going like to the Four Seasons. I'm going to sit in an air-conditioned room with a big screen TV. It's true. You deserve it, I think.

Yeah, I know. I was like, I can't imagine just like crashing in a tent like after you finish that. No way. No way. I know. It's insane. So tell me about uh ray

sanchez that you were crewing for like what's what's his story and and how did you get to hook up with him yeah i mean just uh he's a badass i don't say that on podcast but he's you can say whatever you want he's so tough um he he was a a golden glove golden gloves boxer until i don't have the dates right until just a few until maybe five years ago and transitioned into ultra running and that's such a weird segue it is i mean i guess the endurance sports thing and you know i don't know why he stopped what what what what caused him to stop boxing but um he i mean it's not like he wanted a break from from the regimen because he jumped in he dove right into ultra running and he does he competes he races like we were talking about hillary just a minute ago he had on a few weeks ago he he's

probably the equivalent of her in ultra running world. He races almost every weekend. Right. And I don't know how many hundreds and longer races he's done, but it's a lot. This was his sixth Badwater finish. He's done, I think, Arrowhead 135 in Minnesota a couple times, Brazil a few times. He's done races, long-distance races all over the world.

And then there's the 100 milers that he's done races long distance races all over the world and and then there's the 100 the 100 milers that he's done in the u.s which i mean actually today's today's friday tomorrow morning he's lining up for the tahoe for the trt tahoe rim trail 100 um you know four days after i finished it yeah he finished on Wednesday, right? No, Tuesday night. And now he's doing another 100. He's doing another 100. And he's done that before.

A couple years ago, he did. And actually, I mean, he's not the, and the crazy thing is, is he's not the, he's not even, I mean, he's probably among the craziest, but among the most hardcore in that. But there's another guy, I don't know if he's, Heath, I can't remember his last name. He's the one who runs in the tutu every year the pink oh

yeah that guy yeah um he's straw he's um and raised on this before too there he's he flew immediately jumped on a plane to vermont to run the vermont 100 tomorrow but like why i have no what is and what is the life i mean if if that's what you're doing your lifestyle is just that's that's your life you know what i mean you there's really wouldn't be too much room for much else in your life i don't think i don't yeah i don't think so i know i mean ray works a full-time job what does he do to make money he's a mechanical engineer oh wow so legit yeah i mean he's got a legit full-time job they must you know obviously they're they're they're accommodating but you know most races aren't saturdays if he's uh i guess i'm bad

water sort of you know the exception in terms of that saturdays or sundays but just getting the training in and then the travel the racing and the racing it's amazing yeah but there's also this weird thing like you know a bunch of people ask me questions or tweet questions like, you know, what's recovery? What is it? What is the recovery hurting man like he was you know he was struggling and not feeling good and you know there were a bunch of times where i thought you know i wouldn't be surprised if he just says you know i'm bagging this man you know like i've done way better in this race like what am i doing out here like way back from what i you know would like to be doing and you know it's just not having his day and he just never stopped. You know, like he just persevered and he, you know, during the end I was like, man, he's suffering, but you know, what a, what a persistent will that he's going to see this

thing through. Um, and, uh, and he said afterwards, like, I don't know that I've ever had to dig that deep. Like I, that is some of the worst suffering I've ever had in a race. And he's like, I always forget how hard this race is, but really, honestly, you know, I think that might've been the hardest time I've ever had at this race. Like I just really was in a hole. Um, and the original plan was, you know, after the race, we'll go out to dinner and, you

know, we, we were just like, we got to get this guy back in the hotel room, get him sorted out and like get him in bed and take care of him. And he, you know, sure enough, like, we got to get this guy back in the hotel room, get him sorted out and like get him in bed and take care of him. And he, you know, sure enough, we get back to the hotel room. He's like, yeah, I just I can't, you know, I can't deal with going to dinner. It's not going to happen. And, you know, we're like, it's cool, man. Just rest and, you know, don't worry about us. Like, we're fine. like Ray was had to get to Vegas like the following day to catch a plane to go

down to the copper Canyon to run a hundred K race down there with the Tarahumara. Right. You know, and it's like, he's like, I can't believe I'm going to get on a plane and I have to do this hundred Ks. Like I can't even fathom it right now.

Like what was I thinking? And, uh, and then the next morning he's like, guys what's up like he was like completely he's like i cannot figure this race out literally yesterday i couldn't move and today i feel like i didn't do anything and so what is yeah so so what is that how do you what do you attribute that to and i think that it's in part just experience i me the guy's been doing it he's so adapted to doing these things that his body can rebound more quickly but i also think that it's you know people

say well like what kind of pace are they running and i'm like you don't understand like if you you know they're like you know walking running stopping, running, stopping, walking, running. I mean, it's like a march more than anything else. And certainly they're running huge sections of it. But there's, I think there's a lot more walking and marching than people realize. And so it's very, you know, it's the pounding on the feet for sure. But there's, it's also, it's not like running a marathon at your absolute limit where you're just, your legs are so trashed you

really can't do anything for two weeks like muscularly i don't know that there's as much damage probably true i mean if your feet i've seen in the past i've seen people who come out of that with just mangled feet and then you're and and then you can't walk i mean then you're definitely not racing right well that's different but you know i mean ray I mean, then you're definitely not racing this weekend. Right, well, that's different. But, you know, I mean, Ray was the same way. And you saw, I mean, a lot of these guys, I think you're right because you're not redlining. You're, in order to finish, you have to stay somewhat on top of your hydration

and calories and electrolytes. And you're using different muscle groups. You're running and then you're hiking and then you're going downhill and then you're hiking and then you're going downhill and then you're walking and you're resting. I mean, not having done it, it's sort of easy to say, but you're right. It's definitely that. It's not the two-and-a-half-hour or two-hour-and-ten-minute

or whatever marathon where it's full bore, straight ahead, quad pounding, quads and quads just hammering every step of the way. No, I mean, you really have to be patient, too. Like, you know, the first 17 miles, like, into Furnace Creek, everyone's, of course, running. And there was some cloud cover this year, which made it a little bit cooler than it usually is. And I think that people got a little bit excited. And so they were, you know, they were, it was a foot race, you know, they're

running. But when I say running, they're not running like five 30 miles or six minutes, they're running like seven 38 minute pace. And Dean's like, that's way too aggressive. Right. You know, like that's way too fast. And 40 miles in, you know, he's like, this race hasn't even started yet. Like, it doesn't matter where whether somebody's 30 minutes ahead of you or 30 minutes behind you or you can't see anybody else like you have no idea what's going to happen. And it's hard to like comprehend that when you're you've already been out there for, you know, 10 hours or 12. Right. You're just getting going. already been out there for you know 10 hours or 12 hours that you're just getting going same but it's true it's true though i mean like that ray finished somewhere in the mid 20s 20s 20th place i don't remember like 26 or something like that at 37 and a half hours and when we were coming to the top you could see the line of people i mean down the portal road and you can see all their lights i mean i would guess the average finish time is somewhere in the you know low 40s yeah i mean did you stay for the uh

the um award ceremony we did yeah we popped in for most of that and you know when they yeah when they're reading them off you realize like yeah a lot of a lot of people i don't know if it's the majority but a lot of people are finishing in the 40 hour range and so at 135 miles that's 20 minutes is that 20 minutes like 40 i mean that's yeah like around three miles and a little over three miles an hour which i mean it sounds so slow but when you're out there yeah that's and the longer you're out there the harder it is in those elements you know what i mean they almost have to have a stronger will than the faster guys to be able to endure and bear that for that long that's true i mean they because they go through i mean some of those people that with a 48 hour time limit you could potentially see three sunrises and you're going through the heat

of the day twice and the cold and relative cold of the night yeah twice i get an email from dean like six months ago and by the way like it's not like we're buddy like i met him once you know what i mean and it was it was really in passing like it was a really quick like meet so and then and then i i hit him up for a blurb for my book you know which he was nice enough to do so we were we're acquainted but it's not like we're like talking on the phone or you know what i mean like i didn't really know him and i get this email like hey you know how do you feel about spending a couple balmy days out in the desert in july and i email him back i'm like are you asking if I'll crew you with Badwater? Like I was, it was this weird cryptic email. And he's like, yeah. And I was like, I'm not saying no to that. You know, like that's a, you know, once in a lifetime thing,

like what a privilege and what an honor. Uh, of course I'll do that. Um, and you know, I'm familiar with Badwater and I know some people that have done it and thought i knew what was up you know like but i had no idea you know and the one thing that and i'm interested to hear like your experience with ray and and in doing it with you know and being there a couple years um what i didn't realize is that uh that dean wanted he had somebody pacing him every single footstep of the way for the entire race with the exception of like maybe an hour, an hour and a half from like 6 to 8 a.m. the following morning from the start time

where he wanted to run alone. But other than that, he wanted to have somebody right on his heel the whole time. And the crew van, we would never pull up more than a half mile or 0.75 miles for handoffs. So you're constantly attending to your guy.

