Posted on August 11th, 2024

Words: Filippo Canetta

How Bad do
I want it?

This time, I don't even know where to start, the whole adventure was that complicated.

Maybe it's best to begin with what pushed me to try entering Badwater, "the hardest race in the world."

I hate the heat, and I love racing without telling anyone, and, above all, without involving anyone else.

Badwater, though, starts at the lowest point on the American continent, Badwater Basin, a salt flat 85.5 meters below sea level, the exact spot where the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was measured (54°C, on July 30, 2013). In July, temperatures run so high that no aid stations or checkpoints are provided, and competitors are required to have a support vehicle, with at least two drivers, for the entire 135 miles of the race (217 km), all the way to where the road ends, climbing the granite walls of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the United States (aside from Denali in Alaska), at over 2,500 meters above sea level.

So why did I fill out all the paperwork and submit fifteen years of performance data, just to be considered for entry?

I still don't know exactly, maybe it was the pull of a historic race, running for 47 years, one raced by pioneers of our sport like Scott Jurek and Dean Karnazes, maybe it was the need to test myself once more against something new, something bigger than me, maybe I was searching for fresh motivation in my training, or maybe, simply, to find out just how much suffering I'm still capable of.

Almost the exact day, in early February, I received the confirmation email that I'd been selected as one of a hundred athletes worldwide invited to compete, right at the end of a training session, my left knee, which had never given me a single issue, suddenly started hurting like nothing I'd ever felt. It's a completely new kind of pain, and I've felt plenty over the years. I get an MRI right away, and discover bones can hurt badly even without breaking. Bone edema, the diagnosis reads.

I tell myself there's still time, and it's better to stop now than to be forced to right before the race. I rest for over a month, the longest break I've taken since I started doing sports, but the pain shows no sign of easing, and every time I put weight on my left leg, an intense burning shoots straight into my brain. I'm too impatient, though, and gradually start moving again, shifting all the load onto my right leg. Slowly, my body finds a new balance, and despite the pain, I manage to get back into training: 19, 56, 89, 75, 58, 96 km a week, then 7 days off, to see if I can keep this up. My entire lead-up race schedule has completely fallen apart, by now I should have already been running long distances, but instead all I can manage are lots of small, short sessions, several of them on the treadmill, uphill bothers me less, and at least it lets me start simulating a hotter environment, given Milan just had the coldest spring "of the century." I try the Trail dei Castelli Bruciati, which doesn't have much elevation gain and is fairly runnable, I hold pace on the flat and uphill, but get passed on the descents, finishing third. Either way, painfully, the kilometers start piling up in my legs. I'd wanted to run Nove Colli Running, which would have been perfect prep for Badwater, but opt for the shorter Quattro Colli instead. I wouldn't have been able to handle the longer one. Luckily, at least for me, we catch the only hot day of the entire month of May. I finish third at Barbotto, wrecked, but aware I'd had a solid training session. I try entering the Passatore, but late entries aren't accepted.

With less than two months left now, June's typical scorching, humid days are nowhere to be seen. While temperatures at Badwater start climbing dramatically, soaring past 45°C, back in Lombardy we barely crack 25°C.

I go out running during the hottest hours, but the heat's laughably mild. My worries keep growing, I need a #whateverdammit plan to rebuild some confidence that I can actually pull this off. I run a solo 70-kilometer long run along the Martesana canal, and get dropped off in Busalla, 60 km from my grandmother's house, every weekend we manage to escape Milan, but even these "long" sessions feel insignificant compared to the race's 217 km. My running isn't good, the pain's constantly there, but I need to do better if I want any chance at this. I manage a couple of 120 km weeks, but the knee starts getting worse again.

We've already booked everything, flights, car, motel, I've roped in my friend Giuliano as crew, in short, there's no turning back now. Menacing emails from race director Chris Kostman keep arriving, full of warnings about preparation and the rules we need to follow to compete. Even before the start, the race already looks incredibly complex, and I still have no idea what's actually waiting for me...

