If you are unfamiliar with this 135-mile race through Death Valley, you won’t be by the time you are done with this issue. I had the extreme pleasure of working with some very big celebrities in the ultra running community to get this issue completed.
Let’s see, I interviewed Frank McKinney over the phone in my office, David Carver over the phone while I was in the Jacksonville airport, David Green over Skype, Scott D’Angelo via phone while I was running around doing errands and Chris Roman over the phone over several phone calls. I even caught Chris and Dave Green’s coach, Ray Zahab while he was sitting in a plane at Washington Dulles Airport on the way to see Ferg Hawke, who has been joining Ray recently on some of his global expeditions.
I must say, working with Ferg was an unintended surprise, for his story is the main feature in this issue. Mike Morton, Sergio Radovcic, and Brad Lombardi also provided me excellent content by email and I am forever thankful to them for their attention to detail. I do owe a special thanks to Chris, who I met via Facebook last year. At the time I interviewed him for a story in Runners Illustrated where I reported on his run along the Caminho Da Fe which he completed after his first time crewing for Badwater. Since then we’ve talked numerous times, including for about an hour as a I sat in a Whole Foods parking lot and he sold me on doing an issue about all the great guys from Florida who are competing in Badwater this year.
I really thought Badwater and all the reporting on it had dried up (pun intended), but now I am more enamored by these athletes than ever before. This issue would not have been possible without contributions from other athletes/writers as well. I am thrilled to reprint a story on nutrition written by Meredith Terranova, an ultra athlete who wrote great piece on nutrition for Badwater. The best part about preparing for this issue was meeting Chris Roman and Jennifer Vogel in person.
On a trip I took to Florida in March, Jennifer and I sat down and talked for an hour about nu-trition and that being a triathlete makes her a better endurance runner. She’s just like Ferg Hawke, Scott D’Angelo and David Green, for example, who where were triathletes before they became ultra runners. That athletic base has been important in their ability to use their over all physical fitness and mental training as assets in endurance races. Both Scott and David will test these assets for the first time this summer, like Jennifer did last year—with MUCH success, I might add. Jennifer came in 8th overall and was the 2nd place female! I owe a ton of gratitude to Lisa Smith-Batchen. I am extremely fortunate because Lisa provided the Coaches Corner column this issue and her experience I can guarantee, will get any athlete to the finish line at Badwater.
Thank you to everyone who made this issue a success!
The Badwater Basin in Death Valley, California, the nadir of the North American Continent (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Related articles
- Frank McKinney’s Badwater (tighthams.wordpress.com)
- Badwater – Endurance Racing Magazine
- Ferg Hawke – The Running Man
Runners Illustrated by Alix Shutello 
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