And I was like, Jason Koop, who's kind of the main crew captain chief, who's crewed for Dean a lot, I asked him, I was like, so how much, you know, we just pace them at the end, right? Like a lot of these ultras, you don't go in and start pacing until they're unraveling for the last 20 or 30 miles or something he's like no we're gonna pace them the whole way and I was then I had this moment of like I'm in way over my head like I definitely have not been running enough you know like I got worried and my first pull with him was like 3 to 4.30 or something like that. Like going into stovepipe wells, which was kind of the hottest part of the whole race.

And my heart rate was crazy high. You know, like just doing this tiny little jog. And I was hurting. And I thought, I'm not acclimated to the heat. I don't know what I'm doing. And like this is like not – likeated to the heat i don't know what i'm doing and like this is like knock like i might be in trouble you know i might be you know i might just collapse like i don't want to be the guy in the crew who's having the medical problem you know what i mean

yeah no definitely not i mean so is does it was ray the same way like somebody's always running with him that was a plan i mean and each time i've done it that's been that's been the plan um but well that first 17 miles from badwater to furnace creek you're not allowed to have pacers right um but then from then on so that's 118 miles for the next the last 118 miles each of the times i've been there there's the plan has been to have somebody out there with him the whole time there was one point in the middle of night where Ray was having a low point and we decided to try and there were two of us who were swapping pacing duties

and neither of us could really get him motivated or awake and we were trying to figure out what else. We tried everything and our crew chief Brian at one point said you know what let's give him his iPod tell him he's on his own for a little bit and see how he does and I mean Iso and I who were the main pacers to our uh dismay he got out there on his

own and did that was the best he'd done in hours you know and so so we let him run by himself until i was probably like two to five a.m or something like that because once once the sun rose we went back out there. But in the middle of the night, he was great on his own. Wow, that's cool. Yeah, but for the rest of it, there was always one of us with him. Yeah, I mean, you know what? My only point of reference really was Ultraman. And on the run part of that, you're doing hand.

Really, there's some pacing, but really not much. You know what I mean? The runners are kind of doing their own thing. And so that was my first experience at a real like ultra marathon where that kind of thing goes on. I mean, luckily, like my, you know, this, the next time I was up, I ran, I think I saw you, it was right out of, um, uh, Panamint. Yeah. And I picked him up and, and I i and i paced him from like 1 30 a.m to 5 30 a.m like and i felt great just because i it cooled down yeah you know and i was like oh i felt normal again you know like and it wasn't like it was that warm it was it went you know it was maybe 90 80 70 and then it just before dawn it might have hit 69 or something like that maybe yeah but um how was he moving then he was uh

he was good you know he um you know we just that was the ascent right so you have this big long ascent so you know i think that's the other thing people don't realize is that really nobody's running those hills um not that they couldn't if they wanted to, but the amount of energy that it would take that you have to exert to run, your pace is not going to be that much faster than like a steady march. And so it's not worth the energy burn to pick up a couple, you know,

an extra minute or two per mile. Because when, if you're just marching it, you're going to stay fresh you're a little bit slower but you still have like what 90 miles to go or something like that you know what i mean so a lot of it was just you know marching through the night and uh and talking to him you know yeah yeah no i think that i mean that that's because you're right and most even in the 100 miles 100 miles that i've done or most of them you're not allowed to pace her until half at least halfway through the race.

So it is a big difference. But here, I think it's the, I mean, well, one thing I always did, and I bet you guys did too, is carry a spray bottle just to keep him wet. And then there was a point where I'm just with him trying to make sure he stays awake and try to assess what he needs

so when we get to the truck or to our crew truck, I could tell them because there were definitely points where he wouldn't have been able to communicate very well what he needed when we got to the truck. And so all three times that you've crewed,

has it been with Ray? No. No, this is my first time with Ray. Oh, okay. I crewed my friend Blake Benke from New York in 2009 and then my friend Jimmy Dean. Oh, this is my first time with Ray. Oh, okay. I accrued my friend Blake Benke from New York in 2009, and then my friend Jimmy Dean Freeman in 2010. And both of them I knew beforehand. Ray I'd met a couple times, but when I was at San Diego 100,

there were a couple friends of mine there who were helping me through some tough spots, and I was talking to them. And one of them, uh, Brian record was supposed to race this year and he ended up having surgery and was long story short, was able to, was able to, was able to do a transfer's entry to Ray or somehow Ray got in and Brian, Brian and these other guys were crewing Ray and they asked me to come join. And, uh, I was more,

I haven't been there in a few years and I was starting to go back and do it again. Um, and so how is it, um, different athlete to athlete to athlete? Like, I think it's a really, like you were saying, Ray, you know, wouldn't always communicate to you what he needed or what he wanted. Um, you know, Dean was very different, very direct, always knew exactly what he wanted every half mile or 0.75 miles, this is what I want. And then you go and you get it, you know, like. And he stayed on that plan. Pretty much, yeah.

And he was, he retained his like composure completely well, like always like, thank you, you know, okay, could you get me that? All right, great. And then every time, sometimes there's a screw up and he's like, okay, you know, just get it right next time. Like he never got, he never did that thing that is very easy to do when you're that exhausted which is to like explode and you know yeah no not i've been fortunate each of the three guys i've i mean each of the three guys i've crewed were very different um but none of them i i think you're right i mean there's always that i mean

when i get tired when i get tired i'm not mean, just a little bit of lack of sleep. I sometimes, you know, I mean, I get cranky and angry and none of them, I mean, I think Jimmy would, I don't want to call him out on the podcast, but I think he'd laugh about it. He got a little bit, he got a little bit cranky and had some, during some of his low points, but even then, I mean, it's nothing, you know, it was never anything like, never anything out of what you would expect. Right. You're just like, okay, you know, he's tired. tired yeah let's just like get him sorted out he needs something he

doesn't know what he needs i mean the one thing is that but they were different and like blake was very stoic and and and almost silent the whole time jimmy is he's very talkative and in in outside of bad water and he was still pretty talkative and pretty animated for most of the race. Ray was somewhere in between where he had a very strong focus on just moving forward, but was a little bit more talkative, but still was hard. When he was struggling, there were times where he was getting frustrated because he didn't know what he needed to, you know, he's 20 hours into a race and he's having stomach issues or heat issues and he didn't know what to do to fix it.

Frankly, I don't even know what did fix it. Yeah. So what is, I mean, everyone wants to know, you know, well, there's a couple things I want to talk about. The first thing is, so there's, you know, the legend of bad water. Like, you know, you better run on the white line or your shoes are going to melt, you know, and don't bring plastic bags and all this kind of stuff. And, and I guess there's a little bit of wives tale to that and a little bit of truth. I mean, I think the pavement really was like 175 degrees, you know, it's like you spit on it and it sizzles. Does that mean that all the runners are running only on the white line? No, not really. I didn't see that.

I didn't see that either. I think that... There was a sign somewhere. Was it at Furnace Creek? There was something posted that requested tourists to stop frying eggs on the pavement so i mean oh i didn't see that really or maybe it was on it was somewhere it was actually it's the first time i'd seen it but i saw it this year and so people must actually do that and the pavement is hot enough for that but you're right i mean i don't

see people you don't see people running just in the white line but you see people doing you know bizarre things to you know lower their core temperature like you know it seems counterintuitive that you would put so much clothes on you know so much white clothing and that kind of heat but you can those sleeves they they retain the moisture longer so it takes longer for it to evaporate which keeps you cooler longer you can pack them with ice you know its the sun, like all these kinds of things. And did you have a dunk tank in the dirty water, the dirty ice, the gray ice, what do they call it? Yeah, I mean, we just called it, I don't even know what we called it this year.

But yeah, we had a small cooler that we had, like the bandanas and those, pretty gross. Right, like change of shirt, like you pull it out of the ice and you change gross right i mean change of shirt like you pull it out of the ice you change shirts and put on the cold shirt or something like that that's a smart idea i think that in the patent it was in dean's book where he talked about that big coffin cooler where he actually like yeah laid down in it you guys have that this year no we didn't i want to talk about that because he was telling that story during the race too that one year i can't remember what year it was that

he was doing it where he was he was really hurting and this guy comes up you know drives up and he says get in the coffin and he thought he was hallucinating like he thought like it was the grim reaper telling him he was dead you know he's like no you got to get in the coffin and in fact you know the coffin is this it was just the nickname for this thing that he had filled with ice that you could lay in to cool your core temperature down quickly yeah and i didn't see that out there and i know that when scott juric won you know a big part of his equation was like having these literally bathtubs full of ice that he could that he would submerge his entire he'd stop he'd submerge his entire body in it for five minutes or whatever and go again. And that seems to make great sense.