Out of pure desperation, I enter a 24-hour track race in Saronno: the plan is to cover at least 115 km, roughly the length of Badwater's more runnable opening section, at a solid pace, then see what happens. What happens is that, before the hundredth kilometer, my stomach shuts down completely, my usual nausea keeps me from eating, and forces me to cut back on fluids too. I still finish third, with just over 184 km, nearly 80 of which walked. I'm happy to have held on and activated fat-burning metabolism, but for two days afterward I struggle to eat anything at all. My stomach's as empty as my water bottles.

I've covered a few kilometers now, but the heat's what worries me next, an "unusual" heatwave is hitting California and Nevada, and Badwater's already recording temperatures reaching 49°C.

I sign up for a month-long gym membership, explaining I only need the sauna. I go two or three times a week, until I can handle a full hour at 80°C, spread across four 15-minute sessions.

Finally, we depart, and I can relax for a moment.

The relaxation doesn't last long, because the moment we land in Charlotte, North Carolina, it's absolute chaos, the departures board flickers like a Christmas tree, every flight either delayed or canceled. American Airlines apparently gets hit hardest by the Microsoft server crash (thanks a lot, Microsoft, long live Apple!).

We try to stay calm, but updates about our flight's departure time or gate keep pouring in every 15 minutes (we'll count 114 of them over 26 hours). Our luggage, holding our entire lives inside, is being held hostage by the airport, there's nothing left to do but wait to leave. We spend a full night and day stuck inside an airport, air conditioning cranked down to 15°C, eating junk food, even the bathroom line takes an hour. The already-paid hotel night in Las Vegas, gone.

I start to lose hope, and while the mandatory pre-race meeting for bib pickup is underway, we're still 4,000 kilometers away. I write to the ever-formidable Chris Kostman, letting him know the situation, and he replies that if we don't arrive by eleven on race day, I can't start. In a way, I almost feel relieved when I consider that, since the organization offers no support during the race anyway, we could just do our own thing entirely independently, an "unofficial" version seems like a fitting end to this whole ordeal. After yet another delay, it finally looks like our flight's ready to depart.

We reach Las Vegas already in the evening, and go to pick up the minivan I'd reserved, specifically requesting white. We're handed a black one instead, with a black glass roof already scorching hot to the touch, but I'm too exhausted to argue, and we need to rush to buy supplies for tomorrow's race. We grab random items at a discount store, then head to our motel in Death Valley. The temperature display, in Fahrenheit, shows numbers that mean nothing to us, climbing steadily higher as we get closer. Finally, around midnight, we reach Stovepipe Wells, first spotting the gas station with its little store, the deserted campground, a few wooden buildings scattered around. We get out of the car looking for reception, and for the first time, come face to face with "the beast."

The air is so hot it's unbreathable, like standing inside a giant open oven. The wind blows steadily, seeming to suck every last bit of oxygen out of the atmosphere. Irene can't stop laughing, gripped by hysterics. Cecilia wants to go back to the car. Giuliano just keeps pacing in circles, as if in a trance. I'm terrified of what awaits me tomorrow. I've experienced heat before, at Marathon des Sables, Western States, Spartathlon, the final kilometers of Transgrancanaria, or the Grand Raid de La Réunion, but nothing comes remotely close to this feeling, no escape, no way of surviving out here. A sensation I'll never forget.

We try to joke about it as we head to our rooms, and even with the AC cranked to max, everything inside still feels hot. All we want is to shower and get to bed, stop thinking about it. Right, the shower, I fumble with the mixer, thinking it's broken, but it's working perfectly fine, it's just that even the "cold" water sits at 50°C, scalding. At least we won't need the hair dryer, just stepping outside for two minutes is enough to dry off completely. Everyone else falls asleep, but I can't, so I step outside for a walk. The landscape, lit by a nearly full moon, is beautiful and eerie at once, nothing but stretches of wind-carved sand and sun-baked earth, the only vegetation clinging on is low, spiky scrub.

We grab breakfast at an old saloon, trying to take stock of the situation, then, nerves fully on edge, head to Lone Pine to pick up my bib and meet with race director Chris, who immediately points out we're the only ones who missed the mandatory briefing, so I prove we're ready anyway by reciting the five pages of race rules from memory, and, thankfully, our mandatory gear passes his strict inspection. Thanks, Emilia and Simone, for lending us those super-reflective shirts!

