Death Valley and Footcare - Page 1

You may wonder what Death Valley has to do with adventure racing.
I used to have the same question until I spent five days providing foot care to racers in the 2000 Badwater Ultramarathon race across the barren and lonely desert in southeastern California.

I was invited down to Death Valley by Ben and Denise Jones to help the runners as they raced the heat for 135 miles from the lowest point in the US to Whitney Portal at the bottom of Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the US.
Ben is the Badwater Mayor and Denise is the First lady.
Each has run Badwater three times.
Now they dedicate themselves to helping runners.
Denise and I talked after the event and discussed the uniqueness of Badwater.
Some of what follows is applicable to foot care and some to adventure racing in general.

We found that the runners at Badwater do not have the same problems as the runners of events like the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run.
Badwater is done on a road where the runners’ crews always have access to their runner.
The crews are generally well versed in foot care and know what works for their runner.
They do not experiment during the race—solutions have been worked out beforehand.
At Western States crews are allowed at only certain aid stations to manage their runners. All other times the runners count on aid station personnel for their support and foot care needs.
Although well intended, sometimes that help they get is not the best for their feet.