And I didn't see anybody doing it out there. I didn't see it either. And I never have, actually. I mean, I know that, I'm trying to think what, I mean, you definitely, you have ice in the bandana, you have ice in the hat, you have ice, I'm sure, in sleeves and shirts, but I've never seen. The difference is that when you get that hot, you have ice in the hat you have ice i'm sure in sleeves and shirts but i but the difference the difference is that you know when you're when you get that hot you can throw as much ice on you

as you want but like you're overheated like so short of stopping and going into a cool environment and letting your body like you know calm down you're not going to be able to like get a get control over it you know what i mean so the ice bath seems like i don't know why you know i guess you'd have to have a big enough car yeah i don't know why maybe it's just because it would it's too difficult it would be too big and too unwieldy or whatever but smart i don't know i mean all right so when you do it next year we'll make sure that you have an ice tub yeah exactly we'll see but um and uh so um so yeah to control the heat you have the arm the i call them arm warmers they're not are their arm coolers really putting ice in there the the all the hats have um the flaps down the you know the

back that cover your neck uh putting ice in the hat the spray bottles which are like these um industrial gardening tools with like automatic yeah they're like and see how exactly with like automatic sprays you just literally i just be running behind dean with it on automatic and it's just spraying him you know yeah and the crazy thing is how quickly i mean especially during the the heat of the day you can douse shirt douse the hat and within it's dry minutes it's it's bone dry yeah it's dry it's crazy one question that i asked um well jason coop who is again dean's like main crew guy and he'd he'd run uh bad water before he he's a ultra-distance runner, but also

a coach at Carmichael Training Systems in Colorado Springs. So he like really knows his stuff, super experienced, you know, helped crew Dean, you know, in his run across America and like really knows everything. And he had done Badwater. He did it with a stress fracture

and I guess was in second place by the time he got into Darwin where it just kind of unraveled on him and he ended up having to literally like essentially walk from Darwin all the way to the finish you know and what is that I mean mile 90 or something yeah something like that that's a long walk yeah I think he said he he told his crew ahead of time it's either going to be a 24-hour day or a 48-hour day, but it's not going to be anything in between. But he was saying, I asked him, I said, well, why doesn't, you know, it seems like somebody should have invented a vest with like, you know, those coolant packs in it or something that you could just wear that would be comfortable and wouldn't rub, but would like, would really keep your core cool. And I think that there's some kind of rule. It's weird. There's some kind of rule delineation that doesn't allow you to have

anything to like newfangled when it comes to cooling your body, like certain things are okay and certain things aren't. So I don't know where you draw that line um but it seems like you know why wouldn't everybody just be wearing vests when you could just swap out those cold packs in them or something like that but you don't you don't see that either i've never seen that you're right and they actually have i've seen like they have compression clothes now that have that like i've seen or like you've seen you know the time trial cyclists wear those when they're warming up right you know they exist and you'd think if there was any place there couldn't be any place more appropriate for those no running bad water right that's against it must be it's got to be it's got to be so you know we're

doing a podcast on this we should know the answer to that right like we're just a bunch of knuckle heads exactly you know um the other thing i wanted to talk about is the shoes everyone like what kind of shoes they wear they is are the soles melting and i didn't see soles melt but one thing i wanted to talk about is the shoes everyone like what kind of shoes they wear they is are the souls melting and i didn't see souls melt but one thing i did learn and and again this is a you know i'm showing my ignorance here but i'd never seen these hoka shoes that everyone was wearing oh yeah which look like kind of like uh orthopedic nurse shoes Like they're the ugliest running shoes you've ever seen, but all the runners are wearing them. And Dean was like, oh yeah, they're great.

They can account for like 25%, 30% better feeling in your feet. Like they have these huge heels on them. And I guess when the pavement's that hot or you're just pounding on the pavement, they're effective. I don't know. I've never run in them. Have you run in them? I tried them once.

It was probably in the last three years where they really gained in popularity. I tried them at a store in LA once, just ran around the block in them. They feel really weird. They're super cushy. They're super cushioning. I guess I'm sure that if you run you run them for a little i'm sure

you can get used to it very quickly for me i ran around the block and i decided i was already predisposed against them i work pretty minimal low profile shoes anyways but um i didn't i didn't you didn't like them i thought they were too little too weird um but they're definitely weird but everybody i know who runs in them i mean i the people i know who run in them regularly swear by them i mean would never almost probably wouldn't wear anything else and for like training and everything or just for like running a race like that i mean even trail races really yeah i mean they i think that what is it about them you don't i mean well obviously you don't feel that the ground so you have a lot of cushioning um and you can just my friends who wear them say they

just fly downhill and i've seen them because it's just sort of like bounding on clouds and you can just bounce and i mean fly downhill i'm sure going uphill is probably a little bit harder but it completely counters the whole like born to run you know yeah oh yeah movement well you know that i think that i think that again i probably shouldn't say this on a podcast where i don't know for sure but i think they're pretty low you know there's that like drop that the zero drop thing yeah i think they are like zero or yeah they look pretty even all the way across it would look like if you just added like two inches of you know padding beneath your shoe like evenly across the bottom exactly right like they look more like moon boots than they do like running shoes but there are i mean there are a lot and

to be clear like dean didn't wear them the whole you know he he wore lots of different pairs of shoes like um but it was just what they were the ones that i was like what are those like i don't i've never even seen these things before it makes a lot of sense out there i didn't even think about it like the insulation from the heat sure and and because i'm sure that the foot pounding is probably 40 37 hours or whatever it is yeah 30 hours just well and your feet feel the heat you know like i showed you my shoes after we're done you know like i just wore my old worn out pair of asics that were already like you know pretty worn in and uh and just like i think just because dripping sweat on them the salt and then constantly drying out and the flexing the whole upper mesh just like tore in a couple places on

both shoes yeah they just came apart yeah i'm sure from the yeah exactly that there's baking in the sun for two days right and a half right so uh so what does ray eat ray ate he he he had a plan going in and then changed it as his stump he had some stomach issues and so he started on mostly liquid on this uh it's an herbalife drink called 24 that I'd never heard of. I'd never seen before. But it had some protein, electrolytes, carbohydrates. And he started using that.

His plan was to use that and then switch to gels much later. But he ate, I mean, he had sandwiches, he had some turkey sandwiches, he had that, he had gels, he had Cl, he had some turkey sandwiches, he had that, he had gels, he had Cliff Blocks. He had a piece of pizza at one point, which the pizza actually helped turn it around in a huge way. I think he really needed that food. Some real food, real big calories.

Yeah. But he was a little bit more, well, no, actually that's not true. Each of the three guys that I've crewed sort of had a plan going in, but had boxes of other stuff just in case, and then just post all over the place. Right, right, right. Yeah, I think for the crew, when you pack the van, it's about having as many options as possible, knowing that there might only be a couple of those that the guy's actually going to want or use. But you have to be prepared for everything, and you have to know where everything is so the back of these vans are like very well organized you have like we said before you have one cooler that's full of like dirty ice where you can dunk clothes and and maybe you know keep bottles that are already full cool and then you

have one that's just at least in our van we had one that was just ice clean ice for drinking then we had a drinking water cooler and then we had another cooler with food with ice on food and like other like you know products that we wanted to keep cold like coconut water and stuff like that yeah i think that's exactly that's exactly what we had there and then we had um like a one of those plastic chest of drawers where we kept other stuff like medical stuff you know scissors and tape and um you know sunscreen and chapstick and different pairs of sunglasses like all that kind of stuff so you have to know where all that stuff is because he runs up and it's like i need this and you have a half mile to like drive up and get it and then run out and give it to him and you if you don't know where it

is you're gonna miss that drop yeah yeah no we weren't as organized as that that chest of drawers is a great idea i mean we had bins and that that's what we've done before like labeled bins those little plastic like shoe bin things but to have it but by there are certain points in the race we were like okay well where's the bin that has this? Well, and stuff gets, I mean, you know, like it starts to get disorganized quick. You go in, it's super organized. And then like 10 hours in, you're like, I don't know where anything is anymore, you know?