In the second half of the course, the section from our motel to Lone Pine, it seems a bit less hot, which lifts our spirits considerably. We pick up the "poop kits" (look up "BiffyBag" if you're curious) and the mandatory third reflective shirt we ended up having to buy, then head back to set up the car.

Just enough time to decorate the car and prep the cooler bins, one for drinking ice, another to chill the other drinks, plus ice for the cap and bandana, and hold a quick briefing among ourselves, before it's already time to head to the start, and by the time the race even begins, we've already covered over six hundred kilometers by car that same day, already worn down before the gun's even gone off.

As we approach the Badwater basin, we pass competitors from the 8 pm and 9 pm waves, we're set for the final wave, at 10 pm. I'd tried to get my assigned start time changed by the ever-unappealable ruling of the mighty race director, but no luck: unfortunately, I'm right among the fast runners.

As we descend into Death Valley, the temperature reading climbs from 115 to 120°F, we don't quite know what that translates to, but the moment we step out of the car, the air's unbreathable. Scott Jurek's words, from when he ran it, come to mind: "I ended up with the hair inside my nose singed."

The metal railings separating the parking lot from the athletes-only staging area can't be touched, they're scorching hot.

Seeing the other competitors' fully decked-out support vehicles hits us with a wave of discouragement. There's basically no cell coverage along the course, so many carry satellite phones for emergencies and walkie-talkies for crew-athlete communication. Their trunks look perfectly organized for every possible scenario, while we look like tourists on vacation.

This time, the "Dragon" is one of the big ones, no denying it, and I've tried studying how past finishers approached it. Split-time data suggests everyone leverages the night and the almost "flat" opening stretch, running at a solid pace up to the sixty-seventh kilometer, Stovepipe Wells, then run the first climb up to Towne Pass (+1,500 m over 26 km), run fast down the descent (the only one) toward Panamint Springs, where, past the halfway point, they seem to slow down, probably from the heat, on the second climb (700 m D+ over 13 km), before picking the pace back up, though slower, all the way to Lone Pine, at the two-hundredth kilometer, then walk the 1,500 m D+ climb up Mount Whitney, where the second night should, hopefully, bring cooler temperatures.

On paper, it all seems clear and fairly straightforward, or so I keep telling my crew, downplaying the difficulty, though they seem increasingly worried.

I have to admit, honestly, I'm more worried about them than about myself.

But there's no point dwelling on it now, we've made it this far, time to go, weigh-in, obligatory photo, national anthem. This is my favorite part of ultrarunning, after months of preparation, studying the route, gathering information, careful training, careful eating (except for the last two days), finally, all that's left is to run, no more thinking about what I could have done better.

I start to realize something's off when Harvey Lewis, the race's star runner, steps away from the start line and returns at the very last second, soaked, an ice-packed bandana around his neck. He's already finished this race twelve times, and in all the YouTube videos, I'd never once seen him start already wearing ice. Gripped by panic, as we climb back out of the basin right after the start, I shout to my crew: "Ice bandana, first stop!", ruining the audio in every other competitor's starting-line video.

Photos by Manny Olivo

Everyone else takes off running at a hard pace, seemingly confirming my strategy of going fast in the opening section, I try to stay calm and make sense of a situation as absurd as it is new to me, but I'm too dazed to think objectively, so I set the speed I'd calculated I should hold, based on my absurd mental math from Spartathlon and Sakura Michi: 11 km/h, roughly 5'30" per km.

We'd agreed to meet every 5 km, right on schedule, Irene and Giuliano are waiting for me on the left side of the road, wearing their fluorescent yellow shirts with reflectors and blinking LED lights, having carefully parked the car on the right side, all four wheels off the white line, hazards on, headlights off, exactly as one of the many rules requires. I put the ice bandana around my neck, refill on water, and set off again right away, forgetting to tell them what to prepare for the next stop. I need to remember to communicate, each time, what to set up for the following stop, so they don't get too stressed out. After 5 km, a quick refuel, and I tell them I need ice in the hat too, since my head's cooking, starting to actually hurt. Scott Jurek's words keep echoing in my mind: "I felt like a red-hot iron was branding my skull from the inside."