I don't know if, I bet it was the same for you guys. But like that first, because you can crew, in the first 17 miles where you're not allowed pacers, you can crew. And that's when the guy's moving the fastest. And you're going every mile. And those miles are by in you know eight or ten minutes right that's always been each time i've been there it's always the most hectic time and you're wondering and you're talking because but as soon as you get him what he needs that time you're already planning

and giving him for the next time it's there is no break because you think like oh it's chill they're running you know and they're going slow by the way so like you'll be able to drive up you can hang out and relax and then when he comes up they'll tell you what he needs and you can walk out no way like yeah it was like basically you know they and when when somebody starts pacing them they're carrying three or four bottles your runner's carrying at least one bottle if not two so they just drop all their empties this is what we did they just drop all their empties this is what we did they just drop them all on the ground so it's four or five or six bottles

suddenly like on the pavement and then they tell you what they and you're handing them the new ones right and whatever else they need food or whatever and then they're saying here's what i need next you got to collect all the empty bottles you got to go back to your van you got to rinse them out you got to refill them with whatever they want get all that ready jump in the van drive half a mile three quarters a mile up the road hop out get it all out run across the street and by the time you're there there they are again you're handing it off and then it just repeats and you know 135 miles and you're stopping you know you're you're talking about like 300 stops probably yeah 200 at least yeah yeah at least 200 you know it it is it's amazing i remember thinking

there's no way i'm going to be able to maintain this for however many hours it's going to take but you do you i'm sure you get into that rhythm where, and it does as it slows down. I mean, because there are like those 20 minute miles and 25 minute miles where you finally get to catch your breath and think about it. But for the most part, you're just not, you don't even, you can't even really,

you don't have time to think or take pictures or do anything. Yeah, I know, I know. People were sending me tweets and stuff saying, oh, you got to do a podcast with, are you going to do a podcast with, are you going to do a podcast with Dean? And Oh, you got to talk to Charlie angle and like David Goggins. And don't forget to get this guy too. It was like, I didn't bring my podcast up. Like I knew at least I knew

enough to know that like, there wasn't going to be any time for anything other than being completely focused on taking care of your athlete. And as a crew member, that's what you're there for. You're not there for anything having to do with you. You're there to be of service to them completely. And it's a great, it's a really great experience in giving yourself over to somebody else like for their goal, you know? And it's like, I've had the good fortune of having people crew for me for races and it's like high time that I repaid that favor and, and have that experience. And it's, it's, it's fantastic. And it really is, you know, it sounds like nonsense when the athlete at the end says, well, I couldn't have done it without my crew or, you know, we did it together. This is a victory for all of us. But like, you know, there's a lot of truth in that. Like they, you know, you really have to have a well-oiled machine to perform well at a race like that yeah definitely true i mean patting myself on the back patting yourself on the back a little bit but it's true yeah it's no way i mean i think there's

there could be a sense out there just for people who are listening like oh yeah it's great you have crew like oh you just cater the race the whole way you know it's like it's that's not i'm telling you know that is not what it's like no definitely no definitely not. And it really can become like a really complicated equation, especially when you have three, four, five people crewing to get everybody in sync. And more often than not, there's crew meltdowns and dissension among your crew, and people are not getting along, and they're sleep-deprived.

And once that happens, your athlete is the one who's going to suffer because these two guys aren't getting along and are fighting. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, we were fortunate. Yeah, we didn't have that. We didn't have that at all.

But it's definitely, I mean, I'm sure it happens. There's no way it doesn't happen. Oh, yeah, of course it does. You put five people or four people or whatever it is, six people in a hot, overheated, messy, dirty truck for 30 plus 40 hours. Of course. You're definitely going to get that.

Yeah. So he's eating sandwiches. He had some pizza. He did do gels. He did, yeah. Yeah. And what was he drinking in his bottles? Well, one bottle, he did, I mean, a lot of it was just water.

A lot of it was just ice. I mean, the crazy thing is we started off and, you know, we're putting water in the bottles with, you know, some ice and a lot of water in the bottles. And then quickly realized that a better way to do it was to just as much ice as possible in the bottle and then a little bit of water in there because it's kind of melt in five seconds anyway. Right. Yeah, we were doing the same thing.

Yeah. So he did a lot of water in the bottles, but he also did that Herbalife 24 drink. He did another like electrolyte drink. He did some coconut water. He drank some Coke. That was pretty much. Oh, he ate some chia seeds that that that he used right um yeah i think it's a really i think if you pulled all the athletes and had them make a list of what they ate throughout

the race like they would all tell very different tales you know i think it's a really personal thing and and uh you know when you start to get tired and you're really at the limit and you're kind of losing it, you turn into like this crazed pregnant woman, you know, with these bizarre cravings. And, you know, either you don't know what you want or you have this very specific desire for something that is just downright strange. You know, like at one point Dean said, I want cottage cheese with avocado and potato chips mashed into it. You know, just put it in a bowl, mash it up with a fork. You know, I was like, all right, you do it. You know, like just bizarre, weird things. Like he just, that was what his brain was telling him

at that moment, you know. Is that something that he had, I mean, obviously he must have planned on it because he can't, it's hard to get that. Well, we had all those things. You know, we had all those things on tap. I don't know whether that was like a go-to thing for him or not, but you know. It's such a weird combination. Yeah, I know all those things. You know, we had all those things on tap. I don't know whether that was like a go-to thing for him or not, but, you know.

It's such a weird combination. Yeah, I know. I know. So, but the one thing, you know, I think there's also this idea for people out there that aren't familiar with ultra running that, or at least this race, that these guys are just drinking Gatorade and doing gels the whole time. And I can tell you that that is absolutely not the case. Like, more real food whole food than than not you know in the balance of things yeah it's too long you couldn't do it and dean didn't we had no gels and we had no none of no powerade gatorade none of that kind of stuff

wow so um and he would drink tons of water i mean mean, and by the way, like I'm drinking, I'm hammering 16 to 20 ounces every 30 minutes, 20 minutes. And I was just getting progressively more and more dehydrated just being in the crew. Like I only urinated like once, you know? And I was like, yeah, I was like, you know, and I couldn't believe how much water I was putting away. But he would drink tons and tons of water,

but no electrolyte drinks, like no electrolyte laced anything you know and i was like aren't you going to get hype on neutremia you know but he would eat other foods and i think he's just so i mean he's so used to doing this on on a certain level i suppose um but it was interesting to kind of see what his choices are i mean a, a lot of coconut water. Right. But not like, you know, he's not drinking like, quote unquote, like electrolyte drinks. Sure. Was he taking salt pills? No.

Oh, wow. Jason, our crew guy, had some Enduralites and I started taking those. And I was like, I can't believe he's not taking, you know, he's not taking salt tabs. And it's like, no, he doesn't. This is the way he does it. Wow. Yeah. Because, I i mean we relied

all of us ray was not that's the other thing ray was taking we're giving him s caps another brand of uh salt pills every 30 minutes or every hour most and then and and the whole crew was taking him as well it's amazing that dean was doing it without that well he was eating other things like i mean he you know he knows what he needs to keep his electrolytes in balance. And he's done that race where they got out of whack. And I think he knows what that feels like. So we certainly weren't going to do that.

But way more like whole foods than you would think for running a race. Right. And a lot less like artificial kind of stuff. Yeah. So it was interesting, you know, I mean, I learned so much just to, just, just to be there and to witness the whole thing, you know. It is.

It's, it's amazing. And, and I mean, watching people, how far, I mean, I saw this with Ray and I'm sure, and see like how far down people can go and still come back. Yeah. That's the thing. like you think just because you're feeling horrible and you think it's over that story has yet to be told you know what i mean like you see people who look like there's no way it's it's done you know and then they bounce back and pull themselves up and look like a completely different person a couple hours later

yeah i mean there's i think there were, I think 100 people in and 96 starters. And I think there were 14 people who dropped or something like that. Yeah, I think 81 finished, something like that. I mean, that's a pretty high finish rate. And especially because if you look, I mean, there were people I saw out there who I did not, definitely did not think were gonna,

or pretty early in the race, who I thought were not gonna be able to make another 120 or 100 miles or whatever. They do. It's really amazing. I know. It's incredible. You finished the race.

Dean finished it in 32 hours and change or whatever it is. You're up there in the pine forest and he shakes some hands and does some interviews. You do the deal. you're up there in the pine forest and he shakes some hands and does some interviews and you know, you do the deal and then we're driving and then you drive back down to go down to your little hotel at the, in Lone Pine, which is 13 miles down the hill from the finish line. And, uh,

we're driving down. I saw you guys coming up, you know, you weren't that far back from where we were. And, uh, and you know, we went,

we cleaned out the vans, we took showers, we got cleaned up, you know, we just, out the vans we took showers we got cleaned up you know we just we took care of dean we did all that kind of stuff we went out to dinner you know and then you know you and there's people coming in you know it's midnight and everyone sets up lawn chairs like out on the main drag and lone pine and cheers these guys on as they come in through the night and then you go to bed and then you wake up the next morning and come out and there's still people coming in and you're like, Oh my God,

they're coming in at 48 hours on kind of the 40, you know, 42, 44 hour mark. Yeah. It's amazing. You know, it really is the other thing is that there's so many people at this rate i mean everybody has to have their

you know own like amazing life story you know that kind of led them to that place and for me like a couple personal heroes were there you know people i'd never met before like dave goggins was there right and i didn't even know he i didn't know that he was competing and it was his first time uh doing that race in like 10 years so i think it's been a while i don't know it's been it's been a while it's been a while maybe even i could be wrong but you know he had he you know he took that extended break from ultra racing. He had a heart thing, right? That could have been his first one back. He must have done something to lead up to this.