I ask for electrolyte salts too, though I can't even tell if I'm sweating or not. It's so hot that everything dries up instantly. I've read a lot about electrolyte and salt intake, but never having actually used them, I'm not entirely sure how to go about it.

I can't properly gauge the effort behind the pace I'm holding, because the fearsome, scorching wind's blowing right into my face, and I can't tell if I'm running uphill or downhill. The road's gradients are minimal, but never flat, and at night, they're extremely hard to read.

At the next stop, I add ice to my Endurance Cap too, and set off again with the handheld bottle of electrolytes. Normally, ice in the cap hurts from the cold for the first few minutes, here, I keep checking whether it's actually still in there, because I can't feel any relief at all.

I gain back a few positions, but others pass me at insane speed, and I can't tell whether I'm catching runners who started an hour earlier, or if these are athletes who started alongside me. The situation's confusing enough, chaotic enough, that it doesn't help me make sense of how I'm actually doing.

At the first checkpoint, Furnace Creek (what an evocative name!), I already feel behind my battle plan. In a masterstroke, Irene manages to buy a couple of bags of ice without me ever losing contact with the car, sensing we'll need far more ice than I'd planned for. My entire body is overheating, I ask them to shorten the distance between stops, whenever I can't see the car, I feel lost, at risk. I play my joker card, the second ice bottle, to douse myself, alongside the ice-packed bandana and hat. I'd planned to save that one for after sunrise. It's one in the morning, supposedly the coolest hours, but the temperature isn't dropping, and I'm already deploying every weapon I have just to bring my own down.

I can't manage to eat much, but the hydration I'd been so worried about seems to be working. Instead, I'm hit with drowsiness crises like nothing I've ever experienced. Usually, in long races like PTL, I don't sleep at all through the first two nights, here, I'm already staggering, struggling to follow the white line on the road, on night one. I don't even fully register it, but I'm slowing down, at km 34 I sit down for a few minutes on the car's trunk, something's not working right. I keep scanning the blinking hazard lights of parked cars, hunting for ours, and those little red lights flicking on and off through the darkness are driving me mad. I'm worried, since nobody in the car's actually sleeping, and if I keep shortening the distance between stops, it'll only get harder for them to rest at all.

In the months leading up to the race, I'd tried mentally preparing for all of this, imagining, in as much detail as possible, what I'd go through, but reality, in this case, far outstripped my imagination. It's as if every training session, every hour spent in the sauna, every encouraging message from friends, every ounce of my desire not to let my daughter down, had all vanished like an ice cube on that scorching asphalt: I remember absolutely nothing of it.

Deep exhaustion is taking hold of my body, I try to fight back, but the harder I push, the worse things seem to get, I'm not thinking clearly at all. I try taking a break, attempting to eat something, when a wave of intense nausea forces me to throw up the bite still in my mouth, the retching so violent that blood starts pouring from my nose. A sight I would have loved to spare my family and friends. I'd feared this might happen, but I'd hoped it would hit around kilometer one hundred, not thirty-seven! Devastated and furious, I get back up and set off again. My stomach's empty, but having purged itself, it gives me a bit of a truce for the next few kilometers. I keep sniffing, not wanting race officials to spot the blood on my shirt and pull me aside for a medical check. I pour water into my palm and inhale it through my nose, trying to breathe properly. There's a clot of blood and sand stuck in my throat, hard to swallow past. I push on for a few more kilometers in this state, but the waves of drowsiness are slowly shutting me down. It's as if my brain had invented a brand-new tactic to force me to stop.

I thought I was ready for anything, but I hadn't prepared myself, not even remotely, for these waves of sleepiness. I feel old, worn out. My brain's little scheme works, at km 44 I collapse and fall asleep. I don't know how long I slept, but the drowsiness never fully lets go, I push on for a few more kilometers, but have to stop again, the moment I sit down, I'm out. I'm so heartbroken, so sorry for not being able to do better, for my crew's sake, that at the Stovepipe Wells checkpoint (km 67), I break down into uncontrollable tears.

I feel terrible for the people around me, and I'm ready to drop out, rather than keep putting them through this slow, agonizing decline. As I sit crying in the car, Giuliano's already changed, ready to run with me to the next checkpoint, at kilometer 84, where the cutoff's set for 10:00, only two hours away for us, since we started at 10 pm. He came all this way to help, to share a few kilometers of these endless straight stretches. I honestly don't think I'll make the cutoff, my stomach's as empty as my bottles, but his gentle enthusiasm insists we at least try. It's the first time in my life I've had to actually fight to beat a cutoff, and the climb, gentle as it is, feels insurmountable, the sun's already up, starting to bake our backs.

Photos by Manny Olivo

Chris, the almighty director, is standing there watching, and I'm certain he's got a bet running with one of his crew, on whether I'd actually make it in time, when, with a few minutes to spare before the cutoff, Giuliano and I pass right in front of him.

My stomach's still out of order, but that small victory fills us with joy, we stop for a long pause, not even checking the clock, and pull ourselves back together. Now, my crew and I feel like one unit, I watch them eating slices of the excellent prosciutto Giuliano brought from Piacenza, and it seems like the overall mood's lifting, a thin veil of optimism spreading across their faces.

The crew accepts my weakness, and I feel more at ease myself.

We know the road ahead is still long, incredibly long, and that temperatures will keep climbing, but slowly, we might just be able to pull this off. All my plans have fallen apart, but we set off together toward a brand-new adventure.

The climb up to Towne Pass is very long, but, used to the climbs of trail races, my pace is quicker than most other competitors, I gain back a few positions, and, with them, a thread of optimism. A girl on the staff car warns us to bundle up at the top of the pass. Before I even have time to picture a wonderful cool breeze washing over me the moment I reach the top, a swarm of bees starts buzzing all around me, giving me no chance to even breathe. Convinced it'd be cooler on the other side, I'd let myself get carried away, misreading the warning entirely. There's no point trying to swat them off, there's too many, all I can do is stay calm, close the veil I've fitted over my hat to block the sun, and hope that, running downhill, they'll eventually tire of chasing me. It's a pretty absurd situation, bees, of all things, I figure it must've been one of Chris's tricks to make the race even tougher. Luckily, I've got my long-sleeve top on, kept soaked, which shields me (I'd made a long-sleeve tee in our Race fabric, with "NOT NOW" printed on it, which turned out excellent both for sun protection and staying cool).

Past the pass comes the race's only true descent, roughly 1,000 m of elevation loss over just under twenty kilometers, and I run nearly all of it, angrily, finally feeling like my forward progress means something. As I descend, I feel the heat rising up from the valley below, wrapping around me, licking at every part of my body, even the air stirred by my own movement is scorching. My quads, which should be used to descents by now, are burning, melting like butter left out in the sun. I suspect that, thanks to the calorie deficit, my body's been burning through not just fat but also some of my own muscle protein.

I reach the bottom of the descent even more confused than before, it was supposed to get cooler, but instead there seems to be no air left to breathe, this was supposed to be the more runnable section, yet my legs are so wrecked I struggle to even run the flat stretch connecting the descent's end to the next climb. In the car, this had looked like an easy runnable section, and the day before, temperatures had felt almost bearable. It's a real gut punch to my morale, I check the data on my Coros watch (I've also got a pod on my foot measuring temperature), and, for the first time since starting, the temperature reading shows 50°C. The heat is oppressive, absurdly claustrophobic, in stark contrast with the open, sweeping landscape of the valley. I realize how utterly defenseless I am in this environment, how limited my own self-sufficiency really is, entirely dependent on how long the liter of water I can carry actually lasts: just a few dozen minutes.

I realize just how different running at 40°C is compared to running at 50°C.