He must have. But yeah, I remember. I don't think it was 10 years. Because I remember when the story was that if he ever ran again in those kind of conditions, there was a good chance his heart would go out. Right. I mean. And maybe 2006 or seven or something like that,

I think might've been the last time he did it. Yeah, so I don't know how that got resolved, but he was out there, man. And, you know, he was running kind of toe-to-toe with Dean for a long time. So I was able to kind of just watch him and he was being paced by Ferg Hawk, who's a legendary character and ultra running. And he's,

he's the guy who kind of you know, sort of created bad water lore because he would, I think he was the first guy to put a treadmill on a sauna and train like that. Yeah. Like put winter coats on and put a treadmill on and go, go in a sauna and train. Cause I think he lives up in Canada or something to get the heat acclimation, which just, you know, plays into the kind of elevated lore of bad water. But to watch David, and you were talking about how, you know, people come back from lows.

And, you know, at one point, you know, I think his electrolytes were off or something was going on. Like he was having a low moment and was, was struggling. And I thought, well, you know, I don't know if he's going to be able to do it, you know, and his, you know, his, the whole quote thing is, you know, I don't, I don't stop running when I'm tired to stop when I'm done, you know, I was like, we'll see, you know, and like, yeah. And then, you know, he kind of fell back to like maybe 10 or 20 minutes behind dean but then we never saw him again and i didn't you know we didn't know if he dropped out or whether he just fell way back or what was going on and then he just kind of maintained that gap the whole time and finished you know right behind dean like saw it through man it's amazing it's just insane yeah and then uh charlie ing too, is a personal favorite of mine.

Do you know him at all? He had an incredible race. I think he set the record for… The master's record or something? Yeah, the master's record. So for people that don't know, he's an incredibly colorful character with an incredible backstory. Like he is a recovering crack addict and has this crazy like addiction and recovery story. You know, sort of gets his life back,

gets into ultra running, does some pretty spectacular things in the ultra running world, including running across the Sahara. So you might remember him from that documentary. And then got caught up in some sort sort of real estate dealings do you know the details of this i mean it was there was a couple profiles on him in the new york times over the last couple years he ended up getting busted for mortgage fraud um and i don't want to

i don't know i think because if you can read many different stories of course um but yeah i mean he it was mortgage fraud so it had it had you know it had something to do with um overstating or understating income when they were kind of just giving out mortgages without really double checking on anything and from what i understand he really wasn't doing anything all that different from what a lot of people were doing you know it's kind of a standard practice thing um but for whatever reason some regulator decided that he wanted to make an example out of charlie and kind of took him to the mat and charlie ended up going to prison for quite a quite a extended period like two years three

years i can't remember how long but it was you know it wasn't like a short stay and um there was an article about him in uh either this month's or last month, one of those magazines like outside or men's journal, um, there as much as they would allow him like every single day until he accumulated like 135 miles and he got like a lot of the guys in the a lot of the other inmates into running and you know has created a bond with these guys he's an amazing dynamic you know character and to see him like come out i mean he's a guy with nine lives, right? And then he comes out of that experience and shows up at Badwater and gets fifth place

and sets the men's record. I mean, it's a pretty incredible story. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So you can follow him on Twitter. He's at Charlie Engle, E-N-G-L-E. You should check him out. Yeah, it's an amazing story.

So I want to read that guy's book. I'm sure. He's got to be amazing story. So I want to read that guy's book. I'm sure. He's got to be writing a book. I hope he is because I want to read it, you know. I guess this Badwater would probably be a nice like final chapter. You know, I was super high and then I was in jail. And look what I did. Now I've done bad, you know.

Yeah. Came out of that low and that life low. And set this master's record it's crazy right it's amazing good story so and i'm sure there's a bunch of people with you know equally amazing stories that just aren't as well known as a guy like charlie is but did you see the guy with the prosthetic yes yeah so tell tell i don't know i don't know i meant to go back and look i saw him on the course and then when I was flipping through some of the pictures yesterday on somewhere,

I mean, it might have been in the BuzzFeed ones or somewhere else, but yeah, there's a guy with one of those Cheetah, the running prosthetics who was out there. I think he has one prosthetic arm also. Oh, yeah, you're right. Yes. So I think he's from the UK. I heard him speaking. Definitely had a British accent. I think it was a helicopter crash or something like that.

I don't know how he lost his life. And I don't know if it was in military action or what happened. But yeah, he finished? I think he did. I think he did. Yeah, you know what? I think he did. Yeah, I think so. But it wasn't his first time though no yeah and there's been other

i mean there's a there's that woman again uh that i can't remember her name who's who's done with the prosthetic i don't know if she finished she was there in 2010 when i was there um but yeah i mean there's it actually on this note like last night i was going through some of the pictures online with my wife and and in looking at the people I mean like you look at the front runners like there's Oswaldo Lopez who came in third this year and he looks like he looks like a runner oh yeah I thought he's winning it for sure when I saw him he kind of ran off the front in the first 17 miles and just looked like he looks like a guy who's going to win the race. Exactly. But then you flip through those photos, and there are plenty of people in there who, you know, you can't help but judge by looking at them,

or they're like, who don't look like they should be out there running 135 miles, and those people finish. Yeah, I know. It's really, really impressive. It is. How these people push, how everybody just pushes themselves. It doesn't matter. You don't have to be, you don't have to look like that typical runner. No, no, no, how everybody just pushes themselves. It doesn't matter. Like you don't have to, you don't have to be,

you don't have to look like that typical runner. No, no, no, no, not at all. Yeah. I mean,

these are not like, you know, a hundred people that I'll look like bean poles, not at all. You know, they, they, people came in all shapes and varieties,

really tall people, really short people, slender, slim, little, little runner looking dudes. And, and and uh

and people you know with a good you know extra 20 25 pounds on them too you know yeah yeah i mean even well i guess david dawkins isn't isn't but he's taller i mean there are some like he looked pretty lean he was he was looking pretty i mean that's a guy who I think at one point was like 283, and now he's like 183. I think he's like 100 pounds. Let's talk about him for a minute. I mean, come on. This is a guy who like eight or nine months ago went for the world record in pull-ups.

You know, like he's on the Today Show. They did a 24-hour, like, see how many pull-ups you can do. Do you know what he did? Was it like 10,000? It was some insane number, and he was definitely way ahead of pace in terms of breaking the record, but then he injured,

he had some kind of weird injury. I don't know if it was in his wrist or something like that and had to call it a day. But here's a guy who's obviously, you know, an incredible strength athlete. Anybody who can do that, right?

Some ungodly number of pull-ups and he's on national television doing it and then fast forward he's running bad water you know like who has that range as an athlete like the navy seal i know right he's a navy seal he is and it's certainly mental fortitude and and all of that is a huge component of it but but to be able to have that level of strength and that level of endurance at the same time same you know they need to invent a new sport for that guy that combines those things better because he would be indomitable you know yeah so i just think he's remarkable i mean i think that

guy is super inspiring and and uh i can't wait to see what he does next. Did anybody do a double this year? I don't think anybody did. A lot of years they did. A lot of years, yeah. So do you know anyone who's done that?

Do you know Danny Westergaard? No. Danny lives in PV or somewhere down in the South Bay and he's done, I mean, and when most people do the double, they finish,

I mean, the original Badwater course went to Mount Whitney portal and then went up to the top of Mount Whitney for 146 miles. And so when people do the double or more,

mostly they do, they finish and then sometimes they'll go straight ahead or sometimes they'll sleep for a few, they'll go back down and sleep for a few hours

and then climb Mount Whitney up to 12,000 feet or whatever it is. 14,000. 14,000 feet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then come back down and then go in reverse back to Badwater. Right. And Danny, I think he's done either five or six, you know, five or six, like, you know,

so three back and forths or two and a half back and forth i don't know how long it takes him but yeah i mean there are people almost every year who do at least who do a double i know um shan for our griefer has done that and i think she did summit mount whitney probably go back and she she lives around here she's like the local ultra running queen and you know she's well known in bad water circles and you know she's quite quite accomplished um unfortunately she dnf'd this year i don't know what happened i heard i talked to one of her crew members and they said it was i think it was much more than just to say stomach simplifies it i think but i think she was having pretty severe stomach issues

and i guess you know like we were saying before a lot of times you can come out of that but there i'm sure those 14 people who dropped or whatever it was they weren't coming nobody drops out by choice they were not coming out of uh whatever they were no no it's yeah i mean yeah no one no one wants to dnf and certainly not her so i'm sure it had to have been considerable um to go out there i uh i rented a i just rented a car down the street here at local car rental place i was like i'm gonna take this into insane heat i'm gonna leave it there for two days like i don't know how my car is gonna handle that like i just really don't want to break down so i'm just gonna get a cheap rental car uh so i do that and i and i i drove back um when i got back the other night or when i returned the rental car what was it thursday

morning i pull it in to park it like here in calabasas you know and there's a bad water crew van like shannon's crew she was returning her van too and i was like because it's it's so weird because when you're in that Badwater universe, it's like you're a million miles away from anything. Like it doesn't relate to anything else in your life. And then you put it behind you by driving away and you're like, all right, that's way over there now.