Photos by Manny Olivo

Now it's a collective effort, not an individual one anymore, our goal is to reach Panamint Springs, where we can refuel with gas, restock ice, and find something for the crew to eat. I send the car on ahead, and walk the three-kilometer climb up to the gas station myself. When I get there, I sense something's off, Giuliano's pumping gas alone, Cecilia's on the phone (poor thing, the only spot with signal), Irene's running back and forth like a Milanese commuter at rush hour, between the mini-mart and the restaurant, shouting that they're out of ice. She's seriously worried, since the next resupply point is 80 kilometers away. Everyone's fed up with the car, but neither place has AC, and it's impossible to stay put. As for me, though, I'm fairly calm and clear-headed, happy to have finally, painfully, cleared the halfway mark, and with my emergency $10, I go back to the gas station to buy myself an ice cream and some water. Seeing me buying my own food, the other crews start competing to offer me a snack instead. Happy as a kid who's just saved up his allowance, I sit in the shade eating my ice cream, sipping cool water, trying to figure out where everyone else has gone. I can't find them, so I go back to the car and change shoes. My Diadora Cellulas had held up beautifully up to this point, but on the last stretch of descent, the midsole had softened slightly, they'd probably have held for longer, but since I've got a backup pair, I switch shoes and socks. I'm ready to head off again, but I still can't find any of my crew. I go looking, letting them know I'm heading off toward the Father Crowley climb, thirteen kilometers where, because of how winding the road is, the car can only stop at eight organization-designated pull-outs. I climb slowly but steadily, the evening's calm, traffic on the pass nonexistent, and, for the first time since I started, I actually enjoy the scenery, the sunset, distant lightning flashes from a storm out on the horizon. We're rationing the last of our ice, but at the moment it doesn't feel like a major problem yet.

On the asphalt, I spot the typical zigzag patterns left by people peeing on the run, without stopping, I used to do that too, back in the day, so I wouldn't get caught by the runner behind me. Now, to pee, I sit on the door sill or on the trunk edge, how far I've fallen...

Giuliano escorts me through the final switchbacks, where we keep hoping to find the car around every bend, but instead, no sign of it.

Bone-dry on water, we reach the pass and find every crew car lined up, waiting for their runners, about twenty of us moving at roughly the same pace by now, we all know each other, greeting one another every time we cross paths, like a caravan advancing in fits and starts, slowly, toward some invisible point up on a mountain. Irene manages to talk the ambulance following the caravan into handing over half a bag of ice.

The second night catches me off guard too, I don't understand how it's even possible, but I'm still sleepy, despite all the sleep I've already had.

I splash cold water on my face, trying to stay awake, but it doesn't work, and after ending up in those cursed thorny bushes lining the road a couple of times, I stop and fall asleep. In the night, from a cloudy sky blocking out the full moon, a few drops fall, seemingly warm too, their only effect is raising the humidity and making the air even more unbreathable, drawing a rubbery smell up from the asphalt.

I force myself to eat a bite every five kilometers, and, helped by a slight downhill grade, manage to hold a decent pace. Every time I reach the car in the dead of night, my heart breaks a little. I see them sleeping in the seats, in the darkness, but unfortunately, once the car's stopped, the doors lock, and when I wake poor Giuliano to have him open the trunk, every light in the car switches on, lighting it up like daylight, making it impossible for them to sleep. Note to self: next time, remember to disable central locking and turn off the interior lights when the doors open.

I feel terrible for them, but I want to make the most of this window to cover as much distance as possible. Honestly, I'm feeling decent enough, and with whatever strength I have left, I want to run all the way to Lone Pine.

When we're about fifteen kilometers from town, the nightmare that haunts anyone crossing Death Valley materializes: an orange warning light on the dashboard, the tire pressure alert. I'd dreaded this moment. (I'll only find out later that the oil light had already come on too.) Without wasting time, Giuliano gets ready to run alongside me, we load up his backpack, grab every water bottle we can carry, and say goodbye to Irene and Cecilia, who head off, trying to reach a gas station before the front-left tire goes completely flat.

Photos by Mike Trimpe

We're alone now, on that endless straightaway leading toward Lone Pine, the temperature keeps climbing, already unbearable. For the first time since we started, Giuliano seems to be feeling the strain, and, this time, it's me cracking jokes about it.

We ration fluids in small, frequent sips, and I stop wetting my head and shoulders, unwilling to waste a single drop. We're ready to start begging another crew for water, when, through the heat waves rippling off the asphalt, we spot our car's black silhouette, number 93. We dive straight into the trunk, and, once again, we're saved. The tire hadn't punctured, the tire guy had removed, checked and re-inflated it, Irene tells us, but all we care about right now is downing whatever liquids we can, warm or not. Just as they turn the car back in the right direction, the warning light comes back on. The tire guy must have gotten distracted by Cecilia's fluffy slippers and not done the job properly. Without a second thought, Irene sets off again to head back to the tire shop.