Like I'm back in my world. And then to like see a van from that, like parked right next to where I was returning my car, it was like, that's bizarre. That's funny. Were the stickers still on there? Yeah, returning my car. It was like, that's bizarre. That's funny. Were the stickers still on there? Yeah, she had it.

It was all people paint and draw all over their vans with their names and stuff like that. Yeah, that's how I knew. Number 15, Shannon. What else, man? I'm trying to think. Those are the biggest things that that you know i mean the the thing that when i describe it to people it's sort of like because

you know people are my friends even my friends who appreciate ultra some of them who not necessarily the runners but the ones who appreciate the ultra running that i do and the endurance sports the question is why or what right how is it you know because i come back and i'm all jazzed i'm like that's so much fun and their question is what do you mean fun how could that be fun and it's like this like crazy sort of summer camp or crazy ultra runners where like the time at furnace creek the few days before the race you everybody people get to know each other because there are people who i mean this year i think there are multiple people going for their 10th uh i you know i mean ray was on a sixth in a row i'm sure dean's done that was his 11th start but his 10th finish 10th finish i mean there are

multiple people out there who are going who are going for their 10th finish i mean these people and a lot of them have the same crew over and over again or the crew has raced before yeah it's a pretty cool like community it definitely it definitely is it's a unique community i mean and you have like uh you know you have like the crazy characters too like the jester there's a guy who's run it is he's done it a couple times yeah it's second or third time doing it he wears like a jester outfit for the whole like a jester hat but also like a whole get up but like long tights and like all this kind of stuff and the guy in the grass skirt like the pink grass skirt that you were talking

about um ultraman there's a guy that i and i was telling dean i was like yeah every ultra race has their character like that like ultraman there's a guy called cowman it's like a legendary oh i've heard of him you know you know who were like, you know, horns on the whole thing. So, something about these races attract those kind of guys and they're great. And when we were at the pool, I saw you there when they were taking the picture of all the athletes and everyone's congregated around this pool the day before the race at this weird Oasis Hotel right and i was like oh this is like spring break for ultra riders you know yeah it's a weird way it is i mean it's like it's like family you know because you're right that point you made before you're a million miles away i mean your cell phone works but you're so busy that you don't it's not like you can be connected to

nobody's doing work work or very few people i assume and i mean even talking to your family back home is is just because you're so busy and you're so wrapped up and everything and your reception's not good it is it's like a yeah that other world it is to put it in perspective though dean had the day before the race he turned in the manuscript for his next book so he had been there a week earlier just training and acclimating to the heat and trying to finish a book he got it in the and then got it yeah and then got it in and then runs wow that's that's pretty crazy right yeah that's insane i know and then he was going to vegas to catch a flight to the copper canyon and then from there i think he had to do

some North Face appearances in Chicago. He was on the road for weeks. It's quite an interesting life. His Copper Canyon race is tomorrow? Saturday, yeah. It would be interesting to see. I'm sure there's a bunch of those guys. Ray, Keith, Dean. It would be interesting to see. So that's, I mean, I'm sure there's a bunch of those guys. I mean, you know, like Ray, Keith, Dean.

It'd be interesting to see or to talk to them afterwards and see like, I guess they do this, right? That's what they do. And like Dean was like, you know,

we drove back through Ferns Creek together because I had to get my car and he was on his way to Vegas and he's like, I'm good to go. Ready to go, man. Like I didn't know,

I didn't think I would be the other day but he's like, now I'm psyched to go down there and run. You know, like 100K, like literally a couple days after. And a totally different experience. Any of these guys, even Hunter Myler, the US record for Hunter Myler is,

well, these guys aren't running a US record, but I think Ray's done a 16-hour Hunter Myler, and I'm sure Dean's done one somewhere in that range. Which, it's still a long time to be out there, but that's almost twice as fast average minute, or yeah, probably twice as fast average minute mile pace. And if he's going down to 100K, I mean, the pacing is so different.

Oh, it's totally different. Yeah. I mean, you know, you look at the course profile for Badwater and it's impossible to forget because it's on the back of everyone's T-shirt. You're constantly looking at it. But the first third of the race is essentially completely flat, right?

And then you have these crazy mountain passes and ups and downs and culminating in this super steep ascent up Mount Whitney. But when you look at that and that's all you have to go on, you think, oh, they're going to be blazing through the first double marathon. You know, they'll be there. They should be looking at, let's see, first double marathon, some of the greatest runners in the world. You know, I don't know how many hours, you know, they'll be passing through that in like nine hours. You know, I don't know.

I mean, for a double, you know, these guys run that. The guys do 50 milers and mountain 50 milers in five and six hours these days. Right. I mean. So how many hours had gone by when we hit the double marathon mark for the leaders? I don't even remember.

I mean, I think that it took two hours to get to mile 17, and that was the fastest two hours of the race. By a landslide. Yeah, by a landslide. I mean, that was the only two hours of the race right so by far oh by a landslide yeah by a landslide that was the only place where everyone was really running it was it was oh i remember 52 actually that's where i think i saw you guys first and it was cooling down i mean it was getting to eat it was six o'clock at night i mean i think it was 10 hours for at least 10 oh at least at least 10 hours for for those 52 miles yeah i think it was at least 10 so 10 some, at least. At least 10 hours for those 52 miles. Yeah, I think it was at least 10. So some of the most accomplished ultra runners in the world, and they're running a relatively flat course for most of that.

Yeah. And it's still taking them 10 hours to run a double marathon. So that's where you really, if you understand running and pace, that's where you go, oh, this running and pace, that's where you go, oh, this course must really be hard. I wonder what the top guys do. I don't know. Oh, actually, because you guys weren't,

so we were in the 8 a.m. wave, and so the three waves, there's the 6 a.m., 8 a.m., and 10 a.m., and they seed them roughly by experience and speed. And so we saw the first, the top three guys come through somewhere around mile 40 probably, and they were flying. They were still flying.

But even in this whole different league, they're in their own different league. One of the coolest things that I saw was Oswaldo Lopez. He's in a mariachi band

right oh he is yeah that's what i heard so and he ended up third yeah he was third right so uh and he was leading for significant portions of the race and you know at the end of the race he could have been pissed you know i didn't win or whatever um we were coming down uh the hill after finishing um coming down into lone pine and he was coming out of a ice cream shop and he had an ice cream cone and he saw uh he had just gotten it like it was totally maybe he had one lick off it and he saw a runner making that turn to go up portals and he just handed it to the guys like you take it and go and he was like he's just there supporting everybody like cheerleading people on and and i was like just witnessing that one act of him giving that ice cream cone to that guy i was like oh man that's that's what this is yeah

you know that's the spirit of what's going on here. It totally is. He's a special case, though. He's like, I don't know if, he never stops smiling. He's the friendliest. He didn't look tired at all. Yeah, no, he didn't look tired. Ridiculous.

It's so ridiculous the way that those guys, and the next day at the party, he was like at the award ceremony, he's like bouncing around, running around, hopping. I mean, it was amazing how good almost all the runners looked but well not almost all but most of a lot of the runners looked but he was just like you would have he just got back from a hawaiian vacation right exactly run a 5k the day before and like i mean exactly that good so it's it's you know again i guess it's experience

and uh i don't know what i don't know what how you do that genetics experience training but you know he's i mean his attitude is you know that's just who that guy is you know yeah it's true so it's pretty cool um michael arnstein uh was there crewing for o's pearlman do you know at all i don't know i mean i i heard listen to your podcast right but uh i don't i don't know so he uh he was he said to me uh before the race look at the starting line she's like so you know is this something you think you might want to do and i said i don't know ask me at the end you know either i'll like never want to come to back to death valley again or like i'll just be totally jazzed to try to figure out a way to make this happen in my life and so he's so at the end he saw me and he's like so and i go i don't know

i can't you know decide i think honestly like it's impossible to deny the allure of it yeah as ludicrous as it is, there's just something so compelling about it because it's just so off the charts, unbelievable. And why would you not want to kind of find a way to participate in that?