We're alone again, but the town's getting closer, and when we turn onto the highway, the roar of trucks and cars overwhelms us after all that silence in Death Valley. Until this moment, I hadn't realized just how much peace there'd been in that inhospitable place. Slowly, we reach the second-to-last checkpoint, where I see the winners' times, and can't wrap my head around how they managed to run this fast under these conditions. My admiration for them knows no bounds.

We're cooked, no news from Irene, and before tackling the final climb, we dive into Lone Pine's only supermarket, where, ironically, two massive freezers full of ice bags greet us right at the entrance. Not that we need any anymore. We grab a truly awful ice cream and stock up on liquids that, in the five minutes it takes us to sit and eat, already warm right back up. But it doesn't matter, I'm curious to see the "trail" reroute, added because the original road was destroyed in November's flooding (a note for the climate-change deniers out there, come take a walk through here and see what's actually happening).

Giuliano's understandably worn out, all I want now is to reach the finish, to see Chris's face at the top of the mountain. We're warned the trail's technical, to be careful, and, helped by the tension slowly easing as we get closer to the finish, we start joking about how "technical" it actually is compared to some of the sections in the Ferriere Trail Festival, the one Giuliano organizes, and we can't help laughing about it.

Once the dirt trail section ends, where we'd passed a Japanese competitor and his pacer, our brief moment of laughter crashes back into the harsh reality of the paved climb, still without our support car. We're wandering in the middle of the road when, at full speed and with a fresh new tire, Irene comes barreling toward us, honking the horn.

Photos by Mike Trimpe

Giuliano settles into what had been my spot in the trunk this whole trip and downs one of our last Schweppes cans, the one we'd unanimously voted the trip's top beverage. Even though we still can't spot the road climbing the mountain ahead, we know it's not much further now, and nothing can stop us anymore, not even a flat tire. We started this adventure together, and together, we'll finish it.

Around a bend, we spot Harvey Lewis, running toward us in full runner's high. But how's that possible, him, one of the favorites, what's he doing here, and why's he running down, not up? He tells us he'd had to stop and sleep, then started back up the next day, but that it had been an incredible experience, and he hopes ours turns out to be one too. We'll find out the next day that, in true #whateverdammit spirit, not satisfied with just finishing his own race, he'd decided to run back to Badwater on foot afterward. Harvey, one of us!

The climb I'd originally imagined tackling during the first night, according to my plans, tough as it is, turns out to be a pure formality. I let the car go ahead and wait for us at the finish. At a solid pace, we complete our adventure, crossing the finish line all four of us together, as tradition demands, under Chris's disbelieving gaze, unable to fathom how Ceci had managed to cross Death Valley wearing fluffy slippers. It feels, to me, like the perfect payback for him not believing in us.

Photos by Chris Kostman and Erika Small

The mighty director had been right after all, maybe it really is the toughest race in the world. When, joking, I tell him so right at the finish line, with that unreadable face of his, he just answers: "I know."

Sure, there are longer races out there, races with more elevation gain, or over more technical terrain, but nothing compares to Badwater 135: there's simply no escape from the heat.

Photos by Chris Kostman and Erika Small

I'd wanted to finish spent, wrecked, having given absolutely everything in what will probably turn out to be one of my last long races, but instead, at midnight, I'm still on my feet, no leg pain at all, wandering the deserted streets of Lone Pine with Cecilia, trying to figure out where, and what, I'd actually gotten wrong.

To top it off in style, our return flight gets pushed back to the evening, and takes off with reduced fuel, since the extreme heat risks preventing it from taking off from Las Vegas at all. We'll refuel in Calgary, Canada, and end up missing our connection in Frankfurt. It's oddly comforting to know I'm not the only one having trouble with the heat.

In 2024, the finisher rate was 76.3%, compared to the usual 82% average.

Part of me is itching to do it again, but I'm not sure it could ever be as shared an experience as this one was.

Right now, I'm without a goal. So what do I do next? Suggestions welcome in the comments.

P.S.: In the end, after 8 months, a new MRI revealed it wasn't actually bone edema causing the pain, it was my meniscus, folded back against the bone. On October 9, 2024, I had surgery to fix it.