But also to, you know, in a realistic world to have enough, you know, self-awareness and respect to understand that, you know,

the road to showing up on the starting line is something like that is a multi-year thing oh yeah like you know people are tweeting me are you signing up for next year i was like you know they would never you know like i i have you know a lot of things to go that would have to be put on the resume before that would even be possible and even if even if they said you can do it i I wouldn't do it for a couple of years. I wouldn't do it until I've run a couple hundreds and had that experience. I mean, to do otherwise would belie a lack of respect for that course and that race, I think.

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it's funny. When I finished crewing the first time in 2009, I finished and my runner, we were so jazzed. He'd run a great race had some low points but not nothing like i expected and i finished and i was like i'm coming back here as soon as possible i'm gonna be here and then as time has gone by i've had the same attitude where i'm like you know it it's alluring and it would be awesome to do it but it still scares the crap

out of me as it should yeah and if it doesn't you're not thinking clearly right you know and after finishing crewing i wasn't certainly wasn't thinking clearly because the amount of preparation like mental preparation and just being mature enough having gone through like uh it's it's it's wild yeah it's really it's terrifying to think about so we'll see on the on the start line next year. I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't want to jinx anything and wouldn't want to commit to anything yet.

Yeah, come on. I know you've got all your letters of recommendation lined up. Oh yeah, you have to have letters of recommendation. Elizabeth, my wife, she was like, because I was talking to her about it, and she was like, so what do you have to do to apply? And I said letters of recommendation. And she was like, what?

You have to have letters of recommendation to do a race? You haven't done that since you were 18 years old. Exactly. But it's true. I mean, and again, that's probably, you know, I mean, it's a good part of it because having crude, that person who's finished or who's competed can say, you know, this person actually is, does have the maturity, does have the awareness, not maturity, but the awareness. How do you act when you get tired

and can you maintain your focus and have accrued it? I mean, I don't think they should let anyone do that race who hasn't accrued it. I mean, how could you have any understanding of what's going on

without that experience? that's true. I don't know. I think the Adventure Corps offices are like right down the road here. Isn't Chris Cosman in Agora? I know he's somewhere in this area. That's right.

Cool, man. So what's next for you this summer? My next race is Run Rabbit Run 100 on September 13th, I think, in Colorado. Steamado steamboat springs oh that'd be cool it should be i mean it's uh it's it's on paper well it's it's hard to say on paper it's my hardest time it's the hardest 100 i've done it's at altitude starts at 7 000 spends a lot of time in the nine and it's the crazy thing is you it starts at the bottom of the ski slopes of steamboat springs and you go up a ski up a ski up a ski slope like under the lifts i guess go up on some ridge go down a

ski slope through town go up a different ski slope so it's uh climbing just looks sick um but uh you know i'm excited it'll be uh um that the last one i did was supposed to be sort of the easiest on paper based on elevation gain and it crushed me. So no talent. So what does your training look like right now? And are you working with a coach or what is your program? No, I just, I mean, it's, that's the other thing about, I mean, it is much simpler than like we were talking about before. It's much simpler because I know that like almost every week, except for when I'm in my very peak weeks, almost every week I take Friday or Monday off, depending on how I'm feeling. I run at least once every other day.

Usually Tuesday, Thursday, and then either Saturday or Sunday are my long days. Tuesday, Thursday are like 12 to 18 miles. No, I guess Tuesday is more like 10. Thursday is like 15 to 18. Then Saturday, Sunday, I do back-to-back long runs. or no i guess tuesday's more like 10 thursday's like 15 to 18 and then saturday sunday um i do back-to-back long runs and sometimes that's like right those are the only two those are the only days that you run back-to-back days no no no so i run i mean usually i run tuesday i'll do like 8 to 12 on tuesday and then like 8 on wednesday and sometimes a night run on wednesday as well

and then thursday is a long run oh i see 12 15 18 miles and then a lot of times depending on feeling i'll take friday off and do and then saturday is a long run usually out in the mountains like san bernardino's for or san gabriel's um anywhere right now probably i mean i'm gonna build up again saturday maybe it'll be 20 25 you, get up to 30 miles. Then Sunday, go back out and do 10, 15, 20 miles. Then depending on how I'm feeling, Monday is either a short run or another rest day. I try to run.

Usually I'm running six, seven times a week. Do you mix it up like this is a tempo run, this is hill repeats, this is an aerobic run, this is a tempo run this is hill repeats this is an aerobic run this is like a really hard run yeah i mean sometimes sort of i mean the the tuesday run because the group i run with we usually push it we push tuesday is usually my fastest day and wednesday is my least excuse me my least hilly day so that's another fast, faster run. Um, but then especially Saturday, Sunday, those are, those are more aerobic just, I mean, as much time on my feet as I can do that. Right. Five hours, six hours, five. Sometimes I get a seven hour run in,

but like five or six hours. Right. Um, it was pretty regular on Saturday or Sunday. And how's the diet? It's good mean uh you know yeah i mean i went i'm like almost exclusively plant-based i it's uh it's hard to say only like there are times where um i'm out and i'm hungry and options aren't there i don't um you know i i know like a you know a cookie like for example out, I know I had some cookies and those definitely had dairy in them. But pretty much exclusively plant-based. Yeah. And the balance of things. And I dig it. I mean.

So it's been a lot. You've been doing this for a couple of years now. Yeah. Every morning I make the shake. I think it was going to be like a two-week experiment or something like that when you started. Yeah. One month. Yeah. I started off, I was like, I'll do it for one month and uh and see how it goes and i i you know it wasn't i won't say that like i had a huge transformation that month but i felt good yeah i really enjoyed it and i liked the mental prop the mental part of it too and i just kept going with it and i feel great i mean the energy thing is is everybody says that about plant-based diet. You have so much more energy,

but it's true. It really, I mean, it is true. And, you know, I was talking to Dean a little bit about this. Like when he was done and he was in his hotel room and we were going to go get dinner,

I was like, you know, you hear those stories. Oh, he eats pizza while he's running and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, you want me to bring you a pizza? Like,

I'm happy to bring you a pizza. He's no man i don't i don't eat that stuff anymore he's like i eat way more like you now like i wouldn't you know i don't think he would say he's plant-based or or anything like that but you know the dude you know eats a lot cleaner than he used to and he said his body fat has gone down from like 10% to 4%. He's super lean. Wow. And, uh, and you know, just really like tight. And I was saying, how do you feel?

And he's like, ah, he's like, my sleep's better. Everything's better. My skin's better. Uh, my,

I go, what about recovery? He's like insane, insane. Like, you know, and, and just waking up after bad water and how good he felt.

Like I saw it. That doesn't mean that he didn't eat cottage cheese during his race. And when you race, you eat a lot of crazy stuff or whatever. And like I said, he would never call himself exclusively plant-based, but I think he's eating way more in that vein than he used to and he's playing around with it. And the guy has like a degree in like um like biomedical science or nutritional science or something like that like he knows from whence he speaks

so that was interesting and it's good to hear that you you know are still feeling good i like the way it feel i like i definitely like the way i feel too you know there was uh my friend jimmy he paced jay smithberger i guess his name. And Jay and his wife were both vegan or plant-based. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, and I didn't know that either. And Jay finished, it was his first Badwater, and he finished pretty well. I don't remember exactly where, but he had a good race.

That's good. But I don't know if there were, that's the only other one that I sort of knew of. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I just didn't know that many. You know, I knew some people at the race, and there's kind of some overlap with the Ultraman crowd or whatever, but not very many.

But it was cool to see how international it was too. I think that that's kind of a new thing for that race. Yeah, definitely. I think people like Scott Jurek or whatever putting it on the map, and now it's, you know, people flying all over. There were people from South Korea,

Malaysia, Japan, Mexico. The winners this year, I mean, Australia. It was Portugal. We got from Portugal.

A woman from Canada. No, from Australia who lives in Dubai. Right. Oh, yeah. I was like,

she's an Australian who lives in Dubai. And she, by way of chill but trains in chile or something like that there was something out there was another country in there i think it was chile yeah there was some other affiliation i don't know and second place was from the uk and third place i don't know if i don't know where as waldo lives he's i mean he's mexican by heritage right i don't know if he lives i think he lives in california i think so i don't know but yeah i mean tons of huge international presence.