I've always thought of running as an individual sport, but this time, without Giuliano, Irene and Cecilia's support, I never would have made it.

Photos by Chris Kostman and Erika Small

I asked them to describe their impressions of this shared adventure:

GIULIANO

Badwater, an endless stream of intense feelings...

The evening of the start, we were in Stovepipe Wells, right in the heart of Death Valley, deep in the final preparations before driving to the start line, when suddenly a sandstorm hit, making the sunset even more striking, but also unsettling, given what still awaited us. But that was only the beginning.

Throughout the race, several moments felt almost surreal, but what struck me and taught me most was watching how, every single time Filippo hit truly severe difficulties, he somehow managed to find his center again, and push forward.

In the end, despite the long-standing friendship that already bound all of us in the crew together, living through something this intimate, this intense, for over forty hours, made our bond even stronger, even more solid.

IRENE

Tic, tic, tic, tic, that's the sound that accompanied me through my hours of Filippo's race, the sound of the car's hazard lights, in the moments we waited for him, ready to shelter him.

Shelter, support, giving him back his strength. I've watched Filippo race in countless settings and conditions before, I've seen him focused, desperate, agonized, fighting, but this time was different, for a reason I didn't fully understand until I actually lived it: how he was doing literally depended on me too.

Incredibly intense teamwork. My tendency to keep control over things was truly put to the test, everything had to function perfectly to pull off this feat, everything, the water supply, the ice, keeping the engine running, the fuel, the distances between us, those few little towns where supplies were available, the ferocious heat. By the second sleepless night, I gave in to a few moments of paranoia, especially once the ice ran out, or maybe it was just exhaustion, but I understood what it truly means to live in the here and now, something so often preached about, those 40 hours really were an intense here and now, for all of us.

The satisfaction of crossing the finish line was immense, we did it all four of us together, holding hands.

CECILIA

There are a few things about this very unusual experience that struck me: the heat, present at every hour, in every moment, always the same, and how the body reacts to those temperatures, both the runners' and the crew's.

To offset our CO2 emissions, even though I know this isn't a real solution, I made a personal donation, on top of Wild Tee's own contributions, to Selva Urbana, the nonprofit we've partnered with for 8 years now.

Unfortunately, flights are a massive source of CO2 emissions, and these 50 trees will take roughly 20 years to offset our trip. Just to give you a sense of scale, four people flying round-trip to the US, with connecting flights, produces around 15 tonnes of CO2, while a single tree absorbs only about 15 kg per year.

Just for the technical-info enthusiasts among you.

Over the 219 km and 5,600 m D+, of which 31 hours moving and 10 hours resting, I used:

• 3 tees from Wild Tee's RACE Collection: a vest, a T-shirt, and a NOT NOW long sleeve tee
• 1 pair of Wild Tee Bryce 2.0 shorts
• 1 Wild Tee NOT NOW Endurance Cap and a prototype NOT NOW Neck Flap
• 2 pairs of Wild Tee Rockies socks
• 1 Coros Apex 2 Pro with Pod 2 for temperature tracking
• 1 pair of Alba Optics ANVMA 99 sunglasses
• 1 pair of Diadora Cellula shoes for 120 km
• 1 pair of Hoka Clifton 9 Wide for 100 km
• 4 handheld bottles: 1 HydraPak SkyFlask Speed, 1 Ultimate Direction AMP, 1 Nathan QuickSqueeze and 1 CamelBak Quick Grip Chill (the best of the four)

• I drank roughly 20 liters of water, with 2 electrolyte sachets and 1 Maurten sachet, plus 10 liters of soft drinks (Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Ginger Ale, Schweppes, iced tea)

• I ate: 3 bars, 5 gels, a slice of bread, 4 milk cookies, 2 packs of crackers, a few bites of beef jerky, 2 slices of prosciutto, 1 peach, 2 cups of fruit in syrup

Maybe I could have pushed a little harder in the first three stages, but there were so many unknowns weighing on my mind. I had more fun than I had in a long time, and it was another important life experience.

How I miss that wonderful feeling of freedom that only the endless, self-sufficient spaces of the desert can give.

See you soon.