Right, right. It's cool. Yeah, and like, you know, the Washington Post is putting pictures on their website. Right. It's like, whoa. Yeah. So as small and insular as it is,

it still is attracting this kind of national antenna. Yeah. Which is cool. It's cool to see. Definitely. You know, and I think it begs the question of like, where is this ultra world going? this kind of national antenna yeah which is cool it's cool to see definitely you know and you know and it i think it begs the question of like where is this ultra world going you know there's this purist mentality that it's you know these races have been around for a long time and they're

relatively unchanged they're like national parks you know and there's a there's a strong legitimate argument that it should remain that way you know and then kind of just the gestalt of modernism pushing it towards you know well get sponsors and get money and get more attention and how much of that is good and how much of that is really undermining the purity of what makes it great right you know yeah it's true i mean like there's there's no money about there's no prize money about no yeah it's a big point of that, right? Yeah, we didn't even say that because it's like I wouldn't even have imagined that anyone would have thought that.

But I guess that we should have pointed that out. But there are now. You get a belt buckle. The winner gets the exact same thing as the guy who finishes 47 hours and 15 minutes. And they don't do a podium. And when you have the awards ceremony, there's no podium with one, two, three.

They just call everyone up name by name and everybody applauds for everybody and they all stand up there together and that's a beautiful thing yeah totally totally you know ultra running is the race as this run rabbit run that i'm doing is does have a pretty big purse and there are now a few races that have that and i don't you know i don't know what it's it's hard to argue because these guys who are dedicated i mean they should be able to make a living yeah yeah so what i'm saying is i see you know yeah where do you draw the line like how do you maintain that beautiful pure aesthetic of what it is but also allow space for people that have are devoting their lives to excellence in this area to be able to support themselves. I guess you, I mean, some of the races preserve that and give opportunities for,

I'm sure there's sponsorship opportunities that weren't there. I mean, a lot of these guys have. I don't know how much money they make. I doubt there aren't many ultra runners. It's just like there aren't very many Ironman triathletes who are making a living doing that,

doing sport. It must be incredibly hard. I mean, no, I think, I mean, is there any ultra runner other than,

you know, maybe two or three guys that you could name that don't have to, like, have a job? You know, like,

I can't imagine there is. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking maybe, you know, there's, yeah, exactly.

Two or three, maybe five in the world. Right. Yeah. I hope, I'm thinking maybe, you know, there's, yeah, exactly. Two or three, maybe five in the world. Right. Yeah. I hope Killian Jornet doesn't have to work. No, there's no way. He was the one. He's actually the one that you think of as the top.

Essentially the finest endurance athlete in the world right now, like bar none. So somebody should be paying that guy a lot of money. I don't care who it is, but please keep doing it. Right. Yeah, totally. Totally. Most of them, I know Michael Arnstein, he has a real job. He has a family business.

All these guys have real jobs. Of course. Full-time jobs or part-time jobs or whatever they do. They have to in order to buy groceries. To make it work, right? Yeah. Yeah, and it's still very much get the camper and the know, go park at the race start and pitch your tent. Yeah.

It's still a big part of what it's all about. Yeah, totally. So, it'll be interesting to see how it, you know, kind of continues to evolve. Because I think, you know, look, marathoning has never been bigger. And half marathons and, you know, Ironmans and 70.3s, I mean, they can't make enough of bigger, and half marathons, and Ironmans, and 70.3s. I mean, they can't make enough of these races, and they all sell out. So at some point, it's what's the next thing, and this is the next thing. And it's the uncharted waters.

And so people are going to start spilling into that, looking for the next thing. It's inevitable. looking for the next thing it's an it's inevitable so it'll be fascinating to watch how that world kind of um you know handles that and manages sort of responsible growth i guess yeah i mean it is because i mean now i don't know how many hundred hundred like hundred mile races are but there's gotta be one every weekend oh yeah i mean even three or four or five years ago that was not the case not even close so the nice thing about ultras is that, I guess, I mean, all races sort of have this, but there's a cap on, I mean, like Western States,

I think that their cap, you know, the park permits cap them at 260 or whatever it is. And so that race, Western States, probably the most prestigious or most well-known 100-mile race in the US. But it will never get bigger than 260 or 80 or whatever it is

per people per year. So there's like that automatic or internal control on the size. And Badwater too, I'm sure that there's, I don't know what the cap is, but I'm sure it's somewhere around 100 where Adventure Corps couldn't get a permit to be on those roads with more than 100 people yeah it's got to be that

way i mean i yeah i mean that's the thing it you it is a national park like people don't realize that you know it's it's a national park and the park service is a big part of what allows that race to transpire and they make it very clear to you that you better respect them and respect the rules and all of that and as they should yeah you know as they should and there's a lot of safety concerns out there with the vehicles and all that kind of stuff i mean it'd be so easy to get clipped from behind these cars are pulling up because the highway you could be going 100 miles an hour and a car pulls out in front of you you can't tell whether it's going 10 miles an hour or 60 right you know yeah it's amazing that that i mean i don't know but in the three years i've been there i haven't heard of any you know any major issues i'm sure that that event i'm sure that the park service

i'm sure there are little things that happen all the time but i haven't heard i've never seen a car accident or like a runner get i've never seen anybody get hit by a knock on wood never seen anybody get hit by a car or like yeah or anything like that and i think that's testament to the rules that that adventure core puts in place sure how conscious everybody is but it is it's sketchy situation it's open road yeah it's it's ripe for something to happen i'm glad that it hasn't yeah made it through another year without any anything like that occurring so exactly hopefully they'll get permitted to do the race next year so you know we can all go support you running it chris chris this is not me this is not me talking

all right well let's wrap it up. Sure. Yeah. This is great. What do you think? That was awesome. Anything else about Badwater we want to talk about? I don't think so. We covered the shoes.

We covered the heat. We covered the food. We talked about Ray. We talked about Dean. Did you guys think about how much water? Did you guys calculate how much water you had? Oh, I did ask that at the end of the guys. I was like, how much water do you think you went through?

Like, how much? I go, all I know is I was drinking 16 to 20 ounces like every 20 to 25 minutes for a good, you know, 20 hours. We did. I think we calculated that we did 25 gallons of just water. And that doesn't include the ice that melted. I mean, a few hundred pounds of ice, but 25 gallons of water between five people plus

all the ice plus the coke and some gatorade and sodas and coconut water and i mean i don't know what the total amount was of fluids but sorry that's the last thing yeah i know i mean all yeah like well we had one two three we had four or five coolers of varying sizes. And, you know, when we got into stovepipe wells, we had to get all new ice. And then when we got to Panamint, we had to get all new ice. You know, it's like you can't believe you go through that much ice and water. So, I don't know. Do the math, man.

You know, crazy amounts of water. Yeah. Multiplied by a hundred or 96 or whatever. It's like the amount of ice and water that, that area goes through that day. I know. Did, uh,

did Ray have any hallucinations? At one point? Yes. Yeah. At one point we, it was, I mean, it was so tired.

He, we were walking up out of the hill, the second hill after, like the last hill out of Panamint. Oh, right. The one that you're at, it's like three in the morning. It's like three in the morning, yeah.

I mean, it was middle of the night and I'm walking with him. He's struggling to stay awake and he said something about some figures. And I was like, what, what? And he was like, oh my God, I just loosened it. I saw some figures, I saw some people out there

on the side of the hill. That was the only one. To Dean? No. I mean, he was sort of talking to himself on and off, but he never,

he never became incoherent or anything like that. Yeah. But he was kind of like, you know, sort of talking affirmations to himself a little bit when he had some low moments.

I mean, I know he's had hallucinations in the past, but he didn't seem to have them this time. My first year, my runner was, we were walking up the portal road, and there's a cliff on one side. You're on the road, and on one side, it's a cliff down, and the other side, there's a rock wall. And I think that maybe some rocks had fallen down or there was some noise and he was

terrified that all of a sudden it was a massive earthquake i mean for like a split second he he you could see that the fear on his face and i was like what what what and he's like it's an earthquake and i told him and you know i talked him down he was immediately what was cool but um but it was like he just like he saw something i didn't see exhausted depleted your electrolytes are out of whack you haven't slept i mean you know it's like can't blame him you could anything could pop into your head i suppose yeah so anyway everybody survived yeah live to fight another day. All right, man. Cool.

Let's get out of here. Yeah, man. Thanks for coming by. My pleasure. This was great. Badwater recap. I love it. That's cool.

People are going to dig it, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, man. And good luck with the race in September. Thank you. And we're going to do some hill training, right? Yeah. On Wednesdays?

I'll be there. All right, man. That'd be great. I dig it. What about Billy? Is he going to show up? I'll get him out there man be great I dig it what about Billy so you can show up I'll get him out there yeah he's got he's doing 50k

in two weeks but then he'll be he'll be right back out all right cool yeah all right everybody thanks Josh thank you take it easy yeah peace plants Thank you. you you you you you